The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain, 1872

I did not read Tom Sawyer as a child, so I cannot give it the sentimental effusion I gave to Little Women, which is a comparable book; both are so influential that children’s literature and television still borrow techniques and elements from these seminal works. Mark Twain’s two young scamps, Tom and Huck, sneak to the cemetery at night to perform some sort of witchcraft with a dead cat. They witness a crime and spend the rest of the book wrestling with scruple and fear. Ultimately, they manage to stumble into all the right places at all the right times to thwart the villain whom adult authorities failed to apprehend. Does this not remind you of Scooby Doo and Shaggy, and a host of other children’s stories in which the kids capture the bad guy? Mark Twain invented that. He also invented or at the least popularized going to your own funeral as a plot element.

He also created or described a delightful little boy barter economy. Tom trades marbles, teeth, bugs, bits of glass, one-eyed kittens and doorknobs among other things. He notoriously exchanges a chance to whitewash a fence for a wealth of items discarded by adults in their ignorance of the value of sundry scraps to little chaps. Half the humor of the book is in the small things Tom values, such as the ability to steer the movements of a tick during a school lesson. I also appreciate the charming superstitions Tom adheres too. Very funny.

While Twain satirizes the romantic visions of knights, thieves and pirates that Tom has acquired from Robin Hood and other literature, his story is quite a romantic fantasy itself. Children thwart a hardened criminal, survive for days while lost in a cave, and we must talk about Huckleberry Finn. As the son of the town drunk, Huck is brought up by no one. He sleeps in the haylofts of kindly strangers. He doesn’t go to school. The boys in town envy his freedom. Twain does not adequately explain how Huck manages to avoid starvation. Fishing? Seems unlikely to provide year round sustenance.

When the Widow Douglas insists on giving Huck a home, Twain portrays the moment as a lamentable loss of freedom. Granted, young boys can’t be expected to recognize the value of being told to bathe and go to school. It’s natural for Huck to feel uncomfortable in an unfamiliar setting. What bothers me is Twain’s depiction of the glorious liberty of being an uncared for child. I shudder to think of Huck’s vulnerability. Being unloved, undefended and unprovided for is a horrible position for a child to be in. As an allegory for freedom from the tethers of society, Huckleberry Finn in Tom Sawyer only kind of works. I understand what he represents, but he represents it poorly in my opinion. You can take the teacher out of the school, but you can’t take the concern for the safety of children out of the teacher. I hope this trifle will be remedied in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I have enormously high expectations for. I find that books with glowing reputations in the canon tend to deserve them.

In Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain evinces exactly the racial sensitivity and understanding you would expect from a Southerner in the 1870s. Not good. Injun Joe is a dark spot in the already dark history of Native people in the English canon. I could go on about race in this novel and I will, upon request, but if you have found this blog, you probably already know enough about race in America to know what to expect from this region during this era.

You might like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer if:

• you like children’s literature
• you have a silly sense of humor

You might  not like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer if:

• your life is too short for the slightly lesser works of great authors

Final Thoughts: Certainly worth reading. Very funny and charming if not the greatest work by this author.