Name Tags
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer has a big cast for a book about one boy, and the same few names keep coming back. This guide is for when you are halfway through and wondering who Sid is, or why everyone is afraid of Injun Joe.
It has light spoilers. I mention the graveyard murder in chapter nine, but nothing about how the book ends, and nothing about the treasure. I read the Project Gutenberg text, and every detail here comes from it.
Tom Sawyer
Tom lives with his aunt, because, as she says herself, he is her own dead sister’s boy. He is clever, vain and always scheming. He can talk a crowd of boys into paying to whitewash his fence, and a minute later forget his speech in front of the whole school.
He reads adventure stories, and he acts them out. He is a pirate, a Robin Hood, a robber chief, and he insists that things be done by the book. He also trusts a long list of charms, from dead cats to buried marbles. When real danger arrives in chapter nine, he has to act without a book.
His full name is Thomas Sawyer. He tells Becky that is the name they whip him by, and that he is plain Tom when he is good.
Twain’s preface says Tom is not one real boy, but a mix of three he knew.
Aunt Polly, Sid and Mary
Aunt Polly is Tom’s guardian. She is stern, funny and soft-hearted, and she believes she is cleverer than Tom. She is not. She tests him with sly questions, and she falls for every excuse that makes her laugh. She also loves new cures, and tries them on Tom: cold water, wet sheets and, in the end, Pain-killer.
Sid is Tom’s half-brother, quiet, tidy and watchful. He tells tales, and Tom pays him back with clods. Mary is their cousin, kind and patient, and she coaxes Tom through his Bible verses with the promise of a prize.
Huckleberry Finn
Huck is the town drunkard’s son. He sleeps on doorsteps and in empty barrels, wears men’s cast-off clothes, and answers to nobody. Every boy in St. Petersburg envies him, and every mother has forbidden her son to play with him.
Tom plays with him anyway. Huck smokes a corncob pipe, and knows what to do about warts and ghosts. He is also the one boy who will walk into a graveyard at midnight, and the one who can keep a secret when it counts.
Becky Thatcher
Becky is the new girl, with yellow hair in two plaits. She is Judge Thatcher’s daughter. She is proud and quick to be hurt, and she likes chewing gum. She and Tom get engaged, fall out and make up, more than once.
For a first look at her, find chapter six, where Tom is sent to sit among the girls and she shares his slate. In chapter twenty she tears a page of the schoolmaster’s secret book, and what Tom does about it is one of the best scenes in the novel. I won’t spoil it.
Injun Joe and Muff Potter
Injun Joe is the book’s danger. He is a drifter with a grudge, and he first appears in the graveyard. The boys come to believe he has sold himself to the devil. The text calls him a half-breed, and uses period slurs for other characters too, so expect that language.
Muff Potter is a different kind of man. He is a drunk who fishes for his money, mends the boys’ kites and is kind to them. The boys feel for him more than anyone else in the village does.
Young Doctor Robinson is the third man in the graveyard. He is only in a few scenes, but they matter.
The Boys and Girls
Joe Harper is Tom’s bosom friend, sworn friend all week and enemy on Saturdays. He is a good sport, and he has a mother who loves him. Ben Rogers pretends to be a steamboat so well that he walks right into Tom’s trap.
Willie Mufferson is the Model Boy, who carries a clean handkerchief and takes his mother to church, and every other boy hates him for it. Alfred Temple is the well-dressed stranger from St. Louis whom Tom fights in chapter one, and he does not forget it. Amy Lawrence is Tom’s first sweetheart, until he sees Becky. Billy Fisher and Johnny Miller are the boys who pay Tom for a turn at the fence.
The Grown-Ups
Mr. Dobbins is the schoolmaster. He wanted to be a doctor, and he keeps a mysterious book locked in his desk. Mr. Walters is the Sunday school superintendent, a thin man of thirty-five with a special voice he uses only in church.
The Widow Douglas is rich, kind and lives on the hill. Judge Thatcher is the big man of the county, and the boys stare at him as if he were a king. The minister is Mr. Sprague. Jim is a boy in Aunt Polly’s household who fetches water and splits kindling.
Names You Might Trip Over
Some names come up once and never again. Hoss Williams is the dead man whose fresh grave the boys go to see. Mother Hopkins is an old woman the boys say is a witch, because Huck’s father believes she cursed him. Bob Tanner is the wartiest boy in town, which is why his cures are never trusted.
Mrs. Harper is Joe’s mother, and she is the one who will talk with Aunt Polly when the boys go missing. Jim Hollis and Susy Harper are schoolmates you will see in passing.
Quick Answers
Who is Tom’s best friend? Joe Harper, though Huck is the one he is drawn to. Who is the villain? Injun Joe. Who is Becky’s father? Judge Thatcher, the county judge. Is Aunt Polly Tom’s mother? No, she is his aunt, and his mother has died. Is Sid a good boy? He is the quiet one, and he is no friend to Tom.
One more thing to know. The village is called St. Petersburg, and the great river that runs past it is the Mississippi.
Who Is Who, in Short
The cast comes in groups. There is Tom’s house. There is his gang. There is the school, the church, and the danger in the graveyard. If you remember which group a name belongs to, the village is easy to follow.
Does Tom end up with Becky? The book does not say. The Conclusion stops the story where it is, and calls itself the history of a boy, not a man.
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