The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) (edit title/settings)

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Characters edit see section history

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• Tom Sawyer: The novel’s protagonist. Tom is a mischievous boy with an active imagination who spends most of the novel getting himself, and often his friends, into and out of trouble. Despite his mischief, Tom has a good heart and a strong moral conscience. As the novel progresses, he begins to take more seriously the responsibilities of his role as a leader among his schoolfellows.
• Becky Thatcher: Judge Thatcher’s pretty, yellow-haired daughter. From almost the minute she moves to town, Becky is the “Adored Unknown” who stirs Tom’s lively romantic sensibility. Naïve at first, Becky soon matches Tom as a romantic strategist, and the two go to great lengths to make each other jealous.
• Amy Lawrence: Tom’s former love. Tom abandons Amy when Becky Thatcher comes to town.
• Sid: Tom’s half-brother. Sid is a goody-goody who enjoys getting Tom into trouble. He is mean-spirited but presents a superficial show of model behavior. He is thus the opposite of Tom, who is warmhearted but very naughty.
• Aunt Polly: Tom’s aunt and guardian. Aunt Polly is a simple, kindhearted woman who struggles to balance her love for her nephew with her duty to discipline him. She generally fails in her attempts to keep Tom under control because although she worries about Tom’s safety, she seems to fear constraining him too much. Above all, Aunt Polly wants to be appreciated and loved.
• Mary: Tom’s sweet, almost saintly cousin. Mary holds a soft spot for Tom. Like Sid, she is well behaved, but unlike him, she acts out of genuine affection rather than malice.
• Huckleberry Finn: The son of the town drunk. Huck is a juvenile outcast who is shunned by respectable society and adored by the local boys, who envy his freedom. Like Tom, Huck is highly superstitious, and both boys are always ready for an adventure. Huck gradually replaces Tom’s friend Joe Harper as Tom’s sidekick in his escapades.
• Mrs. Harper: Joe Harper's mother
• Joe Harper: Tom’s “bosom friend” and frequent playmate. Joe is a typical best friend, a convention Twain parodies when he refers to Joe and Tom as “two souls with but a single thought.” Though Joe mostly mirrors Tom, he diverges from Tom’s example when he is the first of the boys to succumb to homesickness on Jackson’s Island. As the novel progresses, Huck begins to assume Joe’s place as Tom’s companion.
• Injun Joe: Half Native American and half Caucasian; a violent and villainous man who suffers social exclusion, probably because of his race.
• Muff Potter: A hapless drunk and a friend of Injun Joe.
• Welchman: The man Huck Finn goes to when he learns the Widow Douglas is in trouble.
• Mr. Jones: Add a description of this character.
• Jim
• Judge Thatcher: Becky's father
• Widow Douglas: She is a devote woman who is determined to see good in Huck Finn and help him if she could.
• Robin Hood: A character out of a book Tom Sawyer loves.
• Ben Rogers: A friend of Tom Sawyer
• Jeff Thatcher: Becky's older brother
• Mr. Walters
• Johnny Miller
• Mr. Dobbins

Quotes edit see section history

• “He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.”

• “Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”

  Tom Sawyer

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• THE COMPLETE NOVEL: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)

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• Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

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• Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

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• Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

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• Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.

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• THERE comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

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• their compositions with a sermon; and you will find that the sermon of the most frivolous and the least religious girl in the school is always the longest and the most relentlessly pious. But enough of this. Homely truth is unpalatable.

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• Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush.

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• He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and loathed him.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• St. Petersburg: A fictional town, inspired by Hannibal, Missouri
• Ise

First Sentence edit see section history

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Series & Lists edit see section history

Followed by Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Preceded by The Secret Garden, and followed by Me Talk Pretty One Day.

Followed by História dum marinheiro.

Preceded by Crime and Punishment, and followed by The Count of Monte Cristo.

Preceded by The Godfather, and followed by Mockingjay.

Preceded by At the Back of the North Wind, and followed by Black Beauty.

Preceded by Watership Down, and followed by True Grit.

Preceded by Me Talk Pretty One Day, and followed by Harry Potter Boxed Set (Books 1-7).

Preceded by Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and followed by All the King's Men.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Mark Twain (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PZ7.T88 Ad 2001
• Dewey: 741.5973

Notes for Parents edit see section history

This book can be very hard for young kids to understand, if you want your kids to enjoy the book more wait untill high school.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Teens › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Teens › Literature & Fiction › Adventure & Thrillers
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Action & Adventure
• Books › Children's Books › Literature › Action & Adventure
• Books › Children's Books › Literature › Classics by Age
• Books › Children's Books › Ages 9-12

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Tom & Huck (IMDb): 1995

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