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. When they reappear, alive, all their past sins are forgiven - and Huckleberry Finn even finds himself adopted by a local widow!
It's this tension that makes the book entertaining, showing a child's perspective on the rules of adults. Judge Thatcher is a symbol of respectability, but when he moves into town, Tom is more interested in impressing the judge's daughter, Becky! And when a trial is held to find the murderer of a doctor in the cemetery, the town almost convicts an innocent man. The real murderer is only found because of a superstition of two young boys - that throwing a dead cat in a cemetery is a surefire cure for warts!
They'd gone to the cemetery that night, and had inadvertently watched the crime unfold. In a true Twain touch, the wrongly-accused man was the humble town drunk. (Muff Potter had woken up with a knife in his hand that was planted by the real killer.) It's the boy's honest friendship that saves him in the end, and it's a theme Twain would repeat through the rest of his career. "God bless the drunks and the children," Twain once said, "and the United States of America."
In Twain's book, children escape the schools and the judges and the too-watchful eyes of their ever-concerned guardians. They swim and fish and camp by the river, and enjoy all the joys of childhood. And it's while pretending to be Robin Hood on the island that they realize just how special childhood is.
"They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever."