Thursday, 22 December 2016

Mark Twian - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Hi! Today we will look at the book by Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Twain as well as Poe whom I mentioned in the first post was also a magnificent writer. Mark Twain, in reality Samuel Langhorne Clemens was a very versatile person. In his beginnings, he tried his strengths as a riverboat pilot on the Mississipi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. Unfortunately, he didm't succeed in this field and therefore decided to turn to journalism, which he treated very humorously. Later in his life, he was also an entrepreneur, but his activity in this area made him bankrupt. Interestingly he was born shortly after a visit by Halley's Comet and he made a prediction that he would "go out with it" (which actually happened). However, I'm not going to elaborate on his life therefore let's focus on the book.



The story is about a boy named Tom Sawyer living with his aunt Polly. Tom is a little adventurer. He doesn't restrain himself from trading with his friends in exchange for doing his homework. He treasures tickets (which he would normally get for memorising biblical verses). Generally the whole book is about his adventures and mischievous deeds.

However, an interesting thing is the popularity of the book in popular culture. One of the earliest adaptations was made by Soviet directors Lazar Frenkel and Gleb Zatrovnitsky and comes from 1936. The earliest American adaptation comes from 1917. Besides, it's been also an inspiration for musicians:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auLBLk4ibAk

SeTa and Square have even produced two video games, which main motif was the main character from the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSdlqabG_Fw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHceFHU7d3g

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