The Report on the Adventure of Tom Sawyer

读书报告

姓名：杨澄澳

班级：英语3班 学号：L0815312 指导教师：尹雅娟

The Report on The Adventure of Tom Sawyer

The book I read is The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, which was written by Mark Twain, and before I read the book, I search some information about him, I think it may support a lot of help for my reading. Introduction of the author:

Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Clemens. He was one of the greatest American writers. He captured a peculiarly American humor. He represented a new American voice.

Mark was born in Florida, Mississippi, in 1835, and grew up in nearby Hannibal, a small Mississippi River town. When Samuel was 12, his father died of pneumonia, and at 13, Samuel left school to become a printer's apprentice. After two short years, he joined his brother Orion's newspaper as a printer and editorial assistant. It was here that young Samuel found he enjoyed writing.

At 17, he left Hannibal behind for a printer’s job in St. Louis. While in St. Louis, Clemens became a river pilot’s apprentice. He became a licensed river pilot in 1858. Clemens’ pseudonym, Mark Twain, comes from his days as a river pilot. It is a river term which means two fathoms or 12-feet when the depth of water for a boat is being surrounded. “Mark twain” means that is safe to navigate.

Because the river trade was brought to a standstill by the Civil War in 1861, Mark Twain enlisted in the Confederate militia early in the Civil War, but he soon left to begin working as a newspaper reporter for several newspapers all over the United States. His articles and stories became immensely popular in the decades that followed. In 1870, Clemens married Olivia Langdon, and they had four children.

Mark Twain passed away on April 21, 1910, but has influence today. His childhood home is open to the public as a museum in Hannibal.

Throughout his career, Mark Twain published more than 30 books, hundreds of short stories and essays and gave lecture tours around the world. By the end of his life in 1910, Mark Twain had become known as the quintessential American author having captured in his works the spirit, character and even dialect of a diverse nation. His writing also served to voice his running commentary on American society. Thinly veiled behind the mask of humor and satire, Mark Twain’s writing often critiqued social morals, politics and human nature, making his literature a unique reflection of the American experience in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

In America, his position of The Lincoln of American Literature is unshakable. Mark Twain is one of the most famous humorists in the world. His humorous language, special writing style and writing skill have attracted the people from all over the world. The Adventure of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are the most famous and popular works of him. He is extensively quoted. Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. Twain was very popular, and his keen wit and incisive satire earned praise from critics and peers. Upon his death he was lauded as the “greatest American humorist of his age” and William Faulkner called Twain “the father of American literature”.

So I think I have chosen a good book. Plot Summary:

Form this book I know the story is about a twelve-year-old boy called Tom Sawyer, who lives with his Aunt Polly, his brother, Sid, also known as Sidney, and cousin Mary, in the Mississippi River town of St Petersburg, Missouri. Tom doesn't like to go to school and often tries to find some reasons to skip school. When Aunt Polly asks him to paint as a punishment, he is so disappointed at first, but Tom soon cleverly persuades his friends to trade him a large marble for the privilege of doing his work happily.

Tom fall in love with Rebecca Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get “engaged” to him at lunchtime of her first day in school. Their love is ruined when she learns that Tom has been engaged to another girl before.

Tom’s friend Huck Finn, the town drunk’s son, asks Tom to meet him at the graveyard at midnight, to try out a “cure” for warts with his dead cat. And when they are there, they come across the murder Dr. Robinson by Injun Joe during a grave robbing attempt. Muff Potter, also took part of the robbing, became a scapegoat for Injun Joe. Tom and Huck run away quickly, they were scared and swear a blood oath not to tell anyone what they have seen.

Tom, Huck, and another friend, Joe Harper, decide to run away from St. Petersburg to Jackson’s Island, in the middle of the Mississippi. There they live the life of pirates, playing day and night. They enjoy their new-found freedom, but after a few days the boys begin to miss their family and want to go back.

Finally the boys finish their life of pirates and return to the town on their own funeral, this surprises all the people especially Aunt Polly, and after this she treats him much more kind, and Tom’s life back to before, maybe a little better. They become the envy and admiration of all their friends.

