103: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Join us as we discuss "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", the well-known classic by Mark Twain. 

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Transcript

Welcome to Twin Talk. This is Joy and I'm here with my sister Angie and we were sitting in my classroom on a Saturday afternoon and there was a lot of snow on the ground. Luckily for us here in Arkansas, got some. I don't know if it's lucky or unlucky, but we got some not only some snow, but some ice. So we just missed a full week of school, which I absolutely loved. My daughter absolutely loved

speaker-1 (00:24)
Yeah, it was winter storm Fern that we got to.

speaker-0 (00:28)
Fern? I didn't know what that ⁓

speaker-1 (00:29)
They had they name for.

So while you guys were sitting in your beds enjoying the days off of school, I had planned a trip a month ago to Tulsa for Corby and my 34th wedding anniversary. And wouldn't you know it, winter storm fern decides to come. But we went ahead and went anyway like idiots. Well, OK, I say like idiots. It actually all turned out OK. And we actually had a good time, Joy. We had to drive back on snow covered

roads I'll have to you about this later but we actually raced a road grader

speaker-0 (01:03)
And you sent a picture and it looked like you were the only two survivors and the infern on the earth. She had a picture of them on the interstate and you couldn't see another vehicle from.

speaker-1 (01:13)
We're coming back from Tulsa to Fort Smith and I could count on one hand how many cars we saw we're going down the interstate at one point We go over a bridge and I can see highways just you know sprouting off every direction and Corby said I don't see a single car either and I should have known because when we left the hotel I asked the guy I said

how many people do you have in the hotel tonight? And he said, well, everybody that was here last night is staying again tonight except for you. You idiots from Arkansas, you arkeys.

speaker-0 (01:39)
to But

Korby is loving this just in case our listeners don't know he was he's a former race car driver. Yeah, I don't mean NASCAR. mean trust it dirt track, but he was a race car driver for several years. We had

speaker-1 (01:53)
dirt truck.

multiple conversations where I was saying we don't need to get out on this and he was going ⁓ come on he was dying to get out on the road.

loves to drive on snow and ice and the worse the conditions are the better.

speaker-0 (02:11)
So see it wasn't gloom and doom for everybody. He loved it and we get a weekend

speaker-1 (02:14)
And

now I need to say this we do have a four-wheel drive so yeah like we were out there slipping around going in

speaker-0 (02:20)
ditches or anything. Right, and we got lucky because from what I'm seeing in the news, like places in Nashville or outside of Nashville have not had power for a week and still don't have power in some places. Yes.

speaker-1 (02:31)
Hey, the one thing that we need to mention is when we have weather like this, it is the best time to catch up on your reading.

speaker-0 (02:37)
Yes, absolutely. So let's talk about our book. I'm super excited to do one of my all-time favorite books and it is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is considered an American classic and was written by the famous author and humorous Mark Twain aka shall I say Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain who grew up in Hannibal, Missouri.

I love the fact that his pseudonym is Mark Twain, which is a river term when they go to measure how deep the water is so that the, guess, the riverboat

speaker-1 (03:10)
I actually looked that up too. It means something like when the water is at a 12 and a half foot mark, they call it mark.

speaker-0 (03:18)
Mark whatever one is. Mark Twain means two. Oh, it's like a second mark. Yeah, I don't know if that means two. It's a measurement. very cool. So here is an interesting fact. Twain is the person who famously said, classic. What is a classic? It's a book which people praise and don't read.

speaker-1 (03:25)
measure

Yeah, that's one of my favorite all-time quotes because it is so true because I'm one of the few people who do read classics and here we are reading his classics. He even predicted they're supposed to be great but no one actually reads them. Exactly.

speaker-0 (03:52)
This is not mentioned in our notes, but I just wanted to see if you remember this you probably do. Apparently Samuel Clemens was born when Haley's Comet was coming through. Yes, and he predicted, he said, I will come in with the comet and I'll go out with the comet. And 75, I think it was 75 years. I think he was 75. I'll have to look that up.

speaker-1 (04:03)
came in with the comment and

I'm glad you mentioned that because I had forgotten about that.

speaker-0 (04:17)
Did his prediction did indeed come true and that he did die as the comet was coming through again, okay? I just love that fact about him ⁓

speaker-1 (04:23)
with the bang and left with the back

I who else can say?

I want to about just a minute because Mark Twain himself is a fascinating character and you know he grew up in Hannibal, Missouri and I know as kids we visited Hannibal and I don't remember much about

speaker-0 (04:32)
All let's talk about.

