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Cyclopedia of Literary Places

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Author: Mark Twain (1835–1910)

First published: 1876; illustrated

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Adventure

Time of plot: Early to mid-nineteenth century

More than perhaps any other work by Mark Twain, this novel is suffused with a sense of place. It so vividly depicts a fictional Mississippi Valley village as a microcosm of mid-nineteenth century life at the edge of the Western frontier that Tom Sawyer's village has become an icon of small-town American life, just as Tom himself as become an icon of carefree boyhood.

St. Petersburg. Fictional Missouri village on the west bank of the Mississippi River in and around which the entire novel is set. The village is modeled on the real, and somewhat larger, Hannibal, Missouri, in which Twain himself lived as a boy. Like Hannibal, it has a wooded promontory on its north side and a huge limestone cave to its south. Tom Sawyer lives near its center ina two-story house that closely resembles Twain's own home of the 1840's. However, the fictional St. Petersburg also has elements of the tiny inland village of Florida, Missouri, where Twain was born and spent most of his summers while growing up, and thus evokes an even more rustic flavor than a real riverfront village might have had.

Seen through Tom's eyes, St. Petersburg is a world in itself, an epitome of positive nineteenth century small-town American values that offers almost everything that a boy coming of age could want: rugged sports, Fourth of July picnics, itinerant entertainers, romance, imaginary adventures, and even genuine life-and-death adventures. A mostly sunny place, St. Petersburg reflects Twain's cheerful nostalgia for his childhood haunts, which he regarded as a “paradise” for boys—hence the name “St. Petersburg,” after the gatekeeper to Heaven. Although it appears generally safer and more comfortable than its historical counterpart, it also has an ominous dark side, symbolized by the lurking presence of the murderous Injun Joe, a haunted house, the danger of drowning in the river, and recurrent epidemics. A striking false note in the St. Petersburg of Tom Sawyer, however, is the near invisibility of African American slavery, which was a brutal fact of everyday life in both Twain's Hannibal and the St. Petersburg of Adventures of Huckle-berry Finn (1884), Tom Sawyer's sequel.

*Missouri. State in which St. Petersburg appears to be located. A frontier state at the time of Twain's youth, Missouri represents a remote western outpost of American civilization in Tom Sawyer. Tom reads enough to be aware of the outside world, but the Missouri in which he lives is so remote from the rest of the United States that a senator who visits his village is looked upon as something akin to a god.

*Mississippi River. North America's mightiest river, the Mississippi plays a less important role in Tom Sawyer than it does in Huckleberry Finn, but its presence is nonetheless felt throughout. It represents a possible avenue of escape to the outside world—as when Tom and his friends take a raft to the river's Jackson's Island to become pirates—and a force that swallows up drowning victims.

Cardiff Hill. Promontory on the north side of St. Petersburg modeled closely on Hannibal's real Holliday's Hill (now usually called “Cardiff” itself), which rises three hundred feet above the river. Described as a faraway and “Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful and inviting,” it is the place to which Tom usually flees to evade responsibility by playing make-believe games. However, it is also the site of the haunted house and is a place menaced by Injun Joe—both reminders that perhaps no place in St. Petersburg is completely safe.

McDougal's Cave. Limestone cavern several miles south of St. Petersburg modeled on a huge cave that Twain explored as a youth. The fictional cave is even larger and provides an apt setting for the novel's dramatic climax, in which Tom and Becky Thatcher get lost in the pitch-black cave. After a terrifying near-encounter with Injun Joe—who uses the cave as a hideout—Tom faces an apparently hopeless situation. However, he performs his greatest act of heroism by leading Becky to safety, and his emergence from the cave symbolizes his final coming of age.

—R. Kent Rasmussen

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer." Cyclopedia of Literary Places,Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CLP_0018.
APA 7th
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Cyclopedia of Literary Places,Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CLP_0018.
CMOS 17th
"The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer." Cyclopedia of Literary Places,Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CLP_0018.