V.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

A visit from a boyhood friend reminded Twain of youthful escapades in Hannibal. After two or three false starts, Twain found the right approach and worked on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at intervals throughout 1874 and 1875. Published in 1876 it established Twain as a master of character and situation as well as humor. This celebration of boyhood in a town on the Mississippi River draws heavily on Twain’s memories. In his words, Tom “was all the boy I ever knew.” Rejecting the standard pattern of juvenile literature in which good children are rewarded and bad children are punished, he wrote a novel about real youngsters, vividly and humorously describing their impressions and their adventures.

The many colorful incidents in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer include Tom's courtship of Becky Thatcher, his plans for a pirate gang, and his escapades with his friend Huckleberry (“Huck”) Finn. In one of the book’s best-known scenes, Tom is ordered to whitewash a fence as his punishment for playing hooky. He gets his friends to do the work by making it seem a great honor. Much of the plot revolves around a murder, which Tom and Huck witness. Terrified, they hide on an island. When they secretly return to town, they find that the townspeople think them dead and have arranged their funeral. At the funeral, Tom and Huck are discovered to be alive. They become heroes by identifying the murderer and saving an innocent suspect.