Back in school, Tom gets himself back in Becky’s favor after he accepts the blame for a book that she has torn.

Soon the murder trial comes on in the court, Tom feels uneasy and guilty. On one side, he is afraid of Injun Joe, so he doesn’t tell the truth to anyone, but on another side, he feels sorry to Muff Potter, because he knows he is innocent, so he always wants to do something for him. On the last day of the trial, Tom is called as a surprise witness, and he fingers Injun Joe with the crime. The fact is clear but Joe jumps out of the window and run away. This makes Tom feel very frightened.

When Tom and Huck are digging for hidden treasure, they find Injun Joe , Tom and Huck witness him finding a box of gold with his partner, a Spaniard, Tom and Huck make a plan to shadow Injun Joe every night, watching for an opportunity to nab the gold.

Meanwhile Becky Thatcher invites many of the town’s children to a picnic. Tom and Becky go wandering in a nearby cave, and get lost. Tom and Becky run out of food and candles and begin to weaken. The horror of the situation increases when Tom looking for a way out of the cave, happens upon Injun Joe, who is using the cave as a hideout. Just as Tom and Becky lose all hope of finding an exit, Tom found an opening to safety. They are back to the town. All the people celebrate.

A week later, Tom take Huck to the cave via the new entrance Tom has found and they find the box of gold, and also find Injun Joe die of hunger, which causes by the new iron door. The money that they have found was invested for them. And then they become rich and the heroes in the town.

So the story ends here, it’s a story of a boy's adventures filled with curiosity and imagination. Twain based The Adventures of Tom Sawyer largely on his personal memories of growing up in Hannibal in the 1840s. In his preface to the novel, he states that “most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred” and that the character of Tom Sawyer has a basis in “a combination of three boys whom I knew.” Characters Analysis:

So he describe a lot of curiosity behaviors in the story, because curiosity is basic characteristic of the child, one of the typical examples of children's curiosity can be found in the most famous episode in Tom Sawyer—Tom’s deceiving his friends into “enjoying” the privilege of whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence.

Tom is punished to whitewash Aunt Polly's fence on Saturday morning when every child can go out and play. Tom attempts to persuade Jim, a colored boy, to whitewash some instead of doing it himself. He promises to show Jim his sore toe. “Jim was only human--this attraction was too much for him.” Driven by curiosity, “he put down his bucket, took the candy, and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound”. Jim is sure to whitewash the fence if Aunt Polly does not return home from the field. Tom fails. Yet at this moment, “a great, magnificent inspiration bursts upon him.” He manages to make his hard work very novel that may arouse the curiosity of the children who pass by the fence. He even exclaims: “Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” Besides, he pretends to refuse one of his friend’s request of having a try. Thus the hard work appears so fascinating that it attracts all children in the village. All of them try to be the first to enjoy the privilege of whitewashing.

From the beginning to the end of the story, Tom can take other children into doing anything because no one really shares the experience he has read about in books. He manages to persuade Huck and Joe to take adventure on Jackson's Island with him because it appears so novel that they cannot resist having a try.

In fact, curiosity plays such a great role in children’s psychology that if not compelled by curiosity, the important part of motivation, Tom Sawyer and other characters in the story would not have happened, the superstitious trip to the grave yard, the adventures on the isolated island and in the cave or the discovery of the hidden gold which consist of most part of the story to readers’ delight.

Tom’s character is complexity. A representative hero can be convincing only if he also appears to be an individual. Whatever he stands for, he must give the impression of being composed of flesh and blood, and Tom is an example in case. Tom has the distinction of being neither the model boy nor the completely bad one customarily found in fiction. “He was not simply good or bad but a mixture of virtue and mischievousness.” All young readers, most of whom are assumed to be bad boys only because they defy the adult world, can find at least part of themselves in Tom Sawyer.

