Tom Sawyer is a young boy who lives with his aunt in a small rural town on the banks of the Mississippi. Mark Twain introduces him in this way:

he got back home barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's wood and split the kindlings before supper—at least he was there in time to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the work. (...) If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. Tom is not clear on this distinction and takes a carefree, unencumbered life as serious business, swinging from melancholia—which prompts him to wish he could die temporarily, just to make himself missed—to a fantasy world in which he dreams of being a pirate or an outlaw. And so, with his faithful friends, especially the vagrant Huckleberry Finn, known as Huck, he embarks on a series of exploits, from the pirate life on an island in the middle of the river to wandering through the graveyard at night, witnessing a murder, all the way to setting off in search of treasures surely hidden by bands of robbers. This dizzying flurry of activity does not prevent Tom from courting Becky, a girl from a respectable family, who also finds herself drawn into Tom's reckless escapades. There is no point in recounting the plot, at times convoluted and commonplace yet never dull: it is far more interesting to dwell on two peculiarities of the novel. The first is the rural setting; with gentle and affectionate irony, Mark Twain depicts the school, dominated by the schoolmaster's authoritarianism; the church gatherings with the preacher's tedious and moralizing sermons; and the hilarious ritual of Examination Day, when the best pupils present an essay of their own before the entire community. One can smile, as Mark Twain does, at the ornate English, laden with words that most people likely do not understand, at the puritanical and sanctimonious values, at education imposed by sheer force; nevertheless, a strong communal spirit emerges, seeming to transcend even class divisions. It is a white society, placid in its values, with a single, clear boundary: discrimination against Black people, who remain in the background even as they sustain the small town's agricultural economy; one can sympathize with the vagrant Huck, but not with the servant Jim. The other compelling aspect lies in Tom's powers of fabulation. Unlike the protagonists of other coming-of-age novels, Gian Burrasca or Jim from Treasure Island (see the reviews of Il giornalino di Gian Burrasca and Treasure Island on this site), what surprises is Tom's dialectic: how he manages his aunt, capitalizing on her naive affection; how he cajoles his friends, talking them into adventures and overcoming their reluctance; how he persuades Becky to follow him into dangerous and intimate situations, paradoxical for such a prudish society. And when Mark Twain remarks that he can stop at writing the story of a Boy, because

the story could not go much further without becoming the history of a Man. (...) When one writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can

, he perhaps means that Tom's innocent cunning would turn into a guilty capacity for deceit, as so often happens among adults. In Twain's imaginative world, it is better to keep playing with the petty subterfuges of adolescence.

Beyond the character and the plot, the literary merit of Tom Sawyer resides in its writing—attentive to detail, magically realist, subtly ironic. Take as an example this passage, which describes Tom's awakening on the island of the imaginary pirates:

when Tom awoke at dawn, he wondered where he was. (...) Now, far off in the trees a bird called; another answered; now the distant strokes of a woodchopper were heard. (...) A little green worm came crawling over a soft leaf, lifting two-thirds of its body into the air from time to time and “sniffing around,” (...) then proceeding again, (...) and when the worm approached him, of its own accord, he sat still as a stone, (...) then (...) when it began a journey across him, his heart was all glad. (...) Now a procession of ants appeared from who knows where. (...) A brown-spotted ladybug climbed the dizzying height of a blade of grass (...) and Tom bent down close and said,

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children are alone. These are wonders of a world inhabited at night by spirits, and Nature still seems endowed with a soul. And what of the description of the school, punctuated by that repetitive

“showing off” (in Italian, ostentare or vantarsi)? All the teachers “put on airs”

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer