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