I don't remember much about it either because we were teenagers.

speaker-1 (04:47)
does

seem like we might have visited a cave there that they said that he got a lot of Tom Sawyer like the scenes from the cave may have come from his experiences at that.

speaker-0 (04:55)
And I do remember seeing some engravings in the cave some etchings and it said Becky and Tom how fun and I thought that's so cool. And of course the tour guide I do remember this the tour guide is like Obviously, that's not the back Becky and Tom from the book, but someone has a good sense of humor But I remember saying Becky and Tom etched into the cave wall

speaker-1 (05:13)
But now you and Jeff have visited Hannibal

speaker-0 (05:18)
Well,

I think it was when I was pregnant with Olivia. Oh, Yeah, would have been, she's 13. So it would been over 13 years ago.

speaker-1 (05:27)
Do you remember much about that trip? you recommend people go visit?

speaker-0 (05:30)
I

highly recommend Hannibal Missouri if you are a Mark Twain fan. So we got to ride as a, I don't remember if it was a steamboat or just some type of regular boat, but they do offer rides down the Mississippi River. Oh cool. And they do show you what they think was Jackson's Island. What they think Mark Twain used as Jackson's Island. The only disappointing part to me was it wasn't long enough. I just feel like we maybe 20 minutes down, 20 minutes back, and I wanted to...

to go on, I was really enjoying it. Also, there's the childhood home of Mark Twain. And I feel like it's the original home and they've just fixed it up. I don't feel like it's a reproduction, but I can't remember 100%. And there's ⁓ like a little museum in there and they tell you a lot of stories about Mark Twain that you might not hear somewhere else. So I do highly recommend it. I mean, you could probably see everything in one day. It's not like it's gonna a full week.

But you definitely could just stay for the weekend and probably see and do everything. It would be a great weekend trip.

speaker-1 (06:34)
So the town does embrace its connection to it.

speaker-0 (06:36)
absolutely. That's their big claim to fame. Yeah.

speaker-1 (06:39)
Okay, well that's cool, because one of my bucket list things is I would love to take a ride on a steamboat down the Mississippi River.

so we're talking about how he grew up in Hannibal, but he was laid to rest in Elmira, New York. when I was on the New England trip I took with my mom and my aunt, we were headed through Elmira, New York. And I was thinking, I wonder if there's anything here interesting. Well, we were searching and it said that Mark Twain is buried here. So it just so happened, we were like, hey, we're like,

less than a mile from that cemetery. It was just kind of weird how it all worked out. Yeah. So we go to the cemetery. I find his grave and I'm standing over his grave and I'm thinking, this is the closest I've ever been to a real live famous author person. of course I'm not, you know, it's just.

It's his grave. But anyway, all his family is buried around him and it was around Halloween and there were pumpkins laid all around their graves. wow.

speaker-0 (07:42)
That'd be cool. I totally forgot you have been to Mark Twain's.

speaker-1 (07:46)
his grave.

speaker-0 (07:47)
well. That's awesome. The last thing I want to say before we get into the book is I think the reason this is one of my all-time favorite books is it just really resonates with me in our childhood. We did grow up in a rural setting not next to the big Mississippi River but we did grow up next to a creek and we explored the creek and walked the woods and climbed the coal hill and

We even had an old abandoned house across the road that we explored one time and they explore this old abandoned house in this book.

Anyway, I am rabbit trailing here.

speaker-1 (08:19)
to say though we kind of did have the spirit of Tom Sawyer with it.

speaker-0 (08:22)
We swam the creeks we we we even had a clubhouse and an old hog pen I mean I just feel like we grew up kind of in the same spirit Yeah, we know we played out till it was dark came in when it was dark came and we got too cold We were outside all the time

speaker-1 (08:37)
You know what song I love that kind of reminds me of all this?

speaker-0 (08:40)
Also there's ⁓

Let's play it at the end of our podcast. one those It's Charlie Proud. It's Charlie Proud, River Row On. I'm just joking. You're out there when you hear us. And there's another Alabama song that talks about, it mentions Huck Finn in it. Playing with shirt rock. Oh. It's something else. It's playing me some mountain music. Oh. Yeah. Hey, let's tag it on at the end too. Okay. We don't get copyrighted.

speaker-1 (09:15)
We're

sorry that we're doing this, but this is just fun.

speaker-0 (09:19)
Yeah,

All right, here's the summary. This story follows the mischievous but good-hearted boy Tom Sawyer in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, which we've already established really as Hannibal, Missouri. And apparently a lot of the things that happen here are similar to places in Hannibal. Yeah. Chronicling the coming of age through imaginative adventures, pranks like tricking friends into whitewashing a fence.

and serious challenges, including witnessing a murder by Injun Joe and getting lost in a cave with Becky Thatcher, learning about friendship, love, responsibility, and societal rules along the way, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn, which by the way, to me is one of the best literary names of all time, Huckleberry Finn. there a connection there or not? I don't know. that up.

speaker-1 (10:05)
Come on. I'll be your huckleberry.

