I had read Tom Sawyer when I was a kid and remembered it vaguely as a good book. My oldest son and I decided to reread it together, and as a mother, I had some different responses.
Tom Sawyer is a book about a boy, perhaps 8 to 12, named… Tom Sawyer. It starts with a very colorful survey of this boy’s guileless audacity. He is pretty much every mother’s nightmare of troublemaking and self-centeredness, yet within it all, he has a kind heart when anyone is genuinely hurting. He causes both his siblings and aunt much worry and heartache, yet somehow everything works out in the end.
The story is almost like a short story in that that each chapter covers a new escapade, but the book is unified by a more significant event of a murder mystery.
For the politically correct time we live in, I am surprised by how popular this book still is. The children speak a racist language without a second thought throughout. When Little House on the Prairie is so criticized for racist language against Native Americans, I guess this book gets a pass because of the fact that Huckleberry Finn (the equal to Tom Sawyer) is anti-racist in the message. I personally am not afraid of my children reading any of these classics because racism was true to history and something that should be discussed openly in the home. Still, for my more sensitive readers, you should know that racist language is openly used with no contradiction in Tom Sawyer.
Tom Sawyer is a very well-written novel with detailed descriptions and vivid imagery of ordinary life in the pre-Civil War south. The childhood antics are true to life even to the humorous extent of having the “yes/no” nonsense arguments of kids written out in all of its silliness. The picture of childhood that Mark Twain shows is not one that children live in today, though. Tom Sawyer’s aunt would be put into jail for neglect today. His school teacher would be arrested for child abuse. The children would never be allowed to explore forests, rivers, and caves today without chaperons. Still, it is an excellent story of complex people dealing with complex people. Not a single person in this book is perfect, but they do have redeeming qualities. That is what makes this book so worthwhile!
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What do you think?