Sure, this is a story about a boy. It is also a sharp delineation of the American character, a myth that includes episodes that harken back to Plato, Homer, the Old and New Testament, among other influences. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer presents a new kind of hero, a distinctly American hero, to world literature. From his low estate, due to his poverty, youth and incivility, Tom Sawyer surveys the grand vista of small town American life - and, by extension - America, and by his innocence and natural kindheartedness, redeems it from bigotry, intolerance, hypocrisy and all the ills that attend it. It is through Tom Sawyer's eyes that America is revealed as fresh and vital, even though in the novel he has no standing or prestige in the society. He eventually earns his prestige by a series of adventures that draws the town together and elicits it's highest potentialities. Tom Sawyer is the catalyst and the figure around which the Town realizes it's own highest ideals.
All this freight is carried by a novel that takes the form of a 'young adult's book,' the kind of book that would be a staple of elementary and junior high school cirricula for a hundred years. It is a testament to Twain's capability as a writer to have written one of the truly great American novels in the disguise of a children's book. In this, it imitates it's protagonist, who incorporates in his child form the entire cultural history of America up to that point.
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