The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

I've read the adventure of huckleberry Finn in 2019 yet I didn't read this one too. Bit annoyed it took me so long to read this amazing novel, while it's isn't a masterpiece by any means he writes kids in highly believable way and I highly enjoyed the story. Will probably reread the books I've read by Mark Twain as soon as possible and continue on my own adventure of reading his books!

I’m sure I’ve read this in the past and I’m sure I liked it then but I had a hard time getting through it this time. It took me a lot longer than I care to admit to finish it. It just wasn’t holding my interest. In fairness, I have had a hard time staying interested in a lot of things of late so I’m not sure this is a fair assessment.

***5.0***

One of my favorite reads of all time..

Happy Reading!!

“What I like is chewing-gum.” “Oh, I should say so! I wish I had some now.” “Do you? I’ve got some. I’ll let you chew it awhile, but you must give it back to me.” That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their legs against the bench in excess of contentment.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is just that: a series of highly episodic adventures about a little boy who will make one fully believe in the old rhyme about little boys being made of “snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails” (Tom is more in the vein of pinchbug beetles and dead cats). It was a fun and easy read, but I didn’t find anything in the style, plot, or characters to really

love…though that very well might be because Twain is writing children's literature and I am now solidly an adult.

Tom himself is a rascal. He’s not unlovable, but he never faces consequences for his absolutely atrocious behavior, which is a bit frustrating. It’s also a bit of a shock to hear these little boys talk about chewing and smoking tobacco, which I didn’t realize was so prominent. (Similarly, the degree to which Tom and his friends are superstitious about the strangest things is very surprising.) In a sense, then, I suppose I appreciated the insight into the Southern culture of the time.

The episodes are quite short, and often lack a strong narrative shape. Instead, they feel almost more like they’re jokes setting up for a slapstick punchline (like when Tom decides to feed medicine to the cat). Unfortunately, I just didn’t think most of these punchlines are that funny—they’re not entirely without humor, but I don’t think they’re enough to justify the story.

My favorite moments are those spent camping on the island, wandering through the caves, and (of course) hunting for buried treasure. Twain excels at setting the scene and getting closer to adventure writing, and I wish there was more of it in the book as a whole.

All together, this book passed the time, but I won’t be rereading it, and the jury is still out on whether I’ll give Twain another chance.

Tom Sawyer gets a very low three stars.

Some favorite passages:

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees.

It seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released; it must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more.

The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple, and upon the varnished foliage and festooning vines. When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass, filled with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but they would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting campfire.

All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near, and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.

After a dainty egg and fish dinner, Tom said he wanted to learn to smoke, now. Joe caught at the idea and said he would like to try, too. So Huck made pipes and filled them. These novices had never smoked anything before but cigars made of grapevine, and they “bit” the tongue, and were not considered manly anyway.

Now the battle was at its highest. Under the ceaseless conflagration of lightning that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in cleancut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy river, white with foam, the driving spray of spumeflakes, the dim outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the drifting cloudrack and the slanting veil of rain. Every little while some giant tree yielded the fight and fell crashing through the younger growth; and the unflagging thunderpeals came now in ear-splitting explosive bursts, keen and sharp, and unspeakably appalling. The storm culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely to tear the island to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the treetops, blow it away, and deafen every creature in it, all at one and the same moment. It was a wild night for homeless young heads to be out in.

A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of “fine language”; another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brainracking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with edification.

NOTE:—The pretended “compositions” quoted in this chapter are taken without alteration from a volume entitled “Prose and Poetry, by a Western Lady”—but they are exactly and precisely after the schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much happier than any mere imitations could be.

It was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn by old traditions. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghosts lurked in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note.

There in the middle of the moonlit valley below them stood the “ha’nted” house, utterly isolated, its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very doorsteps, the chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a corner of the roof caved in.

Every few steps other lofty and still narrower crevices branched from it on either hand—for McDougal’s cave was but a vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and out again and led nowhere. It was said that one might wander days and nights together through its intricate tangle of rifts and chasms, and never find the end of the cave; and that he might go down, and down, and still down, into the earth, and it was just the same—labyrinth under labyrinth, and no end to any of them.

Presently they came to a place where a little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and ruffled Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone.

In one place they found a spacious cavern, from whose ceiling depended a multitude of shining stalactites of the length and circumference of a man’s leg; they walked all about it, wondering and admiring, and presently left it by one of the numerous passages that opened into it. This shortly brought them to a bewitching spring, whose basin was incrusted with a frostwork of glittering crystals; it was in the midst of a cavern whose walls were supported by many fantastic pillars which had been formed by the joining of great stalactites and stalagmites together, the result of the ceaseless water-drip of centuries. Under the roof vast knots of bats had packed themselves together, thousands in a bunch; the lights disturbed the creatures and they came flocking down by hundreds, squeaking and darting furiously at the candles.

The captive had broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone, wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock-tick—a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the foundations of Rome were laid; when Christ was crucified; when the Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the massacre at Lexington was “news.”

It is falling now; it will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for this flitting human insect’s need? and has it another important object to accomplish ten thousand years to come? No matter. It is many and many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped out the stone to catch the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that pathetic stone and that slow-dropping water when he comes to see the wonders of McDougal’s cave. Injun Joe’s cup stands first in the list of the cavern’s marvels; even “Aladdin’s Palace” cannot rival it.

Read it over 45 years ago.

Mark Twain is one of the most overrated authors ever to be branded a literary genius. His works are unimaginative and repetitive; 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' is no exception. If you must read Twain, read 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' instead.