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    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer SparkNotes Literature Guide
    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer SparkNotes Literature Guide
    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer SparkNotes Literature Guide
    Ebook145 pages1 hour

    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer SparkNotes Literature Guide

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    About this ebook

    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer SparkNotes Literature Guide by Mark Twain
    Making the reading experience fun!
     
    When a paper is due, and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis; explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols; a review quiz; and essay topics. Lively and accessible, SparkNotes is perfect for late-night studying and paper writing.
     
    Includes:

    • An A+ Essay—an actual literary essay written about the Spark-ed book—to show students how a paper should be written.
    • 16 pages devoted to writing a literary essay including: a glossary of literary terms
    • Step-by-step tutoring on how to write a literary essay
    • A feature on how not to plagiarize
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSparkNotes
    Release dateApr 9, 2014
    ISBN9781411471337
    The Adventures of Tom Sawyer SparkNotes Literature Guide

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      Book preview

      The Adventures of Tom Sawyer SparkNotes Literature Guide - SparkNotes

      Cover of SparkNotes Guide to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by SparkNotes Editors

      The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

      Mark Twain

      © 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing

      This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

      Sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes LLC

      Spark Publishing

      A Division of Barnes & Noble

      120 Fifth Avenue

      New York, NY 10011

      www.sparknotes.com /

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7133-7

      Please submit changes or report errors to www.sparknotes.com/errors.

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Contents

      Context

      Plot Overview

      Character List

      Analysis of Major Characters

      Themes, Motifs & Symbols

      Part 1

      Part 2

      Part 3

      Part 4

      Part 5

      Part 6

      Part 7

      Part 8

      Part 9

      Part 10

      Part 11

      Important Quotations Explained

      Key Facts

      Study Questions and Essay Topics

      The Literary Essay: A Step-by-Step Guide

      Suggested Essay Topics

      A+ Student Essay

      Glossary of Literary Terms

      A Note on Plagiarism

      Quiz and Suggestions for Further Reading

      Context

      M

      ark Twain was born

      Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri, in

      1835

      , and grew up in nearby Hannibal, a small Mississippi River town. Hannibal would become the model for St. Petersburg, the fictionalized setting of Twain’s two most popular novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The young Clemens grew up in a prosperous family—his father owned a grocery store as well as a number of slaves—but he was sent out to work at the age of twelve after his father’s death. As a young man, he traveled frequently, working as a printer’s typesetter and as a steamboat pilot. In this latter profession he gained familiarity with the river life that would furnish much material for his writing. He also gained his pen name, Mark Twain, which is a measure of depth in steamboat navigation.

      Twain enlisted in the Confederate militia in

      1861

      , early in the Civil War, but he soon left to pursue a career in writing and journalism in Nevada and San Francisco. His articles and stories became immensely popular in the decades that followed. On the strength of this growing literary celebrity and financial success, he moved east in the late

      1860

      s and married Olivia Langdon, the daughter of a prominent Elmira, New York, family. Twain and Langdon settled in Hartford, Connecticut; there Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which he published in

      1876

      . Twain proceeded to write, among other things, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (

      1884

      ) and two sequels to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Tom Sawyer Abroad (

      1894

      ) and Tom Sawyer, Detective (

      1896

      ). He died in

      1910

      , one of America’s most beloved humorists and storytellers.

      While The Adventures of Tom Sawyer retains some of the fragmented, episodic qualities of Twain’s earlier, shorter pieces, the novel represents, in general, a significant literary departure for Twain. He toned down the large-scale social satire that characterized many of his earlier works, choosing instead to depict the sustained development of a single, central character. Twain had originally intended for the novel to follow Tom into adulthood and conclude with his return to St. Petersburg after many years away. But he was never able to get his hero out of boyhood, however, and the novel ends with its protagonist still preparing to make the transition into adult life.

      Twain based The Adventures of Tom Sawyer largely on his personal memories of growing up in Hannibal in the

      1840

      s. In his preface to the novel, he states that [m]ost of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred and that the character of Tom Sawyer has a basis in a combination . . . of three boys whom I knew. Indeed, nearly every figure in the novel comes from the young Twain’s village experience: Aunt Polly shares many characteristics with Twain’s mother; Mary is based on Twain’s sister Pamela; and Sid resembles Twain’s younger brother, Henry. Huck Finn, the Widow Douglas, and even Injun Joe also have real-life counterparts, although the actual Injun Joe was more of a harmless drunk than a murderer.

      Unlike Twain’s later masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer concerns itself primarily with painting an idyllic picture of boyhood life along the Mississippi River. Though Twain satirizes adult conventions throughout The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he leaves untouched certain larger issues that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn explores critically. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer never deals directly with slavery, for example, and, while the town’s dislike of Injun Joe suggests a kind of small-town xenophobia (fear of foreigners or outsiders), Injun Joe’s murders more than justify the town’s suspicion of him. Because it avoids explicit criticism of racism, slavery, and xenophobia, the novel has largely escaped the controversy over race and language that has surrounded The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. To this day, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer remains perhaps the most popular and widely read of all Twain’s works.

      Plot Overview

      A

      n imaginative and mischievous boy

      named Tom Sawyer lives with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid, in the Mississippi River town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. After playing hooky from school on Friday and dirtying his clothes in a fight, Tom is made to whitewash the fence as punishment on Saturday. At first, Tom is disappointed by having to forfeit his day off. However, he soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of doing his work. He trades these treasures for tickets given out in Sunday school for memorizing Bible verses and uses the tickets to claim a Bible as a prize. He loses much of his glory, however, when, in response to a question to show off his knowledge, he incorrectly answers that the first two disciples were David and Goliath.

      Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get engaged to him. Their romance collapses when she learns that Tom has been engaged before—to a girl named Amy Lawrence. Shortly after being shunned by Becky, Tom accompanies Huckleberry Finn, the son of the town drunk, to the graveyard at night to try out a cure for warts. At the graveyard, they witness the murder of young Dr. Robinson by the Native-American half-breed Injun Joe. Scared, Tom and Huck run away and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen. Injun Joe blames his companion, Muff Potter, a hapless drunk, for the crime. Potter is wrongfully arrested, and Tom’s anxiety and guilt begin to grow.

      Tom, Huck, and Tom’s friend Joe Harper run away to an island to become pirates. While frolicking around and enjoying their newfound freedom, the boys become aware that the community is sounding the river for their bodies. Tom sneaks back home one night to observe the commotion. After a brief moment of remorse at the suffering of his loved ones, Tom is struck by the idea of appearing at his funeral and surprising everyone. He persuades Joe and Huck to do the same. Their return is met with great rejoicing, and they become the envy and admiration of all their friends.

      Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky’s favor after he nobly accepts the blame for a book that she has ripped. Soon Muff Potter’s trial begins, and Tom, overcome by guilt, testifies against Injun Joe. Potter is acquitted, but Injun Joe flees the courtroom through a window.

      Summer arrives, and Tom and Huck go hunting for buried treasure in a haunted house. After venturing upstairs they hear a noise below. Peering through holes in the floor, they see Injun Joe enter the house disguised as a deaf and mute Spaniard. He and his companion, an unkempt man, plan to bury some stolen treasure of their own. From their hiding spot, Tom and Huck wriggle with delight at the prospect of digging it up. By an amazing coincidence, Injun Joe and his partner find a buried box of gold themselves. When they see Tom and Huck’s tools, they become suspicious that someone is sharing their hiding place and carry the gold off instead of reburying it.

      Huck begins to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to

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