“ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER”: A BOOK REVIEW

“ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER”:
A BOOK REVIEW

Saturday, March 12, 2011
Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman


Mark Twain has written a rousing good yarn in his 1876 novel “Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

The story is set in a mythical symbolic town, with mythical symbolic characters, in a mythical symbolic time. But, the emotions, sentiments felt and expressed in this classic are real. So real, one feels them as one reads breathlessly onward, from episode to episode, toward the fearful and joyful end.

The book’s principal character is Tom Sawyer, one of two filial orphans, being raised by Aunt Polly. Sidney, Tom’s younger half-brother, is Tom’s first in a long series of foils. Cherubic, as Tom is mischievous, Sidney’s suspicions are repeatedly piqued, yet repeatedly diverted or thwarted by Tom’s smooth craftiness and aplomb. Sidney is a good student. Tom is contentedly average. Sidney is well-behaved in church. Tom is notoriously bad. Sidney is obedient. Tom is usually not. Aunt Polly, the loving and befuddled matriarch, is another foil: the classic fretter and hand-wringer, as Tom’s evasions and exploitations whirl and unfurl against her, and others’, settled backdrop of community values.

Then, there’s Huckleberry Finn, the final foil. Huck, whose absent father is the town drunkard, does not go to school, nor appear to have a definite home, nor even a bed. Yet, he is befriended by Tom, whom he idolizes, as he is deputized and engrafted into a successive series of escalating and reinforcing adventures. Huck is naïve as Tom is worldly. Huck is unread, while Tom, pretensions aside, is reasonably well read. Tom is the leader. Huck is the follower.

Indeed, everyone in this story is Tom Sawyer’s foil or follower, whether wittingly or unwittingly!

Broadly, the story recounts Tom’s initiatory adventures into manhood, culminating in a harrowing cave escapade with Becky Thatcher, Tom’s girl friend, which was also the hideaway and treasure trove of “Injun Joe,” the murderous villain Tom and Huck secretly observe kill a man at midnight in the town cemetery. Tom later exposed Injun Joe at trial after he almost succeeded framing an innocent man, Muff Potter, another drunkard. Injun Joe escapes by diving out the courthouse window, after he’s exposed by Tom.

Tom’s miraculous escape from, and rescue of Becky from, the cave, while arranging for Injun Joe’s demise therein exalts him to town hero. His subsequent recovery of Injun Joe’s stolen gold coin treasury in the cave, that he splits with Huck, pursuant to previous agreement, made Tom and Huck town demigods, even as it set up its classic sequel, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Great yarn! And that’s just scratching the surface!