Chapter 21
1 (p. 125) “You’d scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the stage,” etc.: This phrase comes from the 1791 poem “Lines Written for a School Declamation” (to be spoken by Ephraim H. Farrar, aged seven, New Ipswich, New Hampshire), by David Everett.
2 (p. 126) “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck”followed; also “The Assyrian Came Down”: These titles of “declamatory gems” have their, sources in, respectively, the poems “Casablanca,” by Felicia D. Hemans (1793-1835), and “The Destruction of Sennacherib,” by George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824).
3 (p. 126) “extract from it”: See Twain’s note at the end of this chapter (p. 147), in which he indicates, accurately, that all the “compositions” in his “extract” are taken “without alteration” from an actual source. Scholars have identified the source as The Pastor’s Story and Other Pieces; or, Prose and Poetry (1871), by Mary Ann Harris Gay, an ardent Southern sympathizer during the Civil War.
4 (p. 128) My dearest friend... to my side“: These lines of verse derive from The Course of Time (1827), by Scottish poet Robert Pollock.
5 (p. 129) Daniel Webster: A New England statesman—congressman, senator, and secretary of state—Webster (1782-1852) was regarded as antebellum America’s greatest orator.
Chapter 22
1 (p. 130) Cadets of Temperance ... their ”regalia“: This was a youth organization against smoking and alcohol; young Samuel Clemens belonged to it—because, he later said, of the colorful sash (the ”regalia“) the cadets wore on holidays.
2 (p. 131) Mr. Benton: Thomas Hart Benton served as United States senator from Missouri for three decades (1821-1851).
Chapter 25
1 (p. 143) Still-House branch: This stream took its name from the fact that one of Hannibal’s several distilleries was located along it.
Chapter 26
1 (p. 148) on a Friday: The belief that Friday is an unlucky day for undertaking new ventures derives from Christ’s crucifixion on Good Friday.
2 (p. 148) dreamt about rats: To dream about rats, according to the belief expressed here, meant that one had dangerous enemies.
3 (p. 151) Then for Texas!: Texas was known as a haven for outlaws in the mid-nineteenth century.
4 (p. 153) Murrel’s gang: The American desperado John A. Murrel (1804?-1850) led a band of outlaws whose violent acts were legendary in Missouri towns during Twain’s youth.
5 (p. 153) by the great Sachem: For Injun Joe to swear by the ”sachem,“ a generic term for a great Indian chief, would be for him to take a serious oath.
Chapter 28
1 (p. 159) Temperance Taverns: Unlike Hannibal’s other taverns of the 1840s, its ”temperance tavern“ did not (except covertly) serve alcohol.
2 (p. 160) Hooper Street: This is probably a reference to Hill Street, where Twain’s boyhood home was located.
3 (p. 160) good as wheat: This expression, which in this context means that Tom’s and Huck’s agreement is absolutely firm, derives from colonial times, when wheat could serve as payment for goods and services.
Chapter 29
1 (p. 161) ”hi-spy“ and ”gully-keeper“: ”I spy“ and ”goalie keeper“ are children’s games; both involve a player trying to reach ”home base“ before being tagged.
2 (p. 163) McDougal’s cave: This cave is drawn after McDowell’s cave, located along the Mississippi to the south of Hannibal. During Twain’s youth the cave was associated with its namesake, Doctor Joseph Nash McDowell, a physician given to mysterious activities.
Chapter 33
1 (p. 190) lucifer matches: The lucifer match, tipped with phosphorous and ignited by friction, was patented in the United States in the 1830s.
INSPIRED BY THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
Mark Twain Tonight!
Since 1954 accomplished American actor Hal Holbrook has presented his one-man show Mark Twain Tonight! dozens of times every year. In each performance—there have been some 2,000 to date—Holbrook, the only actor ever to do the show, depicts Twain at age seventy, which allows him to mine nearly all of the author’s writings. Holbrook constructs each performance almost entirely from Twain’s own words, drawing from some fifteen hours of material he has accumulated. He improvises a great deal to accommodate his mood and audience and often adapts the show to, the times and social milieu. Holbrook’s film and theater careers have grown over the past half-century, but Mark Twain, as he appears in Mark Twain Tonight!, has remained relatively unchanged and ageless: Wearing a dapper white suit, he smokes a cigar and rants a timeless sarcasm.
