The Fence
Here is a puzzle. How does a boy who cannot name the first two disciples walk off with a Bible in front of a county judge? With a trade. Trades run through all of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, from a dead rat to a box of gold. This is a full summary, so it spoils everything, the ending included.
I followed what Tom swaps, buys and gives away, and you get the plot in order, chapter by chapter. A few counts from the text come along too, and every count is mine.
Which Edition
I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number seventy-four. Its header says it was released in two thousand four and last updated in May of two thousand twenty-five.
Twain’s own preface is dated Hartford, eighteen seventy-six. He says most of the adventures really happened, and that Tom is a mix of three boys he knew. Huck Finn, he says, is drawn from life.
By my count the story runs about seventy-three thousand words, in thirty-five chapters and a short Conclusion.
Fence, Tickets and a Bible
Chapter one. Aunt Polly cannot find Tom, then catches him with jam on his hands. He escapes by telling her to look behind her. He lives with her, along with his quiet half-brother Sid, who tells on him, and his cousin Mary. That evening he fights a well-dressed stranger in the road and wins, so his aunt sentences him to Saturday labor.
Saturday is thirty yards of fence, nine feet high. Tom offers Jim a marble and a look at his sore toe, but Aunt Polly turns up with a slipper. Then Ben Rogers strolls past eating an apple, and Tom acts as if whitewashing is a privilege. Ben pays for a turn with the apple. Billy Fisher pays with a kite, and Johnny Miller with a dead rat on a string. By afternoon Tom owns twelve marbles, a one-eyed kitten and a tin soldier, and the fence has three coats.
That evening he sees a new girl in a garden and forgets Amy Lawrence, whom he had been engaged to for a week. On Sunday he trades his loot for Sunday school tickets, and walks up with enough to claim a Bible. Judge Thatcher asks him the names of the first two disciples. Tom answers, David and Goliah. In chapter five, a beetle in church pinches a poodle, and the sermon falls apart.
Warts, a Tooth and Becky
Monday morning, Tom fakes a dying toe. Aunt Polly pulls his loose tooth with a silk thread instead. Then he meets Huckleberry Finn, the town drunkard’s son, whom every boy envies and every mother fears. Huck has a dead cat for curing warts, and the two of them agree to test it at midnight. Tom trades his tooth for a tick.
He is late for school, he blames Huck, and the master sends him to sit with the girls. Beside him is the Judge’s daughter, Becky Thatcher. Tom draws her a house and writes, I love you, on his slate.
At noon they get engaged with a kiss. Then Tom mentions Amy Lawrence, Becky cries, and she throws his brass andiron knob on the floor. Tom runs into the woods, plays Robin Hood with Joe Harper, and decides to become a pirate.
The Graveyard
That night Tom and Huck sneak to the graveyard with the cat, and hide by three elms. Three men arrive with a lantern. Muff Potter and Injun Joe dig up a fresh grave for young Doctor Robinson, and Potter demands more pay.
Injun Joe has a grudge against the doctor. There is a fight, and Potter is knocked flat. Injun Joe stabs the doctor with Potter’s knife, and puts the knife in Potter’s hand. Potter wakes up believing he did it.
Tom and Huck run. They swear a blood oath on a shingle to say nothing. In chapter eleven Potter wanders back to the grave, the town takes him, and Injun Joe tells his version at the inquest. Tom smuggles small comforts to the jail window, and talks in his sleep.
Pirates
Becky falls ill. Aunt Polly tries one cure after another on Tom, ending with Pain-killer, which he feeds to the cat. When Becky snubs him, Tom, Joe Harper and Huck take a raft to Jackson’s Island. Tom is the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main.
A cannon booms from the ferryboat, searching for drowned bodies. They realize the bodies are theirs. Tom sneaks home, hears Aunt Polly mourning, and almost leaves a note on bark. At the last second, he takes it back.
Back on the island the boys learn to smoke, and a storm tears their tent away. On Sunday, the three of them walk into their own funeral. Aunt Polly later catches Tom in a lie about a dream, and she finds the bark in his pocket. She forgives everything.
One Lie and One Truth
Becky tears the master’s book. Tom says, I done it, and takes the whipping. At the Examination, Tom forgets his speech, and the boys lower a cat onto the master’s wig.
Vacation drags. Tom joins the Cadets of Temperance for two days, catches measles, and relapses. Then the murder trial arrives. Potter’s lawyer cross-examines no one, and then calls Tom. Tom tells what he saw, and Injun Joe jumps through a window and vanishes.
Gold and the Haunted House
Treasure fever returns. The boys dig under dead trees, and then try the haunted house. They hide upstairs while two men enter. One is a Spaniard who is Injun Joe in disguise. The men dig up a box of gold and decide to move it to Number Two, under the cross.
Tom searches the taverns for a room numbered two. Huck keeps watch, and he follows Injun Joe up Cardiff Hill to the Widow Douglas’s. He fetches the Welshman and his sons, who fire at the two men and scare them off.
The Cave
At the picnic, Tom and Becky wander off into McDougal’s cave. Their candles burn down. They spend days lost, and Tom sees Injun Joe in the dark. Tom finds a hole to daylight, and brings them out five miles down the river. When Judge Thatcher says he sealed the cave door, Tom turns white: Injun Joe is inside.
They find him dead at the door. Tom and Huck return and find the gold under the cross.
What Tom Gets
Back in town, the boys pour the coins on the widow’s table, a little over twelve thousand dollars. It is put out at interest. The Judge calls Tom’s lie for Becky noble. Huck lives with the widow for three weeks, then runs back to a barrel. Tom coaxes him home with a promise of a robber gang.
The Conclusion says the story stops there, because it is the history of a boy, not a man.
The Counts
Now the counts. Tom’s name appears about seven hundred and seventy times, Huck’s about two hundred and eighty, and Becky’s about one hundred and seven. Injun Joe turns up fifty-seven times.
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. Tom wins by performing, until the courtroom, where he finally tells the plain truth, and it costs him sleep. I think that is the real trade in the book.
If this helped, subscribe, and tap like. And tell me in the comments which trade of Tom’s you would have fallen for.
