ENGLISH PROJECT 1.

Mark Twain Best known as Mark Twain Samuel Clemens was born 30 November 1835 and raised in Hannibal, Missouri. There he absorbed many of the influences that would inform his most lasting contributions to American literature. During his youth, he delighted in the rowdy play of boys on the river and became exposed to the institution of slavery. He began to work as a typesetter for a number of Hannibal newspapers at the age of twelve. In the late 1850s, he became a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. After a brief stint as a soldier in the Confederate militia, Clemens went out west, where he worked as a reporter for various newspapers. During this phase of his career, in 1863, he adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain, taken from the riverboat slang that means water is at least two fathoms (twelve feet) deep and thus easily travelled. His second book, The Innocents Abroad (1869), a collection of satirical travel letters the author wrote from Europe, was an outstanding success. Clemens married Olivia Langdon and moved to the East, where he lived for the rest of his life. Clemens's first two novels. The Gilded Age (1873), written with Charles Dudley Warner, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), a children's book based on his boisterous childhood in Hannibal, won Clemens widespread recognition. Shortly afterwards, he began to compose a sequel to Tom's story, an autobiography of Tom's friend, Huck Finn. He worked sporadically on the book over the next seven years, publishing more travel books and novels in the meantime. In the 1890s, Clemens's extensive financial speculations caught up with him, and he went bankrupt in the depression of 1893-94. With an eye to paying back his many debts, he wrote a number of works, including continuing adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. He spent his final decade dictating his autobiography, which appeared in 1924. Clemens died on 21 April 1910.

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NOVELS 1873 The Gilded Age (with Charles Dudley Warner) 1882 The Prince and the Pauper 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court 1892 The American Claimant (with William Dean Howells) 1894 The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins 1896 Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc 1894 Tom Sawyer Abroad 1896 Tom Sawyer, Detective 1916 The Mysterious Stranger NONFICTION 1869 The Innocents Abroad 1872 Roughing It 1880 A Tramp Abroad 1883 Life on the Mississippi 1906 What is Man? 1907 Christian Science

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1907 Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven 1959 The Autobiography of Mark Twain (Charles Neider, ed.) STORIES AND SKETCHES 1867 The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches 1875 Sketches, New and Old 1876 "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut" 1882 "The Stolen White Elephant" 1891 "Luck" 1893 "The L1,000,000 Bank Note" 1899 "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" 1902 "The Five Boons of Life" 1902 "Was It Heaven? Or Hell?
Quotes o A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. o Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. o Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge. o Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. o Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

2. PLOT

In the mid-1800s, young Tom Sawyer is enjoying life in his small Missouri town. Tom's Aunt Polly tries to discipline him, but Tom usually avoids punishment and manages to skip school and evade chores. Tom's troubles are simple, and his main concerns are keeping himself entertained and winning the heart of the new girl in town, Becky Thatcher. Tom's life gets more complicated when he and his friend Huckleberry Finn witness the criminal Injun Joe murder Dr. Robinson in a graveyard. When Injun Joe blames the murder on Muff Potter, Tom and Huck don't speak out. Tom forgets Muff Potter's troubles for a while and has some more adventures. He runs away to become a pirate with Huck and Joe Harper. The townspeople think the boys have drowned. The boys march home in time to attend their own funerals and are welcomed with hugs and tears. Tom finally testifies against Injun Joe, but Joe escapes. A short time later, Tom and Becky get lost while exploring a cave. When the children are found, Tom reveals that Injun Joe was inside. But it's too late to save him because the cave is sealed off and Injun Joe is stuck inside. Tom's good fortune increases when he and Huck find enough robbers' gold to make them rich. Aunt Polly takes care of Tom's money for him, and the Widow Douglas becomes Huck's guardian, though he does not appreciate her efforts to clean him up and civilize him. When Huck runs away, Tom convinces him to come back home to the widow.

Theme

Moral growth and maturation During the first part of the novel, Tom indulges in many pranks and adventures, giving little consideration to the consequences. Everything changes when Tom and Huck witness the murder in the graveyard and Injun Joe frames Muff Potter, who is innocent of the crime. Suddenly, the boys' actions could make the difference between justice being done or an innocent man being hanged. Doing the right thing has overridden his fears for his personal safety. Tom's reward is the adulation he receives from the local people. Huck also undergoes a moral growth. For most of the novel he is concerned with the necessarily selfish business of survival, but one night he finds himself alone when the time comes to track Injun Joe. When he finds that Injun Joe intends to attack the Widow Douglas, he recalls her kindness to him and commits an entirely selfless act, alerting Mr Jones and thus saving her from Joe. the boys' final subjection to the restraints of civilization is a necessary rite of their passage into adulthood and into society. Freedom Throughout the novel, freedom is equated with standing outside society's rules. Good behavior, as defined by adults, means a loss of freedom. Huck, is admired by the other children as a symbol of freedom. Tom occupies a position between the free and the imprisoned. Under Aunt Polly's orders, he attends school, church and Sunday school. But whenever he can, he escapes, most notably to the island, where he lives with Huck and Joe Harper as a pirate. Forgiveness The theme of condemnation and forgiveness is taken up as it applies in wider society. Huck moves from being an outcast to being a hero for saving the Widow Douglas. Tom moves from being viewed as a mischievous child, also to a hero, for his part in saving Muff Potter from being hanged for a crime. Muff Potter himself is taken back into society's embrace in spite of his faults and petty criminal tendencies: the fact that he means well counts for much. Race Issues of race in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer center on the novel's half-Native American villain, Injun Joe. Injun Joe is subject to the usual stereotypes about Native Americans but, and here's the important part often times he's the one promoting the stereotypes. The book is set in the mid-1800s in Missouri, a slave state, so slavery does factor into the story. Because the protagonists of the novel are

only children, we see how conventional views of race affect them at an age before prejudice really has a chance to set in.

Friendship

Children's friendships are at the center of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The importance of friendship comes up throughout the entire book as Tom faces his many experiences and challenges that he constantly stumbles upon. His friends including Huckleberry Finn and Joe Harper were by his side and partook in the wild schemes and ideas that Tom always had to offer.