List of characters in the Tom Sawyer series

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This is a list of characters from Mark Twain's series of books featuring the fictional character Tom Sawyer:

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Widow Douglas
2 Huck Finn
3 Joe Harper
4 Injun Joe
5 Nigger Jim
6 Tom Sawyer
7 Judge Thatcher
8 Becky Thatcher
9 Aunt Poly
10 External links

Widow Douglas

Widow Douglas' life is saved by Huckleberry Finn after he followed Injun Joe and a confederate of his and realised they were plotting to disfigure her. Out of her gratitude, she takes Huck into her home, but he has trouble adjusting to "civilised" life and soon runs away. However, at the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck is persuaded by Tom Sawyer to return.

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Huck Finn

Huckleberry Finn is the protagonist of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck also appears in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The main theme of this book, according to author Mark Twain, is sound mind versus distorted conscience.

Huck is the son of a vagrant drunkard. He enjoys lazing about and joining Tom Sawyer in adventures. At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck is adopted by the Widow Douglas for saving her. In the book's sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is kidnapped by his father, but soon manages to escape; the rest of the book tells of his search for a way to avoid his father until the climax. Huck lives a simple life; often sleeping in barrels. He helps Nigger Jim escape from slavery in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Joe Harper

Joseph (Joe) Harper is Tom Sawyer's best friend in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and joins Tom on some of his adventures.

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Injun Joe

Injun Joe is a half Indian half white man who went mad from years of social exclusion due to his race, and now hates virtualy everyone. He was horsewhipped by Judge Douglas for vagrancy, and this led to a lifelong burning for revenge against the Judge, and later on, his widow. Injun Joe also uncovered loot in a haunted house and buried it in a cave; however, around the same time, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher were trapped in the cave and soon rescued, leading to the entrance to the cave being sealed and Injun Joe being trapped inside, leading to his demise.

The story is memorialized by a tame version of Injun Joe's Cave on Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland.

It can be presumed that Injun Joe was based on Joe Douglas, a 1/2 Black 1/2 Osage Indian who who lived in the Hannibal Missouri area, dying in 1923 at the age 102 "from ptomaine poisoning from pickled pig's feet" the story goes.

Douglas, while never identified by Mark Twain, must have been a fright to all of the towns' children who had been reared on horror stories of Indian brutality and slave uprisings, for not only was Douglas half Indian and half Black but he was a giant, his face scarred by smallpox, and he wore a red wig covering a bald head.

But the truth is that he was a property owner who was neither dishonorable nor murderous. He lived a long life and died respectably.

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Nigger Jim

Jim flees slavery with Huck, who flees his drunkard father. Of Jim, Russell Baker wrote:

"The people whom Huck and Jim encounter on the Mississippi are drunkards, murderers, bullies, swindlers, lynchers, thieves, liars, frauds, child abusers, numskulls, hypocrites, windbags and traders in human flesh. All are white. The one man of honor in this phantasmagoria is 'Nigger Jim,' as Twain called him to emphasize the irony of a society in which the only true gentleman was held beneath contempt." [1]

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Tom Sawyer

Tom Sawyer is the protagonist of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and a character in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Tom Sawyer is a playful boy around the age of ten. His best friends include Joe Harper and Huckleberry Finn. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it is apparent that Tom is infatuated with Rebecca Thatcher.

Among the adventures Tom gets himself into are revealing Injun Joe's crime, getting trapped in a cave with Becky Thatcher, and discovering Injun Joe's treasure.

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Judge Thatcher

Judge Thatcher is a minor character in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He is also Rebecca Thatcher's father.

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Becky Thatcher

She is the daughter of Judge Thatcher, and she is known for the mutual infatuation she and Tom Sawyer shared in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. She has long blonde hair that is always in two braids. When Tom and Becky first have an encounter, she gives him a pansy to show her love.

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Aunt Poly

She is Tom's aunt, she cares for Tom as a mother should. She loves him throughout the story, and yet she doesn't show it very well. Her influence on Tom is not great but she does try hard to get Tom into shape. When she is first seen in the book, she gives him a slap for eating jam without permission but still believes she is too soft-hearted to give him effective discipline. She exemplifies many parents of the time.

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