Tom Sawyer is an adventurous, playful boy, a natural showoff who likes to show his authority over other boys. Tom is supposed to represent the carefree and wonderful world of boyhood in the early-mid 1800s.

The name Sawyer is derived from the Mississippi River pilot's term for a "tree in the bed of the river with its branches reaching the surface and moving up and down with the current." Mark Twain was a river pilot at one time, and many of the adventures of his character, Tom Sawyer, are connected with the Mississippi River, and partly derive from this experience.

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