The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain

• Éditeur: William Collins
• Année: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780007480685
• Sujet: Literatura
• Sous-sujet: Clásicos

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'Now he found out a new thing – namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. '' Now he found out a new thing – namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. 'An idyllic snapshot of a boy's childhood along the banks of the Mississippi River, Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the author's work that comes closest to his boyhood experiences of growing up in Hannibal in the 1840s. An idyllic snapshot of a boy' s childhood along the banks of the Mississippi River, Twain' s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the author' s work that comes closest to his boyhood experiences of growing up in Hannibal in the 1840s. Mischievous and full of energy, Tom enjoys childish pranks and pastimes with his friends, Huck Finn, the town outcast and Joe Harper, his best friend. However, at the town graveyard, Huck and Tom witness a murder, carried out by local vagabond Injun Joe. They vow never to tell a soul about what they have seen and so begins their journey into adulthood as Tom wrestles with his own morality, guilt and anxiety. Mischievous and full of energy, Tom enjoys childish pranks and pastimes with his friends, Huck Finn, the town outcast and Joe Harper, his best friend. However, at the town graveyard, Huck and Tom witness a murder, carried out by local vagabond Injun Joe. They vow never to tell a soul about what they have seen and so begins their journey into adulthood as Tom wrestles with his own morality, guilt and anxiety. A 'coming of age' tale, it is through Tom's adventures and relationships with others that he becomes more responsible and more aware of his own inner conflict. Through the central characters of Tom and Huck, Twain satirises the moral rigidity of society and adult hypocrisy, whilst at the same time giving a nostalgic portrayal of a young boy's journey into adulthood. A ' coming of age' tale, it is through Tom' s adventures and relationships with others that he becomes more responsible and more aware of his own inner conflict. Through the central characters of Tom and Huck, Twain satirises the moral rigidity of society and adult hypocrisy, whilst at the same time giving a nostalgic portrayal of a young boy' s journey into adulthood.

CHAPTER 1

‘TOM!’

No answer.

‘Tom!’

No answer.

‘What’s gone with that boy, I wonder? You Tom!’

The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy, for they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for ‘style,’ not service; she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids as well. She looked perplexed a moment and said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear, ‘Well, I lay if I get hold of you, I’ll—’

She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.

‘I never did see the beat of that boy!’

She went to the open door and stood in it, and looked out among the tomato vines and ‘jimpson’ weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance, and shouted:

‘Y-o-u-u Tom!’

There was a slight noise behind her, and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight. ‘There! I might a thought of that closet. What you been doing in there?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing! Look at your hands, and look at your mouth. What is that truck?’

‘I don’t know, aunt.’

‘Well, I know. It’s jam, that’s what it is. Forty times I’ve said if you didn’t let that jam alone I’d skin you. Hand me that switch.’

The switch hovered in the air. The peril was desperate. ‘My! Look behind you, aunt!’

The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger, and the lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and disappeared over it. His Aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle laugh.

‘Hang the boy, can’t I never learn anything? Ain’t he played me tricks enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can’t learn any old dog new tricks, as the saying is. But, my goodness, he never plays them alike two days, and how is a body to know what’s coming? He ’pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it’s all down again, and I can’t hit him a lick. I ain’t doing my duty by that boy, and that’s the Lord’s truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the good book says. I’m a-laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He’s full of the old scratch, but laws-a-me! he’s my own dead sister’s boy, poor thing, and I ain’t got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off my conscience does hurt me so; and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well, man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and I reckon it’s so. He’ll play hookey this evening,¹ and I’ll just be obliged to make him work to-morrow, to punish him. It’s mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having a holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I’ve got to do some of my duty by him, or I’ll be the ruination of the child.’

Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home barely in season to help Jim, the small coloured 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. Tom’s younger brother (or rather, half-brother) Sid was already through with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a quiet boy, and had no adventurous, troublesome ways. While Tom was eating his supper and stealing sugar as opportunity offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and very deep – for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. Said she: ‘Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn’t it?’

‘Yes’m.’

‘Powerful warm, warn’t it?’

‘Yes’m.’

‘Didn’t you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?’

A bit of a scare shot through Tom – a touch of uncomfortable suspicion. He searched Aunt Polly’s face, but it told him nothing. So he said:

‘No ’m – well, not very much.’

The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom’s shirt, and said:

‘But you ain’t too warm now, though.’

And it flattered her to reflect that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew where the wind lay now. So he forestalled what might be the next move.

‘Some of us pumped on our heads – mine’s damp yet. See?’

Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new inspiration:

‘Tom, you didn’t have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it to pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket!’

The trouble vanished out of Tom’s face. He opened his jacket. His shirt collar was securely sewed.

‘Bother! Well, go ’long with you. I made sure you’d played hookey and been a-swimming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you’re a kind of a singed cat, as the saying is – better’n you look – this time.’

She was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom had stumbled into obedient conduct for once.

But Sidney said:

‘Well, now, if I didn’t think you sewed his collar with white thread, but it’s black.’

‘Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!’

But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out of the door he said:

‘Siddy, I’ll lick you for that.’

In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into the lapels of his jacket – and had thread bound about them – one needle carried white thread and the other black. He said:

‘She’d never noticed if it hadn’t been for Sid. Confound it, sometimes she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to geeminy she’d stick to one or t’other – I can’t keep the run of ’em. But I bet you I’ll lam Sid for that. If I don’t, blame my cats.’

He was not the model boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though – and loathed him.

Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time – just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music. The reader probably remembers how to do it if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet. No doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer.

The summer evenings were long. It was not dark yet. Presently Tom checked his whistle. A stranger was before him – a boy a shade larger than himself. A newcomer of any age or either sex was an impressive curiosity in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. This boy was well dressed too – well dressed on a week-day. This was simply astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes on – and yet it was only Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright bit of ribbon. He had a citified air about him that ate into Tom’s vitals. The more Tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his nose at his ...