Statuary
On May 27, 1926, in Mark Twain’s childhood hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, a bronze sculpture of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn was unveiled. The figures embody the spirit of adventure: Huck sports his famous straw hat, pushes a walking stick into the ground, and looks up to his hero, Tom Sawyer, who gazes forward confidently in midstep. The monument, created by Frederick Hibbard, stands at the base of Cardiff Hill in the town that was the model for the setting of Twain’s two famous novels of boyhood. The unveiling was attended by ninety-year-old Laura Frazer, who inspired the character Becky Thatcher in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Film
In addition to countless stage adaptations, television movies, and animated versions, numerous feature films recount the adventures of Tom and his faithful companion, Huck. These include William Desmond Taylor’s trilogy of silent films (Tom Sawyer, Huck and Tom, and Huckleberry Finn; 1917-1920); the musical Tom Sawyer (1973), starring Jodie Foster as Becky Thatcher; and the family pictures Tom and Huck (1995) and The Modern Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2000). The version most lovingly remembered is David O. Selznick’s production The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), directed by Norman Taurog. Tommy Kelly plays the respectable ruffian who finds himself in a parade of now-famous scenarios—the whitewashing of the fence, the courting of Becky Thatcher, the spooky graveyard scene, and the claustrophobic cave adventure (brimming with bats). The film also dramatizes less familiar scenes, such as Tom kicking the villainous Injun Joe off a cliff to his death—a scene not present in the novel. Selznick’s sumptuous production conveys Twain’s familiar breed of wit by means of lobbed vegetables and other slapstick frills (mostly directed at Sid Sawyer, played by David Holt), and by John V. A. Weaver’s mischief-riddled screenplay. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Art Direction (Lyle Wheeler).
Twain’s Sequels
It is no secret that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer paved the way for Twain’s masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), which Twain originally intended as a companion to Tom Sawyer. However, Huck Finn has a moral dimension not present in the earlier novel. Many critics attribute this to Twain’s decision to write Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Huck’s perspective rather than in the third-person narration he had used in Tom Sawyer. What many people don’t know is that Mark Twain published two other sequels to his novel of Missouri boyhood, both written in the first person and from Huck’s perspective, and both less inspired than derivative. The flavor of the first, Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), is conveyed by its opening words: “Do you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures?” In the second, Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896), Twain capitalized on the mystery craze created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s enigmatic detective Sherlock Holmes. In a review of the later Tom Sawyer stories, The Guardian noted, “If Mr. Clemens had been wise, or had preferred his reputation to ‘the very desirable dollars,’ he would not have attempted to resuscitate the genial Huckleberry.” Nonetheless, readers who want more of Tom and Huck may enjoy looking into Twain’s lesser-known sequels.
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s
history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
Mr. Samuel Clemens has taken the boy of the Southwest for the hero of his new book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and has presented him with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree, and which gives incomparably the best picture of life in that region as yet known to fiction. The town where Tom Sawyer was born and brought up is some such idle shabby Mississippi River town as Mr. Clemens has so well described in his piloting reminiscences, but Tom belongs to the better sort of people in it, and has been bred to fear God and dread the Sunday-school according to the strictest rite of the faiths that have characterized all the respectability of the West. His subjection in these respects does not so deeply affect his inherent tendencies but that he makes himself a beloved burden to the poor, tender-hearted old aunt who brings him up with his orphan brother and sister, and struggles vainly with his manifold sins, actual and imaginary. The limitations of his transgressions are nicely and artistically traced. He is mischievous, but not vicious; he is ready for almost any depredation that involves the danger and honor of adventure, but profanity he knows may provoke a thunderbolt upon the heart of the blasphemer, and he almost never swears; he resorts to any stratagem to keep out of school, but he is not a downright liar, except upon terms of after shame and remorse that make his falsehood bitter to him. He is cruel, as all children are, but chiefly because he is ignorant; he is not mean, but there are very definite bounds to his generosity; and his courage is the Indian sort, full of prudence and mindful of retreat as one of the conditions of prolonged hostilities. In a word, he is a boy, and merely and exactly an ordinary boy on the moral side. What makes him delightful to the reader is that on the imaginative side he is very much more, and though every boy has wild and fantastic dreams, this boy cannot rest till he has somehow realized them. Till he has actually run off with two other boys in the character of a buccaneer and lived for a week on an island in the Mississippi, he has lived in vain; and this passage is but the prelude to more thrilling adventures, in which he finds hidden treasures, traces the bandits to their cave, and is himself lost in its recesses. The local material and the incidents with which his career is worked up are excellent, and throughout there is scrupulous regard for the boy’s point of view in reference to his surroundings and himself, which shows how rapidly Mr. Clemens has grown as an artist. We do not remember anything in which this propriety is violated, and its preservation adds immensely to the grown-up reader’s satisfaction in the amusing and exciting story. There is a boy’s love-affair, but it is never treated otherwise than as a boy’s love-affair. When the half-breed has murdered the young doctor, Tom and his friend, Huckleberry Finn, are really in their boyish terror and superstition, going to let the poor old town-drunkard be hanged for the crime, till the terror of that becomes unendurable. The story is a wonderful study of the boy-mind, which inhabits a world quite distinct from that in which he is bodily present with his elders, and in this lies its great charm and its universality, for boy-nature, however human nature varies, is the same everywhere.