Okay, so I got a question for you, Joanne. I know you just read the book, for the podcast, but before that, had you read it? Like, did you ever have to read this to teach it in one of your...

speaker-0 (10:23)
So I remember reading this when I was young. Young meaning probably teenager, preteen and loving it.

I remember being at a workshop with another teacher and asking her how to handle the language. Because you know, there's the derogatory term for black people. Yeah, and she...

speaker-1 (10:40)
We do need to mention that. Yeah.

The N-word is used extensively.

speaker-0 (10:46)
And this is a black lady I'm talking to okay. She was an English teacher We were at a workshop together like I think we're in Little Rock And I was talking to her about how I was about to teach Huckleberry Finn and how to handle that she said just explain That it was that was the time period and it was acceptable back then but it's not acceptable today And she said you don't have to say the word you can skip over and I thought yeah, that is so true and I did

speaker-1 (11:11)
We were actually getting ready to talk about some of our nostalgic attachments to the book, but I think we've pretty much covered that.

speaker-0 (11:13)
So.

⁓ I'm so sorry. didn't realize I No, I forgot about that.

speaker-1 (11:19)
I

was just gonna say like we kind of have a love affair with the Mississippi River and steamboats and how we visited Hannibal and then the caves you know which we went on a lot of cave tours with our parents as kids so when he talks about the caves that brings back a lot of memories to me. Okay but I love the characters of Tom and Huck and I love

you know, we talk about the things we like and don't like about books. Well, one of my favorite things I like about this book is how he portrays the innocence of Tom and Huck. And I loved their imaginations. You know, they were always play acting. were, you know, all those excerpts where they were trading, I'll trade you this for that and this for that. That was funny to me. And the other thing I love about the book is how they talk in their native vernacular. guess that's the way to say that.

I think I read somewhere that that Mark Twain was one of the first authors to have his character speak in the the the dialect of their time.

also enjoyed, what did you think about all the superstitious beliefs?

speaker-0 (12:21)
I thought that was interesting because I think every culture has their own superstitions including ours and I think it's very interesting

speaker-1 (12:28)
As far as the superstitions go, I they just saturate the book. that was just part of their life. ⁓ So, okay, I can already tell you love the book. You've mentioned that several times that you love it. It's one of your favorite books.

speaker-0 (12:32)
Yes.

their superstitious beliefs.

favorite

books of all time.

speaker-1 (12:44)
What about for today? mean, this is an old book, the language, it's a, you know, the old speak. It's kind of hard to read because it is.

speaker-0 (12:52)
I today's younger people, even teenagers younger people, I just feel like they wouldn't give it a chance because of the language it's written in. It is not in modern day language. I mean he says bye and bye and I mean there's so many expressions and the way the language I feel like it's just too old and stodgy. don't know the word. ⁓

speaker-1 (13:16)
The

synestructure, a ⁓ multitude of sentences would end, it would say said I or says she or says I. It's not the way we structure.

speaker-0 (13:27)
It's

so old-fashioned and maybe I'm not giving our youth enough credit but I just feel like as soon as they see how it's written that they wouldn't give it a chance and would even get past the first few pages because I try to have students read books like this before just for bonus points and they've told me I just can't get through the right.

speaker-1 (13:45)
So, you know, don't know how to answer the question. Who would you recommend this to?

speaker-0 (13:45)
interesting.

Well, I recommend it to anyone who loves classics and anyone who loves, ⁓ you know, a rural setting and adventures and, you know, just reading about kids having adventures, you know.

speaker-1 (14:04)
there were times I just got bored and but I feel like if I had been like on a vacation, let's just say I'm in a car and we've got a two-hour drive. Yes, but there was times when I was at my house listening to it or like driving to work and I just kept losing interest. I just did not keep my attention. I definitely

speaker-0 (14:22)
agree

you have to be in a certain mood when you listen to her to read it.

speaker-1 (14:25)
Okay. All right. Um, can you guess my my word writing?

speaker-0 (14:26)
No.

It's two words. is how many Huck Fins do you give the book?

speaker-1 (14:34)
Now I'm going give you three chances to guess this. Close. You're on the right path. One more.

speaker-0 (14:36)
Okay, how many huck fins? How many Tom Sawyers?

