My Book Review

The two Classics I have read throughout my holidays are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Mysterious Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.


The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The 1st story is about a boy who is extremely rebellious but in actual self he is a very kind person. However, he is only excited about the new things that happen in life and not the usual routine of life. He loathes the normal life he has --- going to church, going to school and so on. The story is talking about his self-initiated adventures when the last adventure lead to a happy ending. At the start, it was just about his excitements in life, playing with a beetle in church, having a crush on a girl and using his wits to cheat others to do work for him. Then, after the character Huckleberry Finn was introduced, the story starts to develop as a whole on the path of adventure.

There were two major adventures in this story. The first, after he gets hurt by the girl he likes, Becky, he is heartbroken and plans to leave the town to make everyone who once felt bullied or made him unhappy feel sad. He then source for his friends to go on a pirate adventure. He finds Huckleberry Finn and Joe Harper and they set off on a pirate adventure, pretending to be pirates on a nearby island, bringing with them the bacon and ham they stole. Tom and Joe learnt to smoke from Huckleberry Finn then.

The other adventure is based on the time when Tom meets Huckleberry Finn to go to the graveyard. There, they saw a murder case happen right before their eyes. They saw Injun Joe and Muff Potter with a doctor there. They then started to argue and a fight broke out. In the midst of the fight, Potter got knocked out and Injun Joe stabbed the doctor. He then put the murder weapon into Potter's hands and accused him of murder when Potter woke up. Potter took the story and believed that he was the one who killed the doctor. Of course, Tom and Huckleberry witnessed the whole thing and is afraid to tell the truth.

Soon, Potter got arrested because he "admitted" he was the one who kileed the doctor. Tom's conscience began to eat into him and he finally relented, telling the truth in court. But at that very time when Injun Joe was present and Tom began to speak the truth, Injun Joe took off, crashing into the window and running away.

After that incident, Becky tore the principal's book by accident and Tom witnessed it. She thought that he would expose her but he didn't. Instead, after looking at how nervous Becky was and knowing that she would expose herself, he took the blame for her. This made her so touched for him that they made up.


Tom was then afraid that Injun Joe would come back to kill him. But after getting over with that fear, Huckleberry Finn and him then began to search for underground treasures. Coincidentally, while doing so, they land themselves in a Injun Joe's Spanish friend and Injun Joe's hideout. Coincidentally again, Injun Joe and his friend dug up a hidden treasure with so much money in it while Huckleberry and Tom was staring at it with large eyes. They then began to search for the treasure after hearing where Injun Joe has kept it. But they could not find it until one day while Tom went out with Becky on a picnic she has organised. They went extremely deep into the cave and got lost. They soon used up their provisions, which included candles and some cake Tom had saved from the picnic. With one last try, Tom found his way out and found Injun Joe hiding in the same cave as him. He then realised that the treasure was actually hidden there. He then escaped and and they were saved out of the cave. Before that, Injun Joe was trying to kill a widow whose late husband humiliated Injun Joe, while Huckleberry followed them sneakily, thinking that they would lead him to the treasure they had hidden.

Tom and Huckleberry then headed back to the cave by themselves without letting anyone know and they found the lost treasure. After taking the lost treasure out of the cave, they were invited to a party to celebrate them as heroes of the town, as Injun Joe died without water and food trapped in the cave after the cave was locked momentarily and Huckleberry Finn saved the widow. At the party then, they then declared that they were rich by showing everyone the gold and money they had brought from the cave. They were then highly respected after these series of incidents and Huckleberry Finn was adopted by the widow. Soon, Huckleberry Finn escaped from the widow as he could not stand the tidyness of the widow as he liked his old living place, the streets where he was free to do anything he wants. He preferred being dirty to being clean.
Tom then coax him to go back by saying that if he does, he would tell the widow to abandon some rules of hers and allow Huckleberry Finn to join the gang he would soon create.

The whole story then ends like this, after revolving around Tom's adventures, saying that the adulthood of Tom is not to be revealed.



The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

This story is about a man named Mr Utterson, a lawyer which holds a will of Dr Jekyll stating that if Dr Jekyll dies, all his properties and money will be transferred to a man called Mr Hyde. Mr Utterson then finds out that this Mr Hyde is actually a very cruel man who is seldom seen except for midnights who once stepped over a little girl who blocked his way. He is then intrigued by the will of his old friend, Dr Jekyll.

In actual fact, everything is revealed when Mr Utterson and Poole, Dr Jekyll's butler break into the office of Dr Jekyll as they suspected that Dr Jekyll was replaced by a certain Mr Hyde, but what the find is a dead Mr Hyde.

The whole story is revealed in the end when Mr Utterson reads the letter written by Dr Jekyll and Dr Lanyon, another old friend of Mr Utterson and Dr Jekyll. Dr Jekyll is ACTUALLY Mr Hyde. Dr Jekyll invented a potion to change his appearance and personality into Mr Hyde when he drank it. Therefore, Mr Hyde is rarely seen. But Dr Jekyll soon lost control of himself and the personality change came by itself, not by its will. He had to increase the dosage and strength of the potion to change his personality if he wanted to do so. But after some time, he lost total control of his personality change. On a certain midnight, he was in the form of Mr Hyde when his personality was evil and cruel, he killed a man. The police was chasing after him all over London and he immediately tried to change his personality back to Dr Jekyll and burnt all of Mr Hyde's papers and stuff in Mr Hyde's stuff. But the next morning, he wakes up finding himself in the body of Mr Hyde. He cannot come out of his house as he would be caught so he had no choice but to call Dr Lanyon to help him.

He wrote a letter to Dr Lanyon and the butler, calling Dr Lanyon to enter his laboratory with a key given to him by his butler to get the ingredients in the drawer for the potion he needs, then he himself would take the risk to go to Dr Lanyon's house to get the potion and drink it. But, when he drank it, he purposely drank it and turn into Dr Jekyll in front of Dr Lanyon. Dr Lanyon then became listless throughout, unable to accept what the potion can do to a person.

Dr Jekyll eventually turned into Mr Hyde not by will and died in the body of Mr Hyde. The story then ends like this, after revealing the story.