Who is Tom Sawyer
This is an ordinary American teenager living in a small town called St. Petersburg, in Missouri. His age is not explicitly stated in the books, but it can be assumed that he is between nine and fourteen years old; Most often they believe that he is twelve, which is quite consistent with his behavior and consciousness.
Tom Sawyer is a cunning and lazy fellow who does not particularly like to work. However, when it comes to seeking adventure, he is enviably active. Nothing can stop him if he wants to get to a desert island, find a treasure, become a pirate, etc. Despite his restless character, the boy loves to read; Most often he reads adventure books, since he himself likes to look for adventures.
Tom is still a child, but he also has to deal with the real “adult” world. So, one day he witnesses a murder and then exposes the criminal. This happened when he and his friend Huck went to the cemetery at night to conduct a “witchcraft ritual” there. Tom also constantly falls in love with pretty girls. One of them, Becky Thatcher, became interested in Tom, but when she found out that she was “not his first girlfriend,” she was disappointed.
Tom Sawyer also attends Sunday school: American society at that time was very religious. The boy himself hates church school with all his heart. But an amazing thing happens. At each lesson, the teacher gives students multi-colored tickets for correct answers, which they can later exchange for a Bible if they collect enough. On the day when the church was solemnly rewarding the best students with the Bible, it turned out that only Tom had the required number of tickets; in fact, he exchanged them with other students. The teacher had to reward this mischievous boy, although he did not imagine that he could be seriously interested in the Bible.
Tom does other naughty things at church. For example, once during the service he pulled out a beetle - one of his “treasures”. At that moment, a dog ran into the church, saw the beetle and began to play with it, which greatly amused all the visitors to the church.
Most of all, Tom Sawyer loves freedom. He constantly misses her; he is raised by a strict aunt Polly, a relative, and she constantly punishes him. However, the boy often manages to outwit her. For example, she sent him to paint the fence, but he was too lazy. He pretended to enjoy this work, and the other boys envied him. Then he began to “sell” this work to them, accepting various trinkets as payment. In the end, he became a "real rich man" and the fence was painted by other boys. Aunt Polly, of course, praised Tom.
It was because of his love of freedom, independence and adventure that Tom became friends with Huckleberry Finn. This boy has no permanent residence and no relatives except his alcoholic father, who does not raise him at all; Thanks to this, Huck does everything he wants, which is why all his peers envy him. Huck does not go to school, wears some cast-offs, but looks much happier than teenagers from normal families.
Tom is capable of being a true friend and keeping secrets. Because of this, he sometimes finds himself in comical situations. For example, Huck once ran away from his father, ended up in the house of Tom's distant relatives and began to impersonate him. When Tom Sawyer himself came to his relatives, he decided not to betray his friend and pretended to be Sid, his half-brother.
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On this page you will find quotes from the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; you will definitely need this information for your overall development.
It often happens that the fewer justifications there are for some ingrained custom, the more difficult it is to get rid of it.
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He forded a small stream two or three times, because it is a common belief among boys that this throws off the pursuit.
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The only nice thing is that it’s hard to get. Huckleberry Finn
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It turns out, Tom, being rich is not such a fun thing. Wealth is melancholy and care, melancholy and care...
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Does everything in the world really have its own purpose and purpose?
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Two thousand verses is a lot, a lot, a lot. And never regret that you spent so much work on it: knowledge is more valuable than anything in the world - it is what makes us good people and even great people; you yourself will someday become a good man, a great man, Thomas, and then you will look back on the path you have traveled and say: “I owe all this to the fact that as a child I had the good fortune to study in Sunday school - to my dear teachers who showed me the road to knowledge...
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Without knowing it, he discovered a great law that governs the actions of people, namely: in order for a man or a boy to passionately want to possess some thing, let this thing be as difficult for him to get it as possible.
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The last feather broke the camel's back.
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Every object that we have received at the cost of noble, honest labor seems sweeter and nicer to us.
