The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

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Tom Sawyer, title page of the 1876 edition of Truman W. Williams

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (original title: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) is a novel by the American writer Mark Twain . The book was also published as a German translation in 1876.

The book is one of the classics of youth literature ; but it also spoke and speaks to many adults. Unusually for the period around 1876, it is told in the everyday language that was common at the time, with which the author designed a counter-concept to the then usual children's books about model boys and good girls. The use of everyday language and strong expressions first brought the book onto the index in the USA .

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Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher, illustration from the 1876 edition

The adventures of Tom Sawyer is a typical rascal story and takes place in the mid-19th century in the fictional town of St. Petersburg in Missouri on the banks of the Mississippi . The orphan boy Tom lives with his aunt Polly, together with his half-brother Sid, his cousin Mary and the black slave Jim. Sid is good and teases Tom at every opportunity. Tom, on the other hand, likes to skip school, beat himself up and hang around with his best friend Huckleberry Finn . He has no permanent residence; his mother is dead, his father is a well-known drinker. Below are some of the numerous episodes that Tom and his friends experience in St. Petersburg.

Aunt Polly, illustration from the 1876 edition

When Tom comes home with a torn shirt after a fight, he has to paint Aunt Polly's fence on Saturday as a punishment. Every time a boy comes by and makes fun of the detention, Tom explains with a straight face how difficult it is to apply the lime paint correctly and that not everyone is by far able to solve this complicated task. Aroused curiosity, the boys ask him if they shouldn't give it a try, and only after a long hesitation and finally in exchange for exchange items, does Tom let them paint the fence for themselves.

Soon after, Tom and Huck go to the cemetery at night, where they want to try a healing spell against warts. Three men come to the cemetery: Indian Joe, a half-breed whom the villagers are afraid of, Muff Potter, a simple-minded tramp, and the young village doctor Robinson. Indian Joe and Muff Potter open a grave and place a body on a wheelbarrow. The doctor wants them to take the dead man to his house, but Indian Joe demands additional money for it. A fight ensues and Indian Joe stabs the young doctor with the knife of the knocked out Muff Potter. When he comes to, Joe makes him believe that he is the murderer of the young doctor. Fearing Indian Joe's revenge, Tom and Huck swear to each other never to reveal anything about what they saw. The next day the murder is discovered and Muff Potter goes to jail.

Tom and Huck decide to become pirates with another friend, Joe Harper. The shelter is an island below St. Petersburg in the middle of the Mississippi. There they enjoy the pirate life while everyone in town searches the river for them and their relatives believe they have drowned. One night Tom sneaks back and overhears Aunt Polly, Joe Harper's mother, Sid and Mary in Aunt Polly's house. When Huck and Joe want to give up piracy after a storm, Tom is able to persuade them to stay by telling them about his secret visit to the mainland, about the date they found for their funeral service and his idea to return at that time. So they overhear their own funeral service from the church gallery and finally reveal themselves. Despite her prank, the mourners in church are overjoyed at their survival, and Tom is envied by the other boys his age for his adventures.

Indian Joe, Tom and Huck are present at the trial of Muff Potter. Tom breaks his vow never to tell and saves Muff Potter from the gallows. Indian Joe escapes, and Tom now lives in fear that Joe will kill him as an eyewitness.

In the fall, Tom and Huck decide to become treasure hunters. They're also looking into a dilapidated house that's supposed to be haunted. While they are on the first floor, Indian Joe and an accomplice come into the house to hide money. They discover an old chest full of gold coins hidden in a wall niche, which they take with them to hide elsewhere.

A few days later, Huck pursues the two criminals to find out where the treasure is hiding. He overhears a conversation and learns that Indian Joe, in revenge, wants to attack Judge Douglas' widow in her house and maim. Huck can get help from her neighbor, but the criminals escape.

