Genre specifics of «The Adventures of Tom Sawyer» by Mark Twain

Abstract

The article illustrates that “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” has a number of features characteristic of the novel as a kind of epic: a fairly large volume of work, the epicness of the author's story, full of dialogues and monologues. It is noticed that the plot narrative is not as detailed as in the classic samples of novels, although it has three plot lines. The work is quite simple in compositional structure, and the characters at the time of the story are almost formed. Although “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” tells of the protagonist's private life in inseparable connection with the life of society, there is no scale to its image. “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” highlights the features of the following genres: 1) adventure – adventure themes, the saturation of the plot with unusual events and their unexpected turn; the presence of mystery and two groups of characters – heroes and villains; 2) autobiographical – specific facts of the writer's biography, the presence of most characters real prototypes; 3) family and household – the author touches on the life and everyday life of ordinary people, relationships in the family and society, moral values and immoral acts, education and upbringing, friendship and love; 4) school story – the dynamism of the plot from the life of school children; depiction of the activities of the educational institution and participants in the educational process, children's life in extracurricular activities; 5) literary parody – similarity of the internal structure of the work with Don Quixote by Cervantes and the main characters of these works about their lives according to the laws of books, as well as parodies of adventure novels about robbers through children's play, Sunday school books through the image of “bad boy” Tom and on the relationship of adults in love because of Tom's love for Becky; 6) humorous and satirical – Mark Twain considers the realities of life exclusively through the prism of laughter, using various means of comic – from light irony to sarcasm. It is proved that “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is an adventure and humorous story and a work that combines features of several genres, i.e. polygenre.