The Adventures of Tom Sawyer


Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The middle of the last century, the town with the pretentious name of St. Petersburg… America, where no factories, no railroads, no class struggle, but instead chickens wander among the houses with kitchen gardens… A pious province where Aunt Polly, alone raising Tom Sawyer, does not take up the rod, not backing up his fragile severity with text from the Holy Scriptures… A demanding province where children even during the holidays continue to cram the verses from the Bible in Sunday school… The unfinished province where the unfamiliar boy, on a weekday absenteeism vayuschiysya in shoes, sassy looks dandy, whom Tom certainly can not fail to teach. It’s very tempting to get out of school and take a bath in Mississippi, despite Polly’s prudently sewn-up shirt collar, and if it was not for the exemplary quiet Tid Sid, the half-brother,
For this trick Tom is waiting for a severe punishment –

he has to whitewash the fence on the holiday. But it turns out that if the boys are impressed with the familiar whitewashing of the fence is a great honor and rare entertainment, one can not only shove the work on others, but also be the owner of a real treasure trove of twelve alabaster balls, a fragment of a blue bottle, cannon from a reel, a collar without a dog, a key without a lock, a glass tube without a decanter, a copper door knob and a knife handle…
However, the human passions are everywhere the same: a great man once enters the small church – district judge Thacher, a man who saw the light, for he came from Constantinople, which is twelve miles from St. Petersburg; and with him appears his daughter Becky – a blue-eyed angel in a white dress and embroidered pantaloons… Love flares up, burns jealousy, behind her rupture, mortal resentment, then a fiery reconciliation in response to a noble act: the teacher dubasit Tom for the book, which inadvertently broke Becky. And between insult and reconciliation, in a fit of despair and hopeless resentment, you can go to pirates, knocking a
gang of noble thugs from the local homeless Huckleberry Finn, with whom good boys are forbidden to be led, and another friend, from a decent family.
Boys spend their time in the wooded island of Jackson not far from their native St. Petersburg, they play, bathe, catch incredibly delicious fish, weave fried eggs from tortoiseshell eggs, survive a terrible thunderstorm, indulge in luxurious vices like smoking self-made pipes from maize… But from this the boyish paradise of pirates begins to pull back to the people – even the little vagabond Huck. Tom hardly tries to persuade his friends to hold out to a breathtaking sensation – to appear, one might say, to their own funeral, to the funeral service for their disappeared souls. Tom, alas, with the delay comes the cruelty of their fascinating pranks…
And against the backdrop of these comparatively innocent cataclysms, a serious bloody tragedy unfolds. As you know, the most reliable means of removing warts is to go to the fresh grave of a bad person with a dead cat at night, and when the devils come after him, throw them after the stained cat with the words: “Damn the dead man, the cat behind the devil, the warts behind the cat – and deal with the end, all three of them are off me! ” But instead of devils, a young doctor appears with a tin lamp (in pious America it is difficult to get hold of a corpse by another means, even for medical purposes) and two of his assistants are the harmless nonsense Meff Potter and the vindictive mestiz Native American Joe. It turned out that the Indian Joe had not forgotten that in the doctor’s house five years ago he was pushed out of the kitchen when he asked for food, and after he vowed to repay at least a hundred years, He was also put in prison for vagrancy. In response to the fist brought to his nose, the doctor knocks the half-breed off his feet, the partner Joe indulges for him; in the ensuing fight, the doctor stuns Meff Potter with a board, and the Joe kills the doctor with a knife hit by Meff Potter, and then tells him that it was he, Potter, who killed the doctor unconscious. Poor Potter believes everything and begs the Indian Joe not to tell anyone about this, but the bloody Meff Potter knife, forgotten in the cemetery, seems to all to be irrefutable evidence. Indications of the Indian Joe finish the affair. Besides, someone saw Meff Potter wash his face – why would that be? and the Indian Joe kills the doctor with a knife hit by Meff Potter, and then tells him that it was he, Potter, who, in unconsciousness, killed the doctor. Poor Potter believes everything and begs the Indian Joe not to tell anyone about this, but the bloody Meff Potter knife, forgotten in the cemetery, seems to all to be irrefutable evidence. Indications of the Indian Joe finish the affair. Besides, someone saw Meff Potter wash his face – why would that be? and the Indian Joe kills the doctor with a knife hit by Meff Potter, and then tells him that it was he, Potter, who, in unconsciousness, killed the doctor. Poor Potter believes everything and begs the Indian Joe not to tell anyone about this, but the bloody Meff Potter knife, forgotten in the cemetery, seems to all to be irrefutable evidence. Indications of the Indian Joe finish the affair. Besides, someone saw Meff Potter wash his face – why would that be?
Only Tom and Huck could save Meff Potter from the gallows, but in terror before the “Indian devil” they swear to each other to remain silent. Tormented by their conscience, they visit Meff Potter in prison – they just go to the barred window of a small secluded little house, and old Meff thanks them so touchingly that the tortures of conscience become quite intolerable. But in the fateful minute, already during the trial, Tom heroically reveals the truth: “And when the doctor missed Meff Potter by the board on the head and he fell, the Indian Joe rushed at him with a knife and…”
Fuck! With rapidity of lightning, the Indian Joe jumped on the windowsill, pushed away those trying to hold him and was like that.
Days Tom conducts brilliantly: thanks to Meff Potter, universal admiration, praise in the local newspaper – some even predict that he will be president, unless he is hanged until then. However, his nights are filled with horror: The Indian Joe, even in his dreams, threatens him with reprisals.