At the same time, some children - including Tom and his girlfriend Becky - visit the McDouglas cave. Tom and Becky get lost in the great cave system. Tom meets Indian Joe, who, however, does not see him in the dark. Finally, Tom finds another, previously unknown exit and can save Becky and himself. Tom later learns that Becky's father, Judge Thatcher, had the entrance to the cave closed with a heavy wooden gate after her disappearance to prevent further accidents. Tom now reveals that he saw Indian Joe in the cave. The criminal is found dead in the cave, failed to open the gate and starved to death.

Tom finds the treasure, illustration from the 1876 edition

In the cave Tom also finds the gold treasure that Indian Joe had hidden here. Tom and Huck share honestly, and Huck is welcomed into her house by the widow Douglas. However, after a while he fled the strictly regulated and decent house, where he was not even allowed to smoke a pipe, back on the street and decided to lead a life in freedom again. Tom succeeds in persuading Huck to try again with the widow, because Tom plans to found a band of robbers and blackmailers later, and only well-off members “with style” should be accepted. Huck sees this and returns to the widow.

reception

Mark Twain describes in the book some events he personally experienced. As a template for the literary site “St. Petersburg ”, the author used the city of Hannibal near St. Louis , where he grew up himself (which is why it is possible to actually visit places from the novel - such as the caves - today). This fact is considered to be the reason why the novel, unlike its successor, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, retains the character of an idyll and describes a harmonious and intact world overall. The narrative perspective also results from this: there is an ironic, distant narrator who describes the boys' experiences. Only the first-person perspective, to which Mark Twain changes in Huckleberry Finn , takes moral conflicts seriously and in this way makes social criticism possible.

Tom Sawyer is considered a "finger exercise" by Mark Twain, which contains only a rudimentary element of humor, satire and criticism, which later made him one of the most important authors of modern American literature.

The reception of the book was and is still influenced by the translations outside of English-speaking countries. This can e.g. For example, the German reader can determine by comparing: In 2010 (on the 100th anniversary of his death) a new translation by Andreas Nohl was published ; A translation by Lore Krüger , published in 1954, is widespread in Germany . Translations from the 1980s were rarely used.

Sometimes the book, especially the follow-up volume " The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ", is called racist because black people are called "niggers". However, this was common language practice at the time. The portrayal of blacks with the same feelings and desires as whites is emancipatory for their time. A revised version that no longer contained the word met with outrage among literary critics.

In 1981, the play "The Boys in Autumn" (German: "Wiedersehen im Herbst") by the American playwright Bernhard Sabath premiered in San Francisco , in which Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn meet again as old men. Despite good reviews, the piece has remained largely unknown to this day.

In 2009 the author Volker Strübing and the presenter Patricia Schäfer shot a documentary about a 2000 km raft trip down the Mississippi in the footsteps of Tom Sawyer. At their milestones, they look for traces of American history and shed light on the contradiction in Mark Twain's life between social criticism and striving for the American way of life . The first part of the documentary was broadcast on May 30, 2010 on 3sat.

Film adaptations

The Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn stories have been widely edited for cinema and television since 1917. The films are usually limited to the topic of the treasure hunt and the adventures with the bandit Indian Joe . One of the fairly complete adaptations took place in the early evening series The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in 1979.

media

expenditure

The book is available in different versions from several publishers. In more complete versions, the adventures of Huckleberry Finn are also summarized in one issue.

literature

  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In: Walter Jens (Ed.): Kindlers new literary dictionary. Study edition. Munich 1988–1992. Volume 11, pp. 194f.

Others

One of the car ferries used by TT-Line between Germany and Sweden is named after Tom Sawyer .

One of the most famous songs by the Canadian rock band Rush from the album Moving Pictures is called Tom Sawyer .

Tom Sawyer car ferry

Web links

Wikisource: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer  - Sources and full texts (English)
Commons : The Adventures of Tom Sawyer  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The time 15/2010 on 8 April 2010 , p 61st
  2. ↑ dradio.de of March 10, 2010
  3. ↑ Andreas Nohl in conversation with Jürgen König on: dradio.de from March 5, 2010.
  4. ↑ That's Not Twain
  5. ↑ Just not the N-word , Die Zeit, January 6, 2011.
  6. ↑ imdb.com: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1982)