Tom Sawyer

I recently finished reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. While Samuel Clemens (under the pen name Mark Twain) wrote a better novel in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I understand Tom Sawyer remains his best-selling book. Twain presents an idylic boyhood which he drew from his time growing up in Hannibal, Missouri (called St. Petersburg, Missouri in the novel). He drew many of the charachters from his boyhood memories of his friends and community. Twain presents such an idylic American portrait, that Disneyland (as well as Disney World) maintain Tom Sawyer Island as a major attraction. Twain called it a hymn to a glorious summer of adventure.

Tom Sawyer also represents Twain's first attempt at a major novel. His previous books were collections or compilations of articles, correspondences, or fictional works he had prepared as a newspaper man that usually were first published in newspapers.

More importantly, Twain wrote, in the language ordinary Americans spoke in. He carefully studied how people spoke, and labored to write it that way. He made it into an artform. This was a departure from American literature to that point, which was still influenced by European literature, and so didn't try to write the way Americans spoke, especially those who didn't speak well.

Tom's character matures in the novel. At the start, he cons the other boys into doing his work to whitewash the fence. Toward the end, he acts selflessly in the cave to save both him and Becky. At the start he admires his carefree friend Huckeberry Finn. At the end, he is encouraging Huck to become civilized, even though he does it by promising that is the only way Huck can join Tom's robber band (one senses Tom is not really going to form a true robber band.) In many ways, I enjoyed this novel, which points the way to Twain's better work in Huckleberry Finn.