The tale is very dramatically wrought, and the subordinate characters are treated with the same graphic force that sets Tom alive before us. The worthless vagabond, Huck Finn, is entirely delightful throughout, and in his promised reform his identity is respected: he will lead a decent life in order that he may one day be thought worthy to become a member of that gang of robbers which Tom is to organize. Tom’s aunt is excellent, with her kind heart’s sorrow and secret pride in Tom; and so is his sister Mary, one of those good girls who are born to usefulness and charity and forbearance and unvarying rectitude. Many village people and local notables are introduced in well-conceived character; the whole little town lives in the reader’s sense, with its religiousness, its lawlessness, its droll social distinctions, its civilization qualified by its slave-holding, and its traditions of the wilder West which has passed away. The picture will be instructive to those who have fancied the whole Southwest a sort of vast Pike County, and have not conceived of a sober and serious and orderly contrast to the sort of life that has come to represent the Southwest in literature.
—The Atlantic Monthly (May 1876)
THE SPECTATOR
This tale of boy-life on the other side of the Atlantic will amuse many readers, old as well as young. There is a certain freshness and novelty about it, a practically romantic character, so to speak, which will make it very attractive. Desert islands and the like are all very well to read about, but boys know that they are not likely to come in their way; but an island in the Mississippi where they can really play Robinson Cru soe, catch fish to eat, and in a way, actually live like real runaways, looks true. Altogether, Tom Sawyer’s lot was cast in a region not so tamed down by conventionalities, as is that in which English boys are doomed to live. Hence he had rare opportunities, and saw rare sights, actual tragedies, which our tamer life is content to read about in books.
—July 15, 1876
THE TIMES OF LONDON
A perusal of “Tom Sawyer” is as fair a test as one could suggest of anybody’s appreciation of the humorous. The drollery is often grotesque and extravagant, and there is at least as much in the queer Americanizing of the language as in the ideas it expresses. Practical people who pride themselves on strong common sense will have no patience with such vulgar trifling. But those who are alive to the pleasure of relaxing from serious thought and grave occupation will catch themselves smiling over every page and exploding outright over some of the choicer passages.
—August 28, 1976
THE PALL MALL GAZETTE
Tom Sawyer, it is almost needless to remark, is an American, and his adventures are such as could only happen in a country where nature and novelists conduct their operations on a portentous scale. Mr. Twain is as daring as his hero. He heaps incident upon incident and impossibility upon impossibility with an assurance which is irresistible. We almost believe in Tom Sawyer while reading about him, and are ready to agree with some of his companions, who affirmed that, “he would be President yet if he escaped hanging.”
—October 28, 1876
THE NEW YORK TIMES
It is exactly such a clever book as Tom Sawyer which is sure to leave its stamp on younger minds. We like, then, the true boyish fun of Tom and Huck, and have a foible for the mischief these children engage in. We have not the least objection that rough boys be the heroes of a story-book. Restless spirits of energy only require judicious training in order to bring them into proper use. “If your son wants to be a pirate,” says Mr. Emerson somewhere, “send him to sea. The boy may make a good sailor, a mate, maybe a Captain.” Without advocating the utter suppression of that wild disposition which is natural in many a fine lad, we think our American boys require no extra promptings. Both East and West our little people are getting to be men and women before their time. In the books to be placed, then, into children’s hands for purposes of recreation, we have a preference for those of a milder type than Tom Sawyer. Excitements derived from reading should be administered with a certain degree of circumspection. A sprinkling of salt in mental food is both natural and wholesome; any cravings for the contents of the castoras, the cayenne and the mustard, by children, should not be gratified. With less, then, of Injun Joe and “revenge,” and “slitting women’s ears,” and the shadow of the gallows, which throws an unnecessarily sinister tinge over the story, (if the book really is intended for boys and girls,) we should have liked Tom Sawyer better.
—January 13, 1877
CARL VAN DOREN
Mark Twain smiles constantly at the absurd in Tom’s character, but he does not laugh Tom into insignificance or lecture him into the semblance of a puppet. Boys of Tom’s age can follow his fortunes without discomfort or bored
om. At the same time, there are overtones which most juvenile fiction entirely lacks and which continue to delight those adults who Mark Twain said, upon finishing his story, alone would ever read it. At the moment he must have felt that the poetry and satire of Tom Sawyer outranked the narrative, and he was right. They have proved the permanent, at least the preservative, elements of a classic.
—The American Novel (1921)
Questions
1. During the composition of Tom Sawyer, Twain was apparently conflicted about whether he was writing a novel for children or for adults. What signs of this conflict do you see in the novel? Would you give a copy of Tom Sawyer to a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old?
2. What are the kinds of dramatic situations in Tom Sawyer that characteristically produce humor, and how is that humor related to Twain’s larger purposes for the novel? Analyze one scene that you find especially funny.
3. Think about the female figures in Tom Sawyer—including Becky Thatcher, Aunt Polly, the Widow Douglas, and Sereny Harper. How would you characterize their individual and collective roles in the novel?
4. In his introduction, H. Daniel Peck describes an opposition in Tom Sawyer between adulthood, civilization, and work, on the one hand, and childhood, nature, and play, on the other. Is Twain affirming the latter over the former? Is reconciliation between the two possible?
5. Is there a moral to the episode about whitewashing the fence? If so, what is the moral? How do you know? Could the moral be described as immoral?
Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 26
