The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer follows a mischievous, imaginative boy growing up in the sleepy Mississippi River town of St. Petersburg, Missouri. Living under the exasperated but loving care of his Aunt Polly, Tom dodges chores, plays hooky, and famously cons other boys into whitewashing a fence for him. He falls for Becky Thatcher, runs off to play pirates on an island, and—along with his friend Huckleberry Finn—witnesses a murder in a graveyard. The boys' guilty secret about the villainous Injun Joe builds toward a hunt for buried treasure and a terrifying ordeal lost in a cave.
Beneath its boyish pranks, the novel is a warm, nostalgic celebration of childhood freedom, friendship, and the pull between mischief and conscience. Twain blends comedy with genuine danger and moral awakening, while gently satirizing the respectable adult world of church, school, and small-town piety. Drawn from his own boyhood, it endures as a beloved portrait of American youth and the lost world along the river.
How it begins
Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual—he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture. The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story—that is to say, thirty or forty years ago. Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. THE AUTHOR. HARTFORD, 1876. CHAPTER I “Tom!” No answer. “TOM!” No answer. “What’s gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!” No answer. The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.