Tom Sawyer

Thomas "Tom" Sawyer is the title character of the Mark Twain novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He appears in three other novels by Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896).

Sawyer also appears in at least three unfinished Twain works, Huck and Tom Among the Indians, Schoolhouse Hill and Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy. While all three uncompleted works were posthumously published, only Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy has a complete plot, as Twain abandoned the other two works after finishing only a few chapters.

The fictional character's name may have been derived from a jolly and flamboyant fireman named Tom Sawyer with whom Twain was acquainted in San Francisco, California, while Twain was employed as a reporter at the San Francisco Call. Twain used to listen to Sawyer tell stories of his youth, "Sam, he would listen to these pranks of mine with great interest and he'd occasionally take 'em down in his notebook. One day he says to me: ‘I am going to put you between the covers of a book some of these days, Tom.’ ‘Go ahead, Sam,’ I said, ‘but don’t disgrace my name.’" Twain himself said the character sprang from three people, later identified as: John B. Briggs (who died in 1907), William Bowen (who died in 1893) and Twain; however Twain later changed his story saying Sawyer was fully formed solely from his imagination, but as Robert Graysmith says, "The great appropriator liked to pretend his characters sprang fully grown from his fertile mind."

Tom Sawyer (song)

Tom Sawyer is a song by Canadian rock band Rush, originally released on their 1981 album Moving Pictures as its opener. The song relies heavily on Geddy Lee's synthesizer playing and Neil Peart's drumming. Lee has referred to the track as the band's "defining piece of music...from the early '80s". It is one of Rush's best-known songs and a staple of both classic rock radio and Rush's live performances, having been played on every concert tour since its release. It peaked at #25 on the UK Singles chart in October 1981, at #44 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and at #8 on the Billboard Top Tracks chart. In 2009 it was named the 19th-greatest hard rock song of all time by VH1. "Tom Sawyer" was one of five Rush songs inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on March 28, 2010.

Background and recording

The song was written by Lee, Peart, and guitarist Alex Lifeson in collaboration with lyricist Pye Dubois of the band Max Webster, who also co-wrote the Rush songs "Force Ten," "Between Sun and Moon," and "Test For Echo." According to the US radio show In the Studio with Redbeard (which devoted an entire episode to the making of Moving Pictures), "Tom Sawyer" came about during a summer rehearsal vacation that Rush spent at Ronnie Hawkins' farm outside Toronto. Peart was presented with a poem by Dubois named "Louis the Lawyer" (often incorrectly cited as "Louis the Warrior") that he modified and expanded. Lee and Lifeson then helped set the poem to music. The "growling" synthesizer sound heard in the song came from Lee experimenting with his Oberheim OB-X.

Tom Sawyer (2000 film)

Tom Sawyer is a 2000 direct-to-video animated film from MGM Animation and was released in the year 2000. It is an adaptation of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with a cast of anthropomorphic animals instead of humans. The characters' voices are generally performed by country music singers.

Plot

Tom Sawyer and his half-brother Sid are on their way to school when they see Huckleberry Finn fishing. Tom skips school to join Huck, but changes his mind after he sees Becky Thatcher. He tries to sneak into class, but Sid snitches on him to the teacher. Tom's teacher makes him sit with the girls, which Tom actually likes since he's able to sit next to Becky. He is also sat beside Amy Lawrence, a friend to whom he became "engaged". She still has romantic feelings for him but he is too transfixed by Becky to notice. Tom's pet frog Rebel then disrupts the class, meaning they are given early dismissal.

On the way home from school, during the musical number "Hook, Line and Sinker", Tom tries multiple times to steal a kiss from Becky, but is thwarted each time by her father, Judge Thatcher. The next day, as Tom is about to go fishing with his friends, Aunt Polly makes him paint the house as punishment for what happened at school. Tom, however, gets his friends to paint the house for him instead.