Just a Couple of Pirates
A review of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
By Julia A. Keirns
I absolutely loved reading this book! It was exciting and enthralling, and held my attention from beginning to end. I love reading about nature and rivers and forests.
“It was the cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a sound obtruded upon great Nature’s meditation. Beaded dew-drops stood upon the leaves and grasses.” – I would love to write like that!
The story kept moving and was not in the least bit boring or mundane. It was not overwhelmingly fast, nor did it bog me down with too much description, which is exactly the kind of book I like. Tom Sawyer is the little boy that every little boy wants to be. To be free, play hooky from school and just go fishing every day. Even I would want to be him. Mark Twain captures the essence of freedom and boyhood on the Mississippi River remarkably well. That is probably why this story continues to be read by new generations of readers year after year.
First published in 1876, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has stood the test of time for over 100 years. Best of all, this story is based partly on truth. Mark Twain based his characters on real boys that he knew in his childhood and some of their real adventures. Tom gets in trouble and has to whitewash a fence as punishment, but he does a good job of convincing a few of the other boys to do the work for him. Pure genius. He falls in love with the new pretty girl at school, Becky, and goes on adventures with his best friend Huck Finn. Tom and Huck search for buried treasure and witness a murder at the graveyard. Before the end of the story they end up telling the truth about the murder and saving an innocent man’s life. There are many other adventures and you will just have to read the book for yourself.
I believe Tom Sawyer matures quite a bit in this book. In the beginning, some of his antics are quite childish and immature, but by the end of the book he seems to think of others more and even chooses to testify at the trial to help save an innocent man. The book also touches on some other important issues such as financial and social status. Judge Thatcher conceives a great opinion of Tom by the end of the book. Not just because of the treasure they find, which gives Tom financial status, but because he saved Becky and got her out of the cave. Huck Finn is ostracized for his low unsocial status in the beginning and the other children are actually forbidden from playing with him. But by the end, with his treasure in hand and a home with the widow Douglas, he is finally accepted as one of the gang. The boys have a lot of superstitious beliefs as well that are touched on in the book, such as being afraid of witches and ghosts and death.
Twain described the river as he so vividly remembered it. “The life which I led there was full of charm,” he later wrote, and he does a wonderful job of capturing that charm and putting it into words. This book is definitely a classic that makes my top 100.