Compared with other characters in the story, such as Sid who is a completely good boy, or Huck who is an “outsider” to the society which Tom belongs to, Tom bear much more complex character. To put the matter negatively, Tom’s motives are never vicious. He is not so bad. His adventures are only the indications of his desire for a place of honor in the community; his tricks are only due to his ignorance. To put the matter positively, he has a good heart. His conscience hurts because of his silence about Potter’s innocence; he suffers pangs for his silence about Potter’s innocence; he suffers pangs for he realizes he has sinned in running away; he worries about his aunt’s concern for his safety, and so on. He is ready for almost any action of running that involves the danger and honor of adventure, but he knows that showing disrespect to God or holy things may cause a thunderbolt. He resorts to any stratagem to keep out of school, but he is not a downright liar, except that the shame and remorse make the falsehood bitter to him. He is cruel, as all children are, but chiefly because he is ignorant. He is a boy, and merely and exactly an ordinary boy on the moral side.

And the complexity of Tom’s characterizations makes him a believable character. Any young reader can find similarities between Tom and himself. They can even find some relief in the story because Tom’s adventures are just what they long to be turned into reality, and because the presumed bad boy whom most of them are presumed to be is not so bad. The bad boy gets his justification in the story and becomes a hero in the end. As a mixture of virtue and mischievousness, Tom symbolizes all American boys, just like a myth which intends to symbolize an entire nation.

Language Analysis:

And a very important point, no matter how good a book is, if the language is difficult, it must be beyond children’s ability of understanding. Unlike Henry James, who often uses long words and complex sentences, Mark Twain seldom employs them, so young readers can share the experience in Tom Sawyer. Consider the following example:

Mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there; then he dipped the soap in the water and laid it down; turned up his sleeves; poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the kitchen and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the door. But Mary removed the towel and said:

“Now aren’t you ashamed, Tom! You mustn’t be so bad. Water won’t hurt you.” This is one paragraph of Chapter Four in The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, and it does not seem to be loaded with luxurious words. The meaning is plain and straight-forward.

In The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, like most of his other works, Mark Twain breaks with the genteel tradition of the nineteenth century. He endows his characters and narratives with the natural speech patterns of the common person, and the writer of subjects hitherto considered vulgar. Just as W. D. Howells, one of Twain’s best friends writes: “So far as I know, Mr. Clemens is the first writer to use in extended writing the fashion we all use in thinking, and to set down the thing that comes into his mind without fear or favor of the thing that went before or the thing that may be

about to follow.

Mark Twain employs his single-minded use of words to express the plain, straight meaning. Like a master storyteller, The Adventure of Tom Sawyer tells a story of a boy’s adventure-filled summer in its simple and plain language to every reader’s delight.

Conclusion:

So in my opinion, Tom is naughty but kind, he is clever and full of all kinds of ideas, he is brave and always wants to try different things. He appears like a bad boy but good in moral. He is so reality.

And from the story we may learn something about friendship, because the author paid a lot of attention to the relationship between Tom and his friends, especially Huck. They spend the most time together, play together, adventure together, they share the sorrow and happiness with each other, they don’t care their identity and they never do anything bad to the other, and so on. They are close friends what the close friends should be. The story is not only suitable for children but also for the adult. It can arouse the memory of everybody’s childhood, a wonderful pried of one’s life. It can make people away from the world that scheme against each other.

But comparatively speaking, the modern children may not be possible to know the feelings that were told in the book, they may never do the things that Tom did, they now are too modernism and have little chance to adventure, or to pursue something they want, but it is not their fault, because their parents have prepared everything they need already. So the book can support them for some new ideas or spirits.

The happiness in the story is very simple, they can easily enjoy themselves, that’s because what they want is simple and so that they can achieve it easily, they are easy to be satisfied, the world in their point of view is much more pure. So we can and need get something from this: happiness is not so far. We shouldn’t pursuer anything unpractical, and learn to be content with things as they are, the less you are concerned for personal gains or losses, the more easily you can feel happiness. Do not make the life so complicate, do not make your heart so complicate. The happiness is just around you, so take it.

In a summary, the whole story is very interesting, wonderful and stimulate, and I really believe that Mark Twain can understand the child or maybe the human being very deeply, and he knows the their thoughts clearly. And thanks to Mark Twain’s accurate description, we see a so lively boy and a so wonderful childhood in the book.

All in all, the book is worth reading.