Sawyer, Tom

Tom Sawyer and his best friend, Huckleberry Finn, are featured in four novels by Mark Twain: Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896). Although Huck Finn is the older boy and the narrator of the last three novels, Tom Sawyer is the undisputed leader and inventor of their adventures. Huck may be a rough boy of nature, but Tom Sawyer is the ultimate “bad” good boy, a trickster who also serves as an emblem of American boyhood.

Mark Twain's intention with Adventures of Tom Sawyer was less to create a classic boy's book than to write a gentle parody of the moralistic children's literature written by authors such as Horatio Alger, Jr., and Louisa ...