The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

A classic novel written by American novelist Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens).

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is about the young Tom Sawyer and his adventures growing up in the mid-western United States of the 1840s -- specifically, the mythical St. Petersburg, Missouri. The town is based on Twain's own Hannibal. A slice of Americana, Tom Sawyer is the precursor to the more recognized classic: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The book is in public domain, and the full text is available online at Project Gutenberg.


 * Fence Painting: Tom convinces one boy after another that he likes whitewashing the fence, whereupon they trade knickknacks for a chance to take part. Read it in all its glory.

"So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing."
 * Abusive Parents: Huck's dad.
 * The Alcoholic: Huck's dad, the "town drunk".
 * The Artful Dodger: Huckleberry Finn.
 * Attending Your Own Funeral
 * Barefoot Poverty: Tom envies Huckleberry Finn for not having to wear shoes. He doesn't seem to realize it's because he doesn't have any shoes or even parents to make him put them on if he did.
 * But then, once Huck does receive shoes from Widow Douglas, he can't stand wearing them.
 * Breakout Character: Huckleberry Finn.
 * Cat Concerto: Invoked; Huck complains about a time that he had to stand around meowing to signal Tom until a guy started throwing rocks at him through a window and exclaiming, "Dern that cat!"
 * Delinquents: Tom and his friends.
 * Disappointed in You: There is a passage where Aunt Polly starts crying and berating Tom. He thinks that for a moment, he hoped she'd just beat him.
 * Does Not Like Shoes: both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Huck can't afford to buy shoes but probably wouldn't wear them even if he had them.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: In story, there are women who treat Injun Joe like this and want him pardoned.
 * Forced Into Their Sunday Best: Tom in an early chapter, and later.
 * Free-Range Children: To the extent that parents only worry if their kids don't come home for two or three nights in a row. After a local girl's birthday party, one of the planned activities was letting the kids wander through a cave and its elaborate system of unexplored tunnels, a cave where more than a few people have gotten lost and died.
 * Girl Next Door: Becky Thatcher
 * Grave Robbing: This is what Dr. Robinson, Injun Joe and Muff Potter are doing in the graveyard until Joe murders Robinson. (Presumably for medical research, as the ringleader is a doctor.)
 * Guile Hero: Tom Sawyer
 * Halfbreed: Injun Joe. He's even referred about as this several times.
 * Inconvenient Itch: This happens to Tom Sawyer when he is trying to hide silently in the dark.
 * Loveable Rogue: Tom Sawyer
 * Nobody Here But Us Birds: Tom and Huck use cat cries to signal each other.
 * Operation: Jealousy: Tom and Becky do this.
 * Parental Abandonment: Huck's dad skipped town and left him to live on the streets. Huck is fine with this--his only fear is that his dad will show up again.
 * Which he does, in Huckleberry Finn.
 * The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Tom and his friends on their pirate adventure.


 * Puppy Love: Tom and Becky
 * Relax-O-Vision: "Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene."
 * The Savage Indian: Injun Joe
 * The Tooth Hurts: Tom has a toothache and Aunt Polly decides the tooth has to come out. She ties one end of a string to the tooth and the other end to a bedpost, then frightens Tom with a hot coal. When Tom jerks away, the string yanks out the tooth.