Oppressed by anxiety, Tom is still starting a new adventure – searching for treasure: why not at the end of some branch of an old withered tree, in the very place where the shadow falls from it at midnight, do not unearth a half-decayed chest full of diamonds?! Huck prefers dollars at first, but Tom explains to him that diamonds are worth a dollar, not less. However, under the tree they suffer a failure (however, perhaps, the witches prevented). Where it is more reliable to dig in the abandoned house, where at night a blue light flashes in the window, and hence the ghost is not far away. But after all, ghosts do not walk around during the day! True, the friends were almost in trouble in the excavations on Friday. However, on time, realizing it, they spent the day playing Robin Hood – the greatest of people who ever lived in England.
In the favor of Saturday’s treasure hunt, Tom and Huck come to the terrible house without glasses, without sex, with a collapsed staircase, and as they survey the second floor, the treasure below really is a miracle! – find an unknown vagabond and – oh horror! – Indian Joe, again appeared in the town under the guise of a deaf-mute Spaniard. Tracing the “Spaniard”, Huck prevents another terrible crime: The Indian Joe wants to mutilate the rich widow Douglas, whose late husband, when he was a judge, at one time ordered him to lash his whips for vagrancy – as if to some Negro! And for that he wants to cut out the nostrils to the widow and cut off her ears, “like a pig.” Overheard terrible threats, Huck calls for help, but Native Joe again hides without a trace.
Meanwhile, Tom goes on a picnic with his beloved Becky. Having plenty of fun “on the nature”, the children climb into the huge cave of MacDougal. After examining the already well-known wonders, worn pretentious names “Cathedral”, “Palace of Aladdin” and the like, they forget about caution and are lost in the bottomless labyrinth. The whole fault was the host of bats, who nearly put out their love candles for the enamored children, stay in the dark – that would be the end! – and then for a long time chased after them through all the new and new corridors. Tom still repeats: “Everything is fine,” but in his voice Becky hears: “Everything is lost.” Tom tries to scream, but only the echo answers with a dying, mocking laugh, which makes it even worse. Becky bitterly reproaches Tom for not making notes. “Becky, I’m such an idiot!” which Becky was going to put under the pillow so that they would see each other in a dream. Tom concedes Becky most of the time. which Becky was going to put under the pillow so that they would see each other in a dream. Tom concedes Becky most of the time.
Leaving the exhausted Becky by the underground stream, tying the cord to the ledge of the rock, Tom ransackes the corridors available to him and – stumbles upon the Indian Joe with a candle in his hand, which, to his relief, rushes himself to run. In the end, thanks to the courage of Tom, children still get out five miles from the “Main Entrance.”
Judge Taecher himself, exhausted by his unsuccessful search, orders that the dangerous cave be safely locked up – and thus, without knowing it, condemns the Hidden Indians Joe to an excruciating death – while creating in the cave a new attraction: “The Cup of the Indian Joe” – a deepening in the stone, in which the unfortunate collected drops from the top, a dessert spoon per day. At the funeral of the Indian Joe, the people gathered from all around. People brought their children, food and drinks: it was almost as much fun as if the ill-famed villain had been hanged on the gallows before their eyes. Tom guesses that the disappeared treasure must have been hidden in a cave – in fact, he and Huck find a hiding place, the entrance to which is marked with a cross drawn by the smoke of a candle. Huck, however, proposes to leave: the spirit of the Indian Joe probably wanders somewhere near the money. But clever Tom realizes that the spirit of the villain will not wander around the cross. In the end, they find themselves in a cozy cave where they find an empty barrel of gunpowder, two rifles in their covers and another miscellaneous junk, a place surprisingly adapted for future robber orgies (although it is not exactly known what it is). The treasure is in the same place – tarnished gold coins, more than twelve thousand dollars! This is despite the fact that for a dollar and a quarter it was possible to live comfortably for a week! The treasure is in the same place – tarnished gold coins, more than twelve thousand dollars! This is despite the fact that for a dollar and a quarter it was possible to live comfortably for a week! The treasure is in the same place – tarnished gold coins, more than twelve thousand dollars! This is despite the fact that for a dollar and a quarter it was possible to live comfortably for a week!
In addition, the grateful widow Douglas takes Huck to the upbringing, and there would have been a full “happy end” if Huck had been on the shoulder of the burden of civilization – this nasty purity and suffocating decency. The servants of the widow wash it, clean the shackles of the movement, do not let the air in, dress every night on hideously clean sheets, he has to eat with a knife and fork, use napkins, learn from a book, attend church, express himself so politely that to say the hunt disappears : if Huck did not run to the attic to swear properly, it seems that he would just give God a soul. Tom barely persuades Huck to suffer, as long as he organizes the bandit gang – because the robbers are always noble people, increasingly counts and dukes, and the presence of a gangster in the gang will greatly undermine her prestige.
The further biography of the boy, the author completes, would turn into a biography of the man and, we add, probably, would lose almost the main charm of the children’s game: the simplicity of the characters and the “fixability” of everything in the world. In the world of Tom Sawyer, , the dead are forgotten, and the villains are deprived of those complicating features that compassion inevitably blend our hatred.


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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer