by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 24, 2009

It was 1876, and Mark Twain was 41 years old, but he wrote a story remembering his childhood in the 1830s. "Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred," Twain writes in a preface, noting that some of the experiences were his own while "the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine." The character of Huckleberry Finn, was based on a single boyhood friend, according to

some sources, but Tom Sawyer was a composite, a "combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew."

Tom's in trouble from the very first page, as his Aunt Polly yells his name, trying to spot him through her weak spectacles. She finds him hiding in the closet, his face covered with jam, and she reaches for a crop to spank him. "Look behind you, aunt!" the boy improvises, and as Aunt Polly whirls her skirts, Tom scurries away. But she vows to punish him the next day, and assigns him a Saturday chore: whitewashing the family's fence.

Tom's aunt adopted him after his sister had died, and she's kindly, well-meaning, and easily outwitted. Mark Twain was a satirist, and delighted in writing books where society's rules are easily thwarted by tricky young boys. "[P]art of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves," Twain wrote in the book's preface. It's fun watching the struggle between youngsters and grownups, and there's a real tension as Tom tries to stay out of trouble.

When it comes to whitewashing the fence, Aunt Polly assumed it would take all day - but Tom finishes in record time. "He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it," Twain wrote, that "in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain." Tom insists it's a honor to whitewash the fence, and won't let his friends participate until they give him a gift. ("Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?") Soon he's received a kite, an apple, marbles, chalk, firecrackers, a tadpole, and even a one-eyed kitten. Aunt Polly even rewards him with an apple, though while she's quoting a Bible passage about the importance of hard work, Tom also steals a doughnut!

Twain fills the book with examples of Tom's funny childhood pranks, like playing hooky from school to swim in the Mississippi River. He camps on an island with his friends Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn, but soon they've planned even bigger mischief. Eventually the boys convince the townspeople that they've drowned in the river.

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