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- What is this - a ransom? - Money. You force them to borrow as much as possible from friends; Well, if they don’t pay in a year, then you kill them. Everyone does it. Only women are not killed. Women are kept captive and not killed. They are always beautiful, rich and terribly afraid of everything. You take away their watches and things, but you just have to talk politely and take off your hat. There is no one in the world more polite than robbers, you will read this in any book. Well, women immediately fall in love with you, and when they live in the cave for a week or two, they stop crying, and in general you won’t survive them from there. ***
If you kick them out, they will turn around, turn around and come back again.
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You can tell everything about girls by their faces - they have no self-control.
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Once you give your word that you won’t do something, you will certainly want to do it.
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Little by little, fatigue began to take its toll; the children tried not to pay attention to her, because they were scared at the thought that they would sit here - when every minute is so precious; moving in any direction, even at random, they were still going somewhere, and perhaps towards the exit, but to sit down meant dooming themselves to death and hastening its approach.
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And they walked at random, aimlessly... just so they could walk, not sit still, because they couldn’t do anything else. Soon hope seemed to rise again in their hearts - not because there was any reason for this, but because such is the nature of hope: it is revived again and again while a person is still young and not accustomed to suffering failures.
Tom Sawyer prototypes
Mark Twain borrowed the name for his hero from a real person whom he met while working as a journalist in San Francisco. The very character of the boy was copied from three teenagers at once, as Mark Twain says in the preface to the book; however, who these boys were is not completely known.
One of the prototypes of Tom Sawyer, apparently, was Mark Twain himself. After all, works about the boy are largely based on his memories of his childhood. It is interesting that these stories were originally intended for adult readers, but it was children who liked them most.
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On June 9, 1876, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain was first published in England.
In essence, the writer did not have to invent anything. He remembered his childhood in Hannibal and his life in those years. And here on the pages of the book
the town of St. Petersburg appeared, in which one can easily distinguish the features of Hannibal, as well as the features of many other small
settlements along the banks of the Mississippi. And in Tom Sawyer you can easily recognize young Samuel Clemens,
who really disliked school and was already smoking at the age of 9.
Huckleberry Finn also had his own prototype. The boy's name was Tom Blankenship. He grew up in a poor large family, with eight children
could not look after them well, so Tom walked around hungry, barefoot, dressed in anything, terrifying the respectable mothers with his
naughty tricks. The boys loved to keep him company, and since this was forbidden by their parents, friendship with him was highly valued and
There was no more popular boy in the whole town than him. When Tom grew up, he managed to get an education and became a justice of the peace in Montana.
A lovely girl with golden hair braided in two long braids, Becky Thatcher actually had a different name - Laura Hawkins.
She lived across from the Clemens house, and saw the acrobatic stunts that Sam Clemens did to get her attention, exactly
just like Tom Sawyer.
A monument was erected to two beloved book characters - Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn - in the writer's homeland: bronze Huck and Tom are carried on
cemetery dead cat. This is one of the world's first monuments to literary heroes!
Work on the book took Twain several years. He usually worked very productively: up to 50 handwritten pages a day, but with “Tom”
it turned out differently. Either he was going to create a play, then he was thinking of writing a book in the first person, then he was going to master a typewriter. It was Twain
became the first writer to make it his working tool. It was invented in 1873, the following year it was purchased for
125 dollars was on his desk. Among the advantages were the compactness of the text, its clarity, and the absence of blots. The book was published in England
dictated by special circumstances. When Twain wrote it, there was no copyright law in the United States. The writer often became a victim
book pirates: as soon as he published a new work in America, it was soon published in England and Canada. With the help of friends
managed to get the book into a London publishing house, where it was published in a bright red cloth binding. The American edition saw
light at the end of the year, and in Canada (apparently out of habit) a month later they published a pirated copy without illustrations from the English edition.
Preface
Most of the adventures described in this book are taken from life: one or two were experienced by myself, the rest by boys who studied with me at school. Huck Finn is copied from life, Tom Sawyer too, but not from one original - he is a combination of features taken from three boys I knew, and therefore belongs to a mixed architectural order.
The wild superstitions described below were common among the children and Negroes of the West at that time, that is, thirty or forty years ago.
