About - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

• The  Adventures of Tom Sawyer 

• 

  The mischievous boy rings a chord across time. The characters are laden with foolish childhood acts that define fun and envy of the age.

  
  
  

  The backdrop of the story set in the 19^th century America inhabits superstition. Illiteracy ruled various societies and science was still searching answers for so many unexplained truths. People had the desire to understand, foresee and control the real world and irrational beliefs prevailed.

  And so when Tom and Huck have a conversation about curing warts by a cat and spunk-water by chanting an incantation, it doesn’t come as a surprise and makes the story authentic.

  
  
  

  Reference - https://www.academia.edu/35277094/The_Use_of_Superstition_in_The_Adventures_of_Tom_Sawyer_

  
  
  

  Twain laid significance on the simple acts of childhood which could include something as raw and uninitiated as ‘skylarking’ - a supremely universal, quintessential childhood conduct, considered natural and healthy by him.

  
  

  Issues touched upon

  
  

  Twain’s narrative has touched on racial integration as in the line  - “white mulatto and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarelling, fighting, skylarking”

  
  
  

  Portrayal of people of color is more a function of the characters' views than the author's.

  
  
  

  Mulatto – having one white and one black parent. 

  
  
  

  In his signature style philosophy, Twain has added – ‘Often the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.’

  
  
  

  

   

  Highlights of the story/writing style

  
  

  - The wild and vivid imagination of a teenage psychology and the deeply felt young emotions thus reproduced.

  
  
  

  ‘ The convulsion of delight that swept his system shook him to his foundations.’ (convulsion – uncontrollable fit)

  
  
  

  The current happenings in Sawyer’s emotional world has been live-reported by the author so well, it is as if it has been served piping hot, right from the psychologically fertile mind of our teenage hero. It is evident in the following line, like in many others –

  
  
  

  ‘This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable suffering that he worked it over and over again in his mind and set it up in new and varied lights, till he wore it threadbare.’’ (When Sawyer‘s petty quarrel with his girl-friend makes him wander alone and contemplate his feelings in extremes. He thinks of death and the responses from his loved ones over his dead body.) There is also the paradox of a suffering that is pleasurable in Tom’s emotions.

  
  
  

  (Threadbare – frayed)

  
  
  

  His emotional descriptions are elaborative and he has at many occasions pitted sentiments against sentiments. For example considering pain a sacred feeling and any feeling of delight too harsh and worldly for this pain.

  
  
  

  “And such a luxury to him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bare to have any worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; it was too sacred for such contact.”

  
  
  

  

  
  
  

  Language/creative usage

  
  

  The use of oxymorons like – dismal felicity (bliss), the agony of pleasurable suffering.

  Other expressions that I liked in the story -

  
  
  

  ‘prayers…for the heathen in the far islands of the sea.’

  
  
  

  ‘He became the centre of fascination and homage.’

  
  
  

  The part that I loved – Huckleberry’s taking to the stage. He has been introduced after quite a few pages to let Sawyer’s character build and take space into the hearts of his privileged readers.

  
  
  

  This is how the legend marks the entry of Huckleberry Finn, Sawyer’s soul brother and the hero of Twain’s next series - 

  
  
  

  ‘The social pariah of the village, son of the drunkard, cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless, vulgar and bad – and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in the forbidden society and wished they dared to be like him.’

  
  
  

  -      Sawyer’s incantation he teaches to Huck to cure his warts – ‘barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts…’

  
  
  

  The urban dictionary defines ‘injun meal’ best –

  
  
  

  Injun was for ‘Indians’ or the indigenous population of native Americans or earliest Europeans who thought they had landed in India. The term was used in later years only by children. It might not necessarily be derogatory always but can be used in a light-hearted, if politically incorrect fashion.

  For example in the sentence –

  Uh-oh, we are entering Injun country!

  
  

  Metaphors

  
  

  ‘A deluge of water and the maid’s discordant voice, drenched the prone martyr’s remains,

  ‘The sun beamed down upon a village like a benediction’ (blessing)

  
  
  

  Idioms (not commonly used) – ‘Girded up his loins’ – to summon up one’s inner resources in preparation for action.

  
  
  

  ‘He was about to take refuse in a lie, when he saw two long tails of yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric sympathy of love…’

  
  
  

  ‘Peppering fire of giggles.’

  
  

  Word usage

  
  

  - Heathen –

  ·         of or pertaining to heathens; pagan.

  ·         Irreligious, uncultured, or uncivilized.

       ' She called us all heathens and hypocrites.' (savage)

        A heathen temple (Godless temple)

        To disappear into the cold heathen north.

  
  
  

  
  
  

  

  
  
  

  
  

  Quotations

  
  "heathen: a benighted* creature who has the folly* to worship something that he can see and feel" [Ambrose Bierce ‘The Devil's Dictionary’]

  
  
  

  *Benighted – overtaken by night or darkness, *folly – lack of good sense.

