Amber (The Literary Phoenix)
Written on Apr 2, 2020
Actually, I think Tom as a character is pretty great. He’s incredibly dramatic to the point of being humorous. He’s solemn and serious when the occasion calls for it, but he’s also brave. Tom Sawyer is a kid in the way that I feel like we don’t write children anymore. He’s whimsy and slyness and sweetness and trouble. Perhaps in the modern age we don’t have the time and trust for such frivolities… how different our lives are now than 100 years ago!
Like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this book is written around a series of small adventures. While Huck travels the wide world, Tom sicks pretty close to St. Petersburg, MO. There are pirates (imaginary), robbers (real), and murders (also real). Honestly, it’s quite the adventure book and I can see why so many of the scenes are classics. But I really don’t think it’s the story here that makes it memorable – I think it’s Tom himself.
I wrote a little while ago about unsavory themes in classic literature, and at the time, I’d included The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an example. If I were to go back and re-write that post, I’d definitely include Tom Sawyer, because while Jim’s characterization feels like a choice made by Twain to outline the inherent racism of his audience… ‘Injun Joe’ feels like much more of a harmful stereotype. Perhaps it’s because he’s the villain that it feels so much worse, but every time we got back to talking about the overarching plot, I cringed. That doesn’t mean the whole book is unreadable, there are definitely bits that are delightful and those are the ones preserved by pop culture, like the fence and Tom and Becky But I was a bit uncomfortable the the vagrant behavior of the villain, and I am sure that someone will reply saying that too was satirical, but honestly… I didn’t need it..
As for the book itself and my experience with it… I had the hardest time pushing myself through Tom Sawyer. I’m not sure if it was the episodic storytelling (which is a style, and there’s nothing wrong with it) or the way Tom so easily got out of scrapes, or just me. I think most likely it’s just me… but I dragged myself through this book and while I think Tom as a character is worthy of remembering, as far as Twain’s writing goes, Huck Finn and A Connecticut Yankee are both better reads.
Come for the classic and the lead up to the Huckleberry Finn story, but I would say don’t expect to have your socks knockoff by something deep and profound and moving or anything like that. There’s an ounce of Twain’s wit in this one, but I prefer to go in for a gallon.