How many steamboats?

speaker-1 (14:46)
were so close because you did guess names. It's how many Injunjos. ⁓ I don't know. just thought of all the names in the book.

speaker-0 (14:54)
to

give it five engine Joes because it is for sure classic and it just brings back so much joy and I just love thinking about I just love reading about the childhood and all their adventures it's just so fun. Okay.

speaker-1 (15:05)
I'm just gonna give it for and for engine Jo's and like I said if you had asked me on a different day a different time I'm not say something different but at this point in my life and where I'm at I just kept losing interest in it and also maybe because I've read it before I don't know so we are gonna go ahead and read some of our favorite passages now it's funny how we talk about books and I'll be like

speaker-0 (15:21)
could be.

speaker-1 (15:30)
Okay, and then we start reading the packages. I'm like, love this passage. you know, the passages are amazing. And then I'm like, wait, I do love this book. Okay, so I guess I'll start. This is one of my favorite paragraphs in the book. And it's, it's the introduction of the character of Huckleberry Finn. Shortly Tom came up on the juvenile pariah of the village Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard.

speaker-0 (15:37)
after all.

speaker-1 (15:54)
Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town because he was idle and lawless and vulgar and bad and because all their children admired him so and delighted in his forbidden society in which they dared to be like him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys in that he envied Huckleberry, his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him.

So he played with him every chance he got. Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim. His coat, when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels, and he had the rearward buttons down to the back. But one suspender supported his trousers. The seat of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing.

the fringe legs dragged in the dirt when not rolled up. Huckleberry came and went at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hog sheds and wet. He did not have to go to school or to church or call any being master or obey anybody. He could go swimming or fishing when and where he chose and stay as long as it suited him. Nobody forbade him to fight. He could sit up as late as he pleased.

He was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall. He never had to wash or put on clean clothes. He could swear wonderfully in a word everything that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in South

speaker-0 (17:42)
St.

Petersburg. love that. Love that.

speaker-1 (17:44)
Isn't that great? mean, that description is awesome. I I have to say, I agree with you. I think he is one of the best characters in American literature. agree, yeah.

speaker-0 (17:55)
In literature.

The next part is about some of the superstitions they're going to talk about how to get rid of a wart and I was talking to our mom earlier and I said didn't our grandpa, her dad, didn't he say he had the power to remove warts and mom said yeah he claimed that and said neighbor kids and everybody would come over and he would look at the wart.

He would touch the wart and tell them not to think about it. And she said, sure enough, it'd be gone in a couple of days. So whether it was power of persuasion or mind or just the placebo effect, apparently our grandfather had the power to remove warts.

speaker-1 (18:30)
placebo effect.

say of I love the passages of where they're talking about their superstitious beliefs. I'm gonna go ahead and read this is like Joy said this is how to cure warts according to Tom and Huck.

speaker-0 (18:56)
What's that you got?

speaker-1 (18:58)
dead cat. Let me see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him? Bought him off on a boy. What did you give? I gave a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at a slaughterhouse. Where'd you the blue ticket? Bought it off of Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop stick. Say, what give the dead cat good for, Huck? Or what you give the with? No, is that so? I know something that's better.

speaker-0 (19:11)
Where did you get the loot?

What good? What is dead hats? Good for cure warts.

I bet you.

speaker-1 (19:29)
Don't? What is it? Why, spunk water. Spunk water? I wouldn't give a darn for spunk water. You wouldn't, would you? Did you ever try? No, I ain't, but Bob Tanner did. Who told you so? Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Jimmy Baker, and Johnny told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and he told me. There now. Well, what of it? They all lie. Shucks. Now you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck.

why he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the rainwater was in the daytime? Certainly. Was his face to the stump? Yes, at least I reckon so. Did he? I don't reckon he did. I don't know. Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk water. Such a blameful way as that. Do any good? You gotta go.

speaker-0 (20:09)
you say anything?

But that ain't a gonna-

speaker-1 (20:22)
yourself to the middle of the woods where you know there's a spunk water stump and just as it's midnight you back up against the stump and jam your hand in and say barley corn barley corn engine mill shorts spunk water spunk water swallow these words and then walk away quick 11 steps with your eyes shut and then turn around three times walk home without speaking to anybody because if you speak the charms busted well that's

like a good way but that ain't the way Bob Tanner done. No sir you can bet he didn't cuz he's the wordiest boy in this town. He wouldn't have a w*** if he'd know how to work spunk water. Thousands of words off my hands that way Huck. I play with f***ing much and I've always got considerable many warts. But say how do you cure him with dead cats? Why you take your dead cat and go get in the graveyard long about midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried.

speaker-0 (20:58)
It hit the ward on it.

took off.