  
  

  Philosophies -

  
  

  Twain has advocated his liberating philosophies and their satirical inscriptions – (when the minister read out the sermon)

  
  
  

  “The minister…droned along the sermon monotonously…and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving.”

  
  
  

  It’s only human for a child to wander away from the morality of principles burdened upon him. Tom finds recluse at this moment in a fly that he desperately wants to hold prey.

  
  
  

  “The gap in his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable way. He gathered quite a following of lads. The guy who had cut his finger was suddenly shorn of his glory.”

  
  
  

  Writing Style - 

  
  
  

  • -         Satirical,
  • -         vivid imagery
  • -         Careful about diction and vernacular dialogue –

  
  

  “They shoot a cannon over the water and that makes him come up to the top..and they take loaves of bread and put quicksilver (mercury) in ‘em and set ‘em afloat, and wherever there’s anybody that’s drownded(sic), they’ll float right there and stop.”

  
  
  

  For summary of the story –

  •  https://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/94940 .
  • for a detailed study of writing style - https://sites.google.com/site/marktwainauthorstudy3/home/writing-style

   

   

Tuesdays with Morrie

Book Review

The story in general –

Can death be ever made into a story? A story that takes away the hearts of millions?

One might argue that it’s the ideas of Morrie and the philosophies of life that he has preached in this book but it is also undeniably the style of narrative – simple and so authentic which makes it appear like a song, as if Morrie the coach is sitting beside us and whispering the secrets of living straight into our ears. It’s soothing and warm and so very personal.

 If Morrie’s lessons make the book what it is, it’s Mitch’s narrative that makes us feel them.

The author has in the entire story made the silence speak. From noting the gestures and ever-changing moods and expressions of his beloved professor to capturing something as small as public expression at the Logan airport with no air-conditioning, or Morrie’s kitchen counter having all kinds of notes and medical instructions, he has made every effort to make the story sound natural.

Mitch is observant. He realizes how a human touch is a therapy for comfort.

‘A slightest human contact was immediate joy.’

It’s also a moment of pride when the philosophies of the father of our nation touches human hearts worldwide and also finds mention in this book –

‘Each night when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning when I wake up, I am reborn.’ – Mahatma Gandhi

In Mitch’s own words – it’s a story of a ‘dying man talking to living man, telling him what he should know.’

The novel unfolds the beauty of a teacher-student relationship which doesn’t always need to be serious or preachy but can be friendly, humane and fun –

Like when Mitch is trying to aid his professor in his physiotherapy, he had to hit his back and Morrie says – ‘I knew you always wanted to hit me.’

Mitch jokes along – ‘yeah, this is for that B you gave me sophomore year!’

The author is curious in questioning nature with its miracles – ‘how could there be life in his beard when it was draining everywhere else?’

In the end the story leaves us in tears thinking how lucky Mitch has been, wondering if we had somebody in our lives to guide us like that, a mentor who would call us ‘Dear Player…’!

But then Mitch still misses his coach, after his death. Were all his questions seeking meaning of life addressed? I don’t think so as in the end he witnesses – ‘the teaching goes on!’

If we aren’t so lucky to find one mentor in life, we can still seek to make a community. Like Michelle Obama says in her speeches, how it served her well or can learn lessons from everyone around us – friends, parents, children, ourselves, our mistakes and life in general. We just need to listen.

The Message -

The story dares us asking some basic questions involved with death – when it comes, are we ready for it? Are we living in self-denial? What are we doing to value our life of which death is the inevitable destination?

The professor of Mitch’s story has a unique approach to death. Unique it is, not because the Budhhist philosophy that he preaches about a bird on the shoulder reminding of death is unbeknownst but because Morrie practices it with utmost sincerity, every single day of his life as death closes in on him and tells us why it is important to practice it also when we are young , when death might not be as close.

His lesson makes Mitch ponder - “I tried to see what he saw. I tried to see time and seasons, my life passing in slow motion.”

He teaches his student how close we become to nature when we are dying slow, that grieving has the healing power, how family is all about love and support, a firm ground we can fall back on, ‘a spiritual security’. The impermanence of all things makes it important for us to practice detachment, by allowing any emotion to fully penetrate our beings and leave us detached.

“Without love, we are all birds with broken wings”. 

Morrie says and quotes Aden the great poet –

“Love each other or perish.”

And the crux Mitch draws from the last thesis of his life with his old professor –

·         To be more open

·         To ignore the lure of advertised values

·        To pay attention when your loved ones are speaking, as if it were the last time you might hear them.

·        There's is no such thing as ‘too-late’ in life. Morrie was changing until the day he said good-bye.

For summary of the story, refer to - YCteen