List of Tom Sawyer characters

Mark Twain's series of books featuring the fictional character Tom Sawyer include:

1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
3. Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)
4. Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896)

Tom Sawyer also appears in at least three unfinished Twain works, Huck and Tom Among the Indians, Schoolhouse Hill and Tom Sawyer Conspiracy. While all three uncompleted works had been posthumously published, only Tom Sawyer Conspiracy boasts a complete plot. Twain abandoned the other two works after only finishing a few chapters.

Widow Douglas

Widow Douglas' life is saved by Huckleberry Finn after he followed Injun Joe and a confederate of his and realized they were plotting to disfigure her. Out of her gratitude, she takes Huck into her home, but he has trouble adjusting to "civilized" life and soon runs away. However, at the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck is persuaded by Tom Sawyer to return.

Huck Finn

Huckleberry Finn is the protagonist of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck also appears in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and narrates Tom Sawyer, Detective and Tom Sawyer Abroad. He is also Tom Sawyer's closest friend.

The main theme of this book, according to author Mark Twain, is the conflict between a sound heart and a distorted conscience.

Huck is the son of a vagrant drunkard. He enjoys lazing about and joining Tom Sawyer in adventures. At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck is adopted by the Widow Douglas in return for saving her life. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in some respects a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the widow attempts to "sivilize" the newly rich Huck. Huck is kidnapped by his father but manages to fake his own death and escape to Jackson's Island, where he coincidentally meets up with Jim, a slave of the Widow Douglas's sister, Miss Watson. Jim is running for freedom because he has found out that Miss Watson plans to "sell him South" for eight hundred dollars. The two take a raft down the Mississippi River in the hope of finding freedom from slavery for Jim and freedom from his father and controlling foster parent for Huck.

Joe Harper

Joseph (Joe) Harper is Tom Sawyer's friend in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and joins Tom on some of his adventures.

Becomes a pirate with Tom.

Injun Joe

Injun Joe is a half Native American, half white man. He was horsewhipped by Judge Douglas for vagrancy, and this led to a lifelong burning for revenge against the Judge, and later on, his widow. Injun Joe uncovers loot in a haunted house and buries it in a cave; however, around the same time, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher are trapped in the cave but soon rescued, leading to the entrance to the cave being sealed and Injun Joe being trapped inside, where he dies.

Injun Joe had, by the time of his death, planned or carried out several crimes. The first that Tom Sawyer witnessed was the murder of Dr. Robinson and the framing of Muff Potter. Following this, Huck Finn overhears Injun Joe plotting the mutilation of Widow Douglas. Huck sounds the alarm, but Injun Joe escapes. There is evidence of other crimes that is not clarified; the fact that there is a "Number Two" home for Injun Joe and that he keeps it secret hints that he also a thief and/or a conspirator.

The story is memorialized by a tame version of Injun Joe's Cave on Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland.

It can be presumed that Injun Joe was based on Joe Douglas, a 1/2 Black, 1/2 Osage Indian who lived in the Hannibal, Missouri area, dying in 1923 at the age of 102 "from ptomaine poisoning from pickled pig's feet," or so the story goes.

Douglas, while never identified by Mark Twain, must have been a fright to all of the town's children who had been reared on horror stories of Indian brutality and slave uprisings, for not only was Douglas half Indian and half Black but he was also a giant, his face scarred by smallpox, and he wore a red wig covering a bald head.

But the truth is that he was a property owner who was neither dishonorable nor murderous. He lived a long life and died respectably.

Jim

Jim flees slavery with Huck, who flees his drunkard father. Of Jim, Russell Baker wrote:

"The people whom Huck and Jim encounter on the Mississippi are drunkards, murderers, bullies, swindlers, lynchers, thieves, liars, mows, frauds, child abusers, numskulls, hypocrites, windbags and traders in human flesh. All are white. The one man of honor in this phantasmagoria is 'Nigger Jim,' as Twain called him to emphasize the irony of a society in which the only true gentleman was held beneath contempt." [1]

According to Philip Jose Farmer, Jim was related to characters from the television series Wild Wild West.

Sidney Sawyer

Tom's goody-goody cousin. Although innocent on the surface, Sid is actually mischievous and malicious towards Tom. Also, people contrast Tom with Sid because Sid is a "good boy" with an evil heart while Tom is a "bad boy" with a good heart

Tom Sawyer

Tom Sawyer is the protagonist of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and a character in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Tom Sawyer is a playful boy. His age is twelve. His best friends include Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it is apparent that Tom is infatuated with Rebecca(AKA Becky) Thatcher. He has one cousin, Sidney and his aunt is known as Aunt Polly. As far as we can tell from the book, he is an orphan adopted by Aunt Polly.

Among the adventures Tom gets himself into are revealing Injun Joe's crime, getting trapped in a cave with Becky Thatcher, and discovering Injun Joe's treasure.

By 1898, Tom was an agent who chose to befriend Allan Quatermain when the latter was feeling 'past it'(The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film).

Judge Thatcher

Judge Thatcher is a minor character in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He is also Becky (Rebecca) Thatcher's father.

Becky Thatcher

She is the daughter of Judge Thatcher, and she is known for the mutual infatuation she and Tom Sawyer shared in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. She has long yellow hair that is always in two braids. When Tom and Becky first have an encounter, she gives him a pansy to show her love.

Aunt Polly

She is Tom's aunt, and she cares for Tom as a mother should. She loves him throughout the story, and yet she doesn't show it very well. Her influence on Tom is not great but she does try hard to get Tom into shape. When she is first seen in the book, she gives him a slap for eating jam without permission but still believes she is too soft-hearted to give him effective discipline. She exemplifies many parents of the time.

External links

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Full text in easy-to-read HTML format
• Tom Sawyer Abroad - Full text
• Tom Sawyer, Detective - Full text
• Information about Huck Finn
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Full text in easy-to-read HTML format.
• Text of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at American Literature