Frogs don't

speaker-1 (21:20)
And when it's midnight, a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see him. You can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear him talk. And when they're taking that fellow away, you heave your cat after him and say, devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat. I'm done with you. That'll fetch any wart.

speaker-0 (21:41)
I love that scene. So the scene I'm gonna do is Tom and Huck and their friend. I

they've all three run away because Tom got accused of doing something that he didn't do and it hurt his feelings

speaker-1 (21:55)
in trouble for stuff. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they didn't.

speaker-0 (21:58)
And then Huck just goes along for the ride, but they're all hiding out on Jackson's Island and everybody thinks they're dead. And while they're there, a storm hits. And this is one of my favorite things about Mark Twain is his ⁓ uncanny ability, as the internet says, to read human nature and just his observation skills. So this is him describing a storm that strikes the island while they're there.

And I just thought it was beautifully written and so descriptive. I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's too long, but I will read the first of it. About midnight, Joe awoke and called the boys. There was a brooding impressiveness in the air that seemed to bode something. The boys huddled themselves together and sought the friendly companionship of the fire, though the dull, dead heat of the breathless atmosphere was stifling. They sat still, intent and waiting. The solemn hush continued.

Beyond the light of the fire, everything was swallowed up in the blackness of darkness. Presently there came a quivering glow that vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment and then vanished. By and by another came, a little stronger. Then another, then a faint moan came sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys felt a fleeting breath upon their cheeks and shuttered with the fancy that the spirit of the night had gone by. There was a pause.

Now a weird flash turned night into day and showed every little grass blade, separate and distinct, that grew about their feet. And it showed three white startled faces too. A deep pill of thunder went rolling and tumbling down the heavens and lost itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. A sweep of chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snowing the flaky ashes broadcast about the fire.

Another fierce glare lit up the forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the treetops right over the boys' heads. They clung together in terror in the thick gloom that followed. A few big raindrops fell pattering up on the leaves. Quick boys, go for the tent! exclaimed Tom. And then it goes into the climax of the storm and he basically takes you from the beginning of the storm all the way

through the end and the aftermath. And it's just so realistic and what it really be like to be on an island in the storm. And I just love that passage.

speaker-1 (24:16)
That is, I'm so glad you picked that passage, because that was one of my favorite ones too. ⁓

speaker-0 (24:23)
I

think the next passage was where Injun Joe was found dead in the cave.

Yeah, this is one of my favorite passages. So Injun Joe he's a villain and Tom and Becky had been trapped in the cave or lost in the cave But they were rescued and found their way out So Judge Thatcher Becky's dad had sealed up the entrance of the cave so no other children can get lost But what they didn't know was that Injun Joe was using the cave as his hideout and when they sealed up the cave he was trapped inside

speaker-1 (24:53)
But in the book, you know, it's horrible the way he died, but in the book they portray him as this heartless person, like he had no empathy. Yeah.

speaker-0 (24:59)
ruthless

So it's hard to feel sorry for.

he would just kill people on Cold Blood.

All right, well here's engine Joe found dead in the cave the poor unfortunate had starved to death in one place near at hand a stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages Builded by the water drip from a stalactite overhead the captive had broken off the stalagmite and upon the stump had placed a stone Wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a clock tick

A dessert spoonful once in four and 20 hours. That drop was falling when the pyramids were new, when Troy fell, when the foundations of Rome were laid, when Christ was crucified, the conqueror created the British Empire, when Columbus sailed, when the massacre at Lexington was news. It is falling now. It will still be falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of history and the twilight of tradition.

and been swallowed up in the thick night of oblivion. That's just so beautiful. Me too.

speaker-1 (26:07)
I want to write like that So,

when you read these passages, they're beautiful

speaker-0 (26:13)
are just beautiful.

They are. And there's so much more we could read. it was hard to narrow down my favorite passages, like I said, we just read a few of them.

speaker-1 (26:21)
I

speaker-0 (26:22)
Yeah, and he's just so funny if you ever read any of his other stuff. He has other books Yeah, they're just always very satirical super funny,

speaker-1 (26:29)
but the thing I always come away with when I read anything that Mark Twain has said, whether it's a quote, whether it's a short story or a novel, He just has, there's the word again, uncanny ability to portray human nature. And he just cuts right through the bull. He calls a spade a spade, that old saying.

yeah his observations he's able to do it in a humorous way where you get the point

speaker-0 (26:57)
I just highly recommend this book to anybody who loves classics. And if you haven't read it in a while, maybe you've already read it, go back and reread it. It's fun to reread it as an adult to me. I picked up a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have picked up as a child, I feel like. ⁓ Well, thank you so much for joining us and we will see you next time on Twin Talks.