Difference between revisions of "Adventures of Tom Sawyer"

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===Good===
 
===Good===
 
* Like many books from this era, it uses an extensive vocabulary. I wish more modern novels did this.
 
* Like many books from this era, it uses an extensive vocabulary. I wish more modern novels did this.
* Twain use a lot of clever wordings to make biting observations about hypocrisy and stupidity.
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* Twain uses a lot of clever wordings to make biting observations about hypocrisy and stupidity.
 
* Tom, like many young boys, is extremely selfish about his feelings towards girls, and causes them all sorts of grief because of it. While this is disappointing, it's quite realistic.
 
* Tom, like many young boys, is extremely selfish about his feelings towards girls, and causes them all sorts of grief because of it. While this is disappointing, it's quite realistic.
  

Revision as of 11:54, 11 November 2019

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a novel written by Mark Twain and first published in 1876. The book is set in the 1840s in a fictional Missouri town near the Mississippi River and follows the adventures of Tom Sawyer as he gets into mischief with his friends, including Huckleberry Finn. Twain explained that many of the adventures the boys have were real events that occurred to him or his friends in childhood.

I read this book to better-familiarize myself with older American fiction.

Status

I do not own the book, but I listened to it as an audio book and finished it on 2019-03-13.

Review

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

  • Like many books from this era, it uses an extensive vocabulary. I wish more modern novels did this.
  • Twain uses a lot of clever wordings to make biting observations about hypocrisy and stupidity.
  • Tom, like many young boys, is extremely selfish about his feelings towards girls, and causes them all sorts of grief because of it. While this is disappointing, it's quite realistic.

Bad

  • Most of the events of the story are rather dull, and those that are of significance are extremely difficult to believe.
  • At first, I was interested in reading about the silly superstitions of the time, but as they began to accumulate, to the point where everyone in the town was staggeringly superstitious, it became obnoxious.
  • The use of the N-word and various other forms of racism are a sign of their times, so they don't bother me too much, and they're mostly said through the characters, who are themselves racist. However, I don't approve of the narrator being bigoted because that is Twain's personal view. I dislike how he made the villain a Native American stereotype and referred to him as a "half-breed," and there is nearly an entire chapter dedicated to insulting how school girls write.
  • Twain's low-opinion of women is detailed further in the character of Becky who has little will of her own and is totally inconsequential to the story.
  • After witnessing a murder and the arrest of innocent man, the boys claim that it weighs heavy on their conscience, but Tom and Huck still manage to have all sorts of wonderfully fun adventures without so much as a second thought about it. I'm presuming Twain was pointing out how carefree the boys were, but that makes me like them less.
  • Tom and Huck encounter Joe so many times, each time less likely than the previous, it's difficult to suspend disbelief.
  • The parents let a bunch of unsupervised children wander around a huge cave system and don't even bother to take a headcount? Surely the people of the 1800s weren't this stupid?
  • Joe's final fate is quite anti-climactic.

Ugly

  • Nothing.

Links

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