Although my book is intended primarily for the amusement of boys and girls, I hope that grown men and women will not disdain it either, for it was my design to remind them of what they themselves were once like, how they felt, how they thought, how they spoke, and how they what strange adventures they sometimes got involved in.
Hartford, 1876
Author
Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Chapter 9 (Mark Twain)
Chapter IX
In the evening, at half past nine, Tom and Sid went to bed as usual.
They said their prayers and Sid soon fell asleep. Tom lay awake and waited in feverish impatience. Just when it seemed to him that dawn was near, the clock struck ten! It's just a disaster. His nervous mood made him fidget and fidget, but he was afraid of waking Sid. So he lay still, staring into the darkness. An ominous silence reigned. Little by little, subtle sounds began to stand out in the silence. The ticking of the clock became clearly audible. The old beams began to groan mysteriously. The steps on the stairs creaked faintly. Obviously, the spirits began their adventures. Steady muffled snoring came from Aunt Polly's room. And there came the unbearable chirping of a cricket, which no amount of human ingenuity could calm down. The ominous tapping of the clockmaker beetle in the wall, at the head of the bed, made Tom wince - it meant that someone's days were numbered. A dog howled in the distance, breaking the silence of the night, and was answered by an even more distant howl. Tom lay motionless. Finally he became convinced that time had stopped and eternity had begun; despite his excitement, he began to doze off; the clock struck eleven, but he no longer heard the fight. But then a most melancholy meow was heard, mingling with his vague dreams. The knocking of a nearby window made him wake up. Exclamation: “Scram, devil!” and the sound of an empty bottle breaking on Aunt Polly's woodshed completely woke him, and a minute later he was dressed, climbed out of the window, and crawled on all fours along the roof. He meowed carefully once or twice, then jumped onto the roof of the woodshed, and from it to the ground. Huckleberry Finn was there with his dead cat. The boys set off and disappeared into the darkness. Half an hour later they were already walking through the tall grass of the cemetery. It was an old-fashioned Western style cemetery. It was located on a hill, one and a half miles from the village. The ramshackle wooden fence around him was bent inwards in places, outwards in others, but nowhere did it stay straight. The cemetery is overgrown with grass and weeds. All the old graves have crumbled. Not a single gravestone was left in place; The worm-eaten crosses on the graves leaned askew, demanding support, but not finding it. Once upon a time there were inscriptions on them: here rests, and so on, but now most of them could not be read anything even in daylight.
A weak breeze moaned between the trees, and Tom was afraid that these were the souls of the dead complaining that they had been disturbed. The boys spoke little, and only in barely audible whispers, since the time, the place, and the surrounding solemn silence impressed them. They soon found the fresh mound they were looking for and hid under three large elm trees that grew in a group a few feet from the grave.
They waited in silence for what seemed to them a long time. The distant hooting of an eagle owl was the only sound that broke the dead silence. Tom became unbearable. He had to speak. So he said in a whisper:
“What do you think, Huck, do the dead people like that we’re here?”
Huckleberry whispered back:
- How do I know? It’s a little scary here, don’t you think?
- Still would.
There was a long pause, during which the boys pondered this question to themselves. Then Tom whispered:
“Listen, Huck, do you think Goss Williams can hear our conversation?”
- Of course, he hears. At least the spirit can hear him.
Tom, after a pause, added:
“It would be better if I told Mr. Williams.” But I didn't want to offend him. Everyone calls him Goss.
- Well, you have to think ten times when you talk about a dead person, Tom.
This reproach again put an end to the conversation. Suddenly Tom grabbed his friend's hand.
- Shh!
-What is it, Tom? – The boys involuntarily grabbed each other, with their hearts beating strongly.
- Shh! Here we go again! Don't you really hear?
- I…
- Here! Do you hear it now?
- Lord, Tom, they are coming! They probably are. What should we do?
- Don't know. Do you think they'll see us?
- Oh, Tom, they see in the dark as well as cats. It would be better for us not to come.
- Well, don't be afraid. I think they won't touch us. What have we done to them? And if we sit still, maybe they won’t notice.
“I’ll try, Tom, but, Lord, I’m shaking all over.”
- Listen!
The boys bowed their heads and listened, barely breathing. The muffled sounds of voices came from the far end of the cemetery.
