| It is unanimously agreed that Mark Twain was a mogul in the history of American literature. With great achievements in both fictional creation and social criticism, he rightfully claimed a high status in both literary and non-literary circles. He enjoyed a high reputation, compliments and appreciation from people from different walks of life. "He has been called the American Cervantes, our Homer, our Tolstoy, our Shakespeare, our Rabelais" ?; Ernest Hemingway confirmed that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn"; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got the phrase "New Deal" from his book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; and his The Gilded Age gave an entire era its name; Gorge Bernard Shaw thought so highly of Mark Twain's works that he wrote to him and said "the future historian of America will find your works as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political tracts of Voltaire." If the words are not so proper in relation to American historian, it is at least true of American literature: many of his works have become an indispensable part of American literary heritage. As a literary genius, he enjoyed his success in literary creation. In his late years, he was, however, aggrieved by the premature deaths of his wife and three of their four children and financially distressed as a result of his bad investments.To such a great man of letters, it is impossible to list all the compliments and appreciations to him from either literary critics or ordinary people. This paper dose not intend to explore Mark Twain's achievements as an artist but try to read Mark Twain's innermost feelings into his classic boy book Tom Sawyer, to explore Mark Twain's obsessions and his perception of religion, culture, race and wealth, which has been woven into the every fiber of the book. In short, this paper intends to look at Mark Twain as an ordinary man of blood and flesh in all around way by...
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