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    Tom Sawyer: This Article Is About The Literary Character. For The Book, See - For Other Uses, See

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    This document provides background information on the literary character Tom Sawyer, created by Mark Twain. It describes Tom Sawyer as a 12-year old boy who lives with his aunt Polly in St. Petersburg, Missouri in the 1840s. His best friends are Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. The document also briefly discusses Tom Sawyer's appearances in other Mark Twain novels and provides sections on his characterization, inspiration, portrayals, and references.

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    Tom Sawyer: This Article Is About The Literary Character. For The Book, See - For Other Uses, See

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    Edward Martos
    28 views2 pages
    This document provides background information on the literary character Tom Sawyer, created by Mark Twain. It describes Tom Sawyer as a 12-year old boy who lives with his aunt Polly in St. Petersburg, Missouri in the 1840s. His best friends are Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. The document also briefly discusses Tom Sawyer's appearances in other Mark Twain novels and provides sections on his characterization, inspiration, portrayals, and references.

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    This document provides background information on the literary character Tom Sawyer, created by Mark Twain. It describes Tom Sawyer as a 12-year old boy who lives with his aunt Polly in St. Petersburg, Missouri in the 1840s. His best friends are Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. The document also briefly discusses Tom Sawyer's appearances in other Mark Twain novels and provides sections on his characterization, inspiration, portrayals, and references.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    28 views2 pages

    Tom Sawyer: This Article Is About The Literary Character. For The Book, See - For Other Uses, See

    Uploaded by

    Edward Martos
    This document provides background information on the literary character Tom Sawyer, created by Mark Twain. It describes Tom Sawyer as a 12-year old boy who lives with his aunt Polly in St. Petersburg, Missouri in the 1840s. His best friends are Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. The document also briefly discusses Tom Sawyer's appearances in other Mark Twain novels and provides sections on his characterization, inspiration, portrayals, and references.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 2

    This article is about the literary character. For the book, see The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

    For
    other uses, see Tom Sawyer (disambiguation).

    Tom Sawyer

    1876 illustration by True Williams

    First appearance The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

    Last appearance Tom Sawyer, Detective

    Created by Mark Twain

    Information

    Family Aunt Polly (aunt)

    Sally Phelps (aunt)

    Mary (cousin)

    Sid (half-brother)

    Thomas Sawyer (/ˈsɔːjər/) is the title character of the Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom
    Sawyer (1876). He appears in three other novels by Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry
    Finn (1884), Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896).
    Sawyer also appears in at least three unfinished Twain works, Huck and Tom Among the
    Indians, Schoolhouse Hill and Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy. While all three uncompleted works were
    posthumously published, only Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy has a complete plot, as Twain abandoned
    the other two works after finishing only a few chapters.

    Contents
     1Characterization
     2Inspiration
     3Portrayals
     4See also
     5References
     6External links

    Characterization[edit]
    Tom Sawyer is a boy of about 12 years of age, who resides in the fictional town of St.
    Petersburg, Missouri, in about the year 1845. Tom Sawyer's best friends include Joe
    Harper and Huckleberry Finn. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom's infatuation with
    classmate Becky Thatcher is apparent as he tries to intrigue her with his strength, boldness, and
    handsome looks. He first sees her after he confessed his feelings for Amy Lawrence, one of his
    classmates. He lives with his half-brother Sid, his cousin Mary, and his stern Aunt Polly. There is no
    mention of Tom's father, as Tom's mother and father are dead. Tom has another aunt, Sally Phelps,
    who lives very much farther down the Mississippi.[1]
    In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom is only a minor character and is used as a foil for Huck,
    particularly in the later chapters of the novel after Huck makes his way to Uncle Phelps's plantation.
    Tom's immaturity, imagination, and obsession with stories put Huck's planned rescue of the runaway
    slave Jim in great jeopardy — and ultimately make it unnecessary since he knows Jim's owner has
    died and freed him in her will. Throughout the novel, Huck's intellectual and emotional development
    is a central theme, and by re-introducing a character from the beginning (Tom), Twain is able to
    highlight this evolution in Huck's character.

    Inspiration[edit]
    The fictional character's name may have been derived from a jolly and flamboyant chief named Tom
    Sawyer with whom Twain was acquainted in San Francisco, California, while Twain was employed
    as a reporter at the San Francisco Call.[2][3] Twain used to listen to Sawyer tell stories of his youth,
    "Sam, he would listen to these pranks of mine with great interest and he'd occasionally take 'em
    down in his notebook. One day he says to me: ‘I am going to put you between the covers of a book
    some of these days, Tom.’ ‘Go ahead, Sam,’ I said, ‘but don’t disgrace my name.’"[3] Twain himself
    said the character sprang from three people, later identified as: John B. Briggs (who died in 1907),
    William Bowen (who died in 1893) and Twain;[3] however Twain later changed his story saying
    Sawyer was fully formed solely from his imagination, but as Robert Graysmith says, "The great
    appropriator liked to pretend his characters sprang fully grown from his fertile mind."[3]

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