Mark Twain writes that “most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest of boys who were schoolmates of mine. ” Twain’s memories of his boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri, form the basis of the novel and give it its idyllic, often nostalgic tone of celebration of lost childhood; Twain called the book “simply a hymn, put into prose form to give it a worldly air. Tom Sawyer is not the complex masterpiece that its successor Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is, but it is well worth reading in its own right. The novel lives on because of its humor and its memorable evocation of the world of childhood. The novel takes place in a transformed, eternal-summer version of Hannibal called St. Petersburg (Saint Peter’s burg, a kind of Heaven).
Tom Sawyer is full of lavish lyrical descriptions of the summer world as it is experienced by those who can appreciate it best–children.
The novel also remembers the nightmare side of childhood; grave-robbing, murder, revenge, and grisly death are also part of St. Petersburg. As he wrote and revised the book, Twain could not make up his mind whether he was writing a book for children or adults. In his preface, Twain expresses a double purpose: “Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves. Although the point of view is Tom’s most of the time, the narrator leading us into Tom’s experience is clearly an adult–amused, superior, and nostalgic by turns–who expects readers to see more than Tom does, to laugh at him and admire him from a perspective of adulthood. Tom Sawyer is in part a reaction against the “Sunday-school literature” abounding in 19th-century America, which featured relentlessly good children who were rewarded and naughty children who came to bad ends. Comic writers like Thomas Bailey Aldrich and B. P.
The Term Paper on Running Head Sexual Predators Brain Damage And Child Abuse part 1
Running head: SEXUAL PREDATORS BRAIN DAMAGE AND CHILD ABUSE Sexual Predators - Brain Damage and Child Abuse August 04, 2008 Sexual Predators Brain Damage and Child Abuse Introduction Despite numerous theories of sex offending, there is no generally accepted scientific substantiation of why sexual predators behave so. It is very likely that there are a number of independent and different causes, ...
Shillaber parodied this moralistic school. Before Tom Sawyer Twain wrote burlesques entitled “The Story of the Bad Little Boy Who Didn’t Come to Grief” and “The Story of the Good Little Boy Who Did Not Prosper,” but in Tom Sawyer he went a step further and told the story of a “bad” (i. e. , normal) boy who will clearly become a good man. In the opening chapters of the novel, Tom displays all the faults of the “bad child” of the moralists: he lies, plays hooky, steals, and generally considers the respectable adult world his natural enemy.
He cannot learn a single Bible verse, but he can memorize the most minute details of the adventures of Robin Hood. It never occurs to him to apply himself in school, but he can be patient, careful, and untiringly diligent in pursuit of childhood arts like whistling and in his sentimental courtship of Becky Thatcher. Like that earlier Tom, Tom Jones, this imprudent boy is naturally good-hearted; in Tom Sawyer Twain is willing to believe in a natural goodness of heart, however much he may distrust such a notion elsewhere.
Tom lives in a private world of gorgeous theatrical dreams, sagas of pirates, robbers, and buried treasure, all starring himself. He successfully transforms dusty everyday life in St. Petersburg into dramas in which he holds center stage, most spectacularly when he attends his own funeral. He is an inspired schemer and entrepreneur, as readers learn in one of the first incidents in the book, the famous whitewashing scene.
The Essay on Tom Boy Joe Growing
Growing Up 5: Tom's experience in the graveyard is disturbing his natural way of doing things. He talks in his sleep and avoids the usual superstitious games the boys play. Instead, he visits Muff Potter in jail, giving him food and tobacco. This is a different side of the normally mischievous, playful Tom. Since he has sworn not to tell anyone about the murder, and is deathly scared of what Injun ...
Twain himself said that the book had “no plot” and critics since his time have called Tom Sawyer everything from “utterly formless and shapeless” to “a most ingeniously plotted novel. ” Three related plotlines intertwine. The first is Tom’s relationship with Aunt Polly, and by extension with the confining “respectable” adult world; this relationship is loving but elaborately hedged with comic plotting on both sides. The second strand is Tom’s courtship of Becky Thatcher, and the third is his involvement with the murder, the buried treasure, and the horrific Injun Joe.
During the course of these adventures Tom begins to mature; at the end, while Huck remains the natural and innocent escapee from “civilization,” Tom edges closer to it. But is “civilized” St. Petersburg worth joining? From the narrator’s wider perspective, we can perceive the narrowness and hypocrisy of the worthies of the little country town. Much of the book’s humor comes from the disparity between what the inhabitants of St. Petersburg “officially” think and feel and what they actually think and feel.