- Look look! - Tom whispered. - What is this?
- It's fucking fire. Oh, scary, Tom!
Some dark figures were approaching, waving an old tin lantern, scattering countless sparkles of light on the ground. Suddenly Huckleberry whispered in horror:
- These are probably devils. Three! Lord, we're lost, Tom! Can you say a prayer?
“I’ll try, but don’t be afraid.” They won't touch us. Going to bed...
- Shh!
- What is it, Huck?
- These are people! At least one of them. I hear the voice of old Muff Potter.
- Come on!.. Are you sure?
- I guarantee he is. Don't move, don't fidget. He's not sharp enough to notice us. Drunk as usual, you old brat!
- Okay, I'll sit tight. Well, here we are. They are looking for something. We were in a hurry. They started again. We were in a hurry again. They are in a hurry as fast as they can. Now we take it to the right. Listen, Huck, I recognize another voice. This is Injun Joe.
- He is - a damned mestizo! It would be better to meet the devil. What did they want here?
The whispering stopped as three people approached the grave and were now standing a few steps from the boys' hiding place.
“Here,” said the third voice, and its owner raised the lantern, illuminating the face of the young Doctor Robinson.
Potter and Injun Joe brought with them a stretcher on which lay a rope and a couple of shovels. They laid their burden on the ground and began to tear open the grave. The doctor placed the lantern in front of her and sat down under the elm tree. He was so close to the boys that they could touch him.
- Come on, guys! - he said in a low voice. - The moon is just about to come out.
They grumbled something in response and continued digging. For some time, all that could be heard was the rustle of shovels dumping earth and sand. It was very painful. Finally, the shovel hit the coffin with a dull wooden sound, and a minute later the people pulled him out of the grave. They removed the lid with their spades and roughly turned the corpse onto the ground. The moon peeked out from behind the clouds and illuminated a pale face. They prepared a stretcher, laid the body on it, covered it with a blanket and tied it with a rope. Potter took out a large knife, cut off the dangling end of the rope and said:
- Well, bone cutter, the damned job is ready, lay out five more - or the business will not work out.
- Right! - Injun Joe confirmed.
- Listen, what does this mean? - said the doctor. “You demanded payment in advance, and I paid you.”
“Yes, you did something else,” said Injun Joe, approaching the doctor, who stood up. “Five years ago you kicked me out of your father’s kitchen when I came in one evening and asked for something to eat.” You said then that I did not come with good intentions, and when I swore that I would repay you at least in a hundred years, your father put me in prison like a tramp. Do you think I forgot this? No, it’s not for nothing that I have Indian blood. Now you have fallen into my clutches, and I will deal with you, rest assured.
He shook his fist, bringing it right up to the doctor's face. He swung and knocked the villain down. Potter dropped the knife and shouted:
- Don't you dare hit my comrade!
He grabbed the doctor, and they began to fight, straining all their strength, trampling the grass, digging the ground with their feet. Injun Joe, his eyes burning with rage, jumped up, grabbed Potter's knife and, like a cat, approaching the fighters, waited for an opportune moment. The doctor broke free, grabbed a heavy board from Williams' grave and knocked Potter over with a blow; at that very moment the mestizo rushed and plunged the knife up to the hilt into the young man’s chest. The doctor fell, hitting Potter as he fell and drenching him in his blood, and at that very moment the clouds shrouded the terrible sight in darkness, and the frightened boys began to run in the darkness.
When the moon came out again, Injun Joe stood over the two bodies, examining them. The doctor muttered something indistinctly, sighed twice and did not move again. The half-breed muttered through his teeth:
“The score with you is over, damn you!”
He then robbed the body. After that, he put the knife in Potter's right hand and sat down on the coffin. Several minutes passed, Potter stirred and groaned. His hand clenched the knife; he picked it up, looked at it and dropped it with fear. Then he sat down, pushed the corpse away, stared at it, then looked around with a dull look. His eyes met Joe's.
“Lord, what’s wrong here, Joe?”
“It’s a bad thing,” Joe replied, without moving. - Why did you do that?
- I! I've never done this!
