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hyperdontiia 's review for:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by Mark Twain
[22/166]
In every sense of the word, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a product of its time-- dialect, attitudes, religious overtones-- but it's also a cunning, playful read, with a deep warmth for the world the characters inhabit and the foibles of youth. (Although 'foible' feels like a weak description as the plot escalates into funeral-crashing and days of absence.) Sawyer himself is ruthlessly charismatic and funny, constantly getting himself into scrapes, and clever without ever abandoning the voice of a child in the antebellum period. There are so many things he does in here that would never fly in modern America (see any period of extended unsupervised time outside... we're wasting away here) and in equal measure some which are apparently universal, such as harassment of small animals, elaborate invented narratives, and really unnecessary pre-pubescent drama.
As a warning, the treatment of "Injun Joe" and any black characters is exactly what you think it's going to be going in. I kept hearing there'd be critique on slavery in this book and it's not aggressively hostile *for the time* but I didn't see any strong abolitionist undertones.
In every sense of the word, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a product of its time-- dialect, attitudes, religious overtones-- but it's also a cunning, playful read, with a deep warmth for the world the characters inhabit and the foibles of youth. (Although 'foible' feels like a weak description as the plot escalates into funeral-crashing and days of absence.) Sawyer himself is ruthlessly charismatic and funny, constantly getting himself into scrapes, and clever without ever abandoning the voice of a child in the antebellum period. There are so many things he does in here that would never fly in modern America (see any period of extended unsupervised time outside... we're wasting away here) and in equal measure some which are apparently universal, such as harassment of small animals, elaborate invented narratives, and really unnecessary pre-pubescent drama.
As a warning, the treatment of "Injun Joe" and any black characters is exactly what you think it's going to be going in. I kept hearing there'd be critique on slavery in this book and it's not aggressively hostile *for the time* but I didn't see any strong abolitionist undertones.