Tom Sawyer

                                          The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

                                       Created by Mark Twain

                                              (Samuel Clemens)

                                                                       

                                        Source: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/565150/mark-twain-books-facts

  

                            Thomas Sawyer: the main- title character

                               Family:  Aunt Polly (aunt)

                                               Sally Phelps (aunt)

                                               Mary (cousin) 

                                               Sid (half-brother)

                                Source:https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=tom-sawyer-holt-elements-literature

Tom Sawyer is one of the best known novels written in the United States. It traces the fortunes of  the roguish* boy  Tom, his adventures, hopes, fantasies, romances and his harsh collision with a very adult world of greed and murder.  The book is a thriller and a comedy, an exploration of youth and a rich picture of rural life in the nineteenth century Mississippi. The novel is ideal material for a stage adaptation as it is full of action and every scene is centred around  one character: Tom Sawyer, perhaps the most engaging  youth in American literature.

*roguish: playfully mischievous

                                         Inspiration

The fictional character's name may have been derived from a jolly and extravagant chief named Tom Sawyer with whom Twain was acquainted in San Francisco, California, while Twain was employed as a reporter at the San Francisco Call. Twain used to listen to Sawyer tell stories of his youth, "Sam, he would listen to these pranks of mine with great interest and he'd occasionally take 'em down in his
notebook. One day he says to me: ‘I am going to put you between the covers of a book some of these days, Tom.’ ‘Go ahead, Sam,’ I said, ‘but don’t disgrace my name.’" 

Twain himself said the character sprang from three people, later identified as: John B. Briggs (who died in 1907), William Bowen (who died in 1893). Twain later changed his story saying Sawyer was fully formed solely from his imagination, but as Robert Graysmith says, "The great appropriator liked to pretend his characters sprang fully grown from his fertile mind" 

                                                                      Tom

Tom Sawyer is an orphan, a boy of about 12 years of age, who lives in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, in about the year 1845.He  is a mischievous and carefree 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.

 His best friends include Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn.

One of the most famous scenes in the book is the “fence scene”, where Tom Sawyer is asked by his Aunt Polly to whitewash their fence as a punishment for a prior mischief. Tom Sawyer, being young, wishes he could play instead. Ben Rogers, one of his friends sees him doing this job and does his best to make fun of him for his penance.Tom turns the situation around and a dozen boys paint the fence for him while he plays to his heart’s desire and they even pay him for the privilege.

Watch the scene of the fence and find out some more character traits that Tom possesses.

In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom's love for classmate Becky Thatcher is apparent as he tries to make an impression on her  with his strength, boldness, and handsome looks. 

                                                                        Themes

The novel (bildungsroman) deals with several themes such as youth, hope and dreams, manipulation, however, the  most important themes are definitely:

                                           Source: https://slideplayer.com/slide/8306092/

Tom's story celebrates the freedom, mischief, and excitement of youth, and suggests that children shouldn’t hurry to grow up and become adults