- No, brother, you can’t get away with words here.
Potter trembled and turned white as a sheet.
- I wish I could stay sober. It was no good to drink today. But the noise in my head is worse than when we came here. I'm completely stupefied, I can't remember anything. Tell me, Joe, tell me honestly, old man, did I do it? I never wanted this; I swear on my soul and honor, I didn’t want to. Tell me how it happened, Joe?.. Horrible... So young, capable...
– You struggled, he grabbed you with a board; and you stretched out; then he jumped up, staggering and stumbling, grabbed a knife and stabbed him at the very moment when he again moved you with all his might with the board, then you fell and lay there all the time like a block of wood.
– Oh, I didn’t understand what I was doing! I should die on the spot, if I understood! All this must be from whiskey and passion. I've never even used a gun in my life, Joe. He fought, but without weapons. Everyone will say this. Joe, don't talk about it! Promise me you won't tell, Joe; be a good friend! I've always loved you, Joe, and stood up for you. Do you remember? You won't tell, won't you, Joe?
The poor fellow threw himself on his knees in front of the cold-blooded killer, folding his hands in supplication.
- No, you have always been good and kind to me, Muff Potter, and I will repay you in kind. The right word.
– Oh, Joe, you are an angel! I will bless you to the grave of my life!..
And Potter began to cry.
- Well, okay, enough about that. Now is not the time to whine. You go that way, and I’ll go that one. Run away and leave no traces behind you.
Potter started to run as fast as he could. The half-breed stood, looking after him. He muttered:
“If he is as stunned by the blow and intoxicated by the rum as one might think from the outside, he will not remember the knife until he has run so far that he is afraid to return.” Chicken heart!
Three minutes later, only a month looked at the murdered man, at the corpse wrapped in a blanket, at the empty coffin and the dug up grave. There was deep silence again.
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The priest uttered a quotation from the Bible and in a monotonous humming voice began a sermon, so boring that soon many were nodding off, despite the fact that it was about eternal fire and boiling brimstone, and the number of the elect for whom eternal bliss was destined was reduced to such a small number that such a handful of righteous people, perhaps, were not worth saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon: after leaving the church, he could always tell how many pages there were in the sermon, but its content completely eluded him. However, this time something interested him. The priest depicted a majestic, stunning picture: how the righteous of the whole world will gather in paradise, and the lion will lie down next to the lamb, and a tiny child will lead them behind him. The pathos and morality of this spectacle did not move Tom at all; he was struck only by the important role that would fall to the child’s lot in the face of the peoples of the whole earth; his eyes shone, and he told himself that he himself would not mind being this child, if, of course, the lion was tame.
But then dry reasoning began again, and Tom’s torment resumed. Suddenly he remembered what a treasure he had in his pocket, and hurried to get it out of there. It was a big black beetle with huge, scary jaws - a “biting beetle,” as Tom called it. The beetle was hidden in a box from under the caps. When Tam opened the box, the beetle first fell into his finger. Naturally, the beetle was thrown away and ended up in the aisle between the church pews, and Tom immediately put his bitten finger into his mouth. The beetle fell on its back and floundered helplessly, unable to turn over. Tom looked at it and longed to grab it again, but the beetle was far away. But now it served as entertainment for many others who were not interested in preaching. Then a poodle wandered into the church, melancholy, languid, exhausted from the summer heat; he was tired of being locked up, he longed for new experiences. As soon as he saw the beetle, its sadly drooping tail immediately rose and wagged. The poodle examined its prey, walked around it, sniffed it cautiously from afar; walked around again; then he became bolder, approached and sniffed again, then bared his teeth, wanted to grab the beetle - and missed; tried again and again; Apparently, he liked this entertainment; he lay down on his stomach, so that the beetle was between his front paws, and continued his experiments. Then he got tired of it, then he became indifferent, absent-minded, and began to nod off; Little by little his head drooped onto his chest, and his lower jaw touched the enemy, who grabbed onto it. The poodle squealed desperately, shook his head, the beetle flew two steps to the side and fell on its back again. Those sitting nearby were shaking with silent laughter; many faces were hidden behind fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was immensely happy. The poodle looked stupid - he must have felt fooled, but at the same time his heart was pinched by resentment and thirsted for revenge. Therefore, he crept up to the beetle and carefully resumed the attack: he jumped on the beetle from all sides, almost touching it with his front paws, clanged his teeth at it and shook his head so that his ears flapped. But in the end he got tired of this too; then he tried to amuse himself with a fly, but there was nothing interesting in it; he followed the ant, pressing his nose to the very floor, but even this quickly bored him; he yawned, sighed, completely forgot about the beetle and calmly sat down on it! An insane squeal was heard, the poodle rushed down the aisle and, without ceasing to squeal, rushed around the church; just before the altar he ran to the opposite aisle, rushed like an arrow to the doors, and from the doors back; he screamed at the whole church, and the more he rushed about, the more his pain grew; Finally, the dog turned into some kind of comet overgrown with hair, spinning with the speed and brilliance of a light beam. It ended with the distraught sufferer darting to the side and jumping onto his owner’s lap, who threw him out the window; the howl, full of painful sorrow, was heard quieter and quieter and finally died away in the distance.
