Mark Twain Influences

Samuel Langhorn Clemens, better known as his pseudonym Mark Twain, implements a myriad of his life experiences and details about the timein which he lived in his writings, most notably, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. To begin, Mark Twain grew up during the latter two-thirds of the eighteenth century in a small town on the Mississippi River. This town is named Hannibal, Missouri which provides the basis for the setting in which the novel takes place. Hannibal Missouri is actually the primary influence Mark Twain used when he was composing the city, St. Petersburg, on the Mississippi River for his character, Tom Sawyer, to live in.

Mark Twain lived in a time of slavery and racial segregation throughout the entire nation. This
Mark and Tom both grew up without a father. Mark Twain's father passed away when he was at the young age of twelve and grew up with his mother for the rest of his childhood. His mother was the springboard Mark Twain used in order to develop his character Aunt Polly who was the main maternal role in Tom Sawyer's life. Mark Twain also used his brother, Henry , and sister, Pamela, to portray the characters of Tom Sawyer's younger brother, Sid, and sister, Pamela. Mark Twain, it is said, even used a young crush, Laura Hawkins, as his inspiration for Tom's girl friend, Becky Thatcher. A poor city buy by the name of Tom Blankenship, who was a childhood friend of Mark Twain was the inspiration for the famous character, Huckleberry Finn who will later have his own controversial adventure tail written about him by Twain. Mark Twain, himself was most of the character behind Tom Sawyer, although there were traces of John Briggs who later became Joe Harper and another friend, Will Bowen. This clearly shows that a majority of the story was based on real life events and Mark Twain even wrote that, "Most of the adventures in this novel happened in real life." These adventures were completed by Mark Twain and his character counterparts who loved to explore and