By this time everyone in the church was sitting with crimson faces, choking with suppressed laughter. Even the sermon stalled a bit. And although she immediately moved on, she stumbled and limped at every step, so there was no point in thinking about her moral impact. Hiding behind the backs of the church pews, the parishioners greeted the most solemn and gloomy phrases with muffled bursts of unholy laughter, as if the unfortunate priest had made an unusually successful joke.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when this torture ended and the last “amen” was said.
Tom Sawyer walked home cheerfully; he thought to himself that sometimes a church service might not be very boring if only some variety was introduced into it. One thing darkened his joy: although he was pleased that the poodle played with his beetle, why did the worthless puppy take away this beetle forever? Really, it's not fair.
Chapter VI
TOM MEETS BECKY
Tom woke up on Monday morning feeling very unhappy. He always felt miserable on Monday morning, as that day began a new week of long torment at school. He even wished then that there would be no resurrections in his life at all, since after a short freedom the return to prison would be even more difficult.
Tom lay there and thought. Suddenly it occurred to him that it would be good to get sick; then he will stay at home and not go to school. The hope is weak, but why not try! He examined his body. It didn't hurt anywhere, and he felt himself again. This time it seemed to him that a pain began in his stomach, and he was glad, hoping that the pain would intensify. But the pain, on the contrary, soon weakened and little by little disappeared. Tom began to think further. And suddenly he discovered that his tooth was loose. It was a great success; He was about to groan to begin with, but then he realized that if he mentioned a tooth, his aunt would immediately pull the tooth out - and that would hurt. Therefore, he decided that it was better to leave the tooth in reserve and look for something else. For some time nothing turned up; then he remembered how the doctor had spoken of an illness which had put a patient to bed for two or three weeks and threatened him with the loss of a finger. The boy, with passionate hope, stuck his foot out from under the sheet and began to examine the sore toe. He had no idea what the symptoms of this disease were. However, it was still worth a try, and he began to moan diligently.
But Sid was asleep and did not notice the moans.
Tom moaned louder, and little by little it began to seem to him that his finger really hurt.
Sid showed no signs of life.
Tom was even out of breath from the effort. He rested for a while, then took a deep breath and let out a series of extremely successful groans.
Sid continued to snore.
Tom lost his temper. He said, “Sid! Sid! - and began to lightly shake the sleeping man. It worked and Tom moaned again. Sid yawned, stretched, propped himself up on his elbow, snorted and stared at Tom. Tom continued to moan.
Sid said:
- Volume! Listen up, Tom!
There was no answer.
- Do you hear, Tom? Volume! What's wrong with you, Tom?
Sid, in turn, shook his brother, anxiously peering into his face. Tom groaned:
- Leave me alone, Sid! Don't shake!
- What's the matter with you, Tom? I'll go and call my aunt.
- No, no, maybe it will pass soon. Don't call anyone.
- No, no, we have to call! Don't moan so terribly!.. How long has this been with you?
- Few hours. Oh! For God's sake, don't toss and turn, Sid! You'll just ruin me.
