MArk Twain Essay, Research Paper

Mark Twain: The People?s Author

During the nineteenth century there were many writers, but no American writer during this period has ever been beloved and celebrated as Mark Twain. He captured the attention of his audience in the west, during the westward movement. Mark Twain, who spent his childhood on the Mississippi River, used everyday American speech and local dialects to transform story telling in American Literature.

Mark Twain was born Samuel L. Clemens was born November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. His father and mother both came from old Virginia families. Twain?s Father John was trained as a lawyer and died when in 1867 when he was 12 years old, and left school to learn the trade of printing, which his brother Orion had entered before (Pullen 1954). In 1839 the family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a small town on the Mississippi River not far from St. Louis. Twain spent his early childhood and developed his love of the great river (Pullen 1954).

In 1857 Horace Bixby, who trained him as a Mississippi Riverboat pilot, a trade he practiced until the Civil War. Twain spent a short time in a Confederate volunteer unit, but left after only a few months. The war wrecked the Mississippi River traffic (Pullen 1954). He traveled west, working as a silver miner and reporter in Nevada and California. During this time Clemens began writing under the pseudonym Mark Twain, which was an expression used by riverboat crews to indicate that the water at a given point was two fathoms deep and therefore easily navigable (?Mark Twain: 1835-1910?).

In February 1870, Twain married Olivia Langdon, heiress of a wealthy New York Family, whose brother he had met on a ship to Europe. The young couple moved to Hartford Connecticut the following year, where Twain designed house that was made for America?s most prosperous author (Otfinoski 97).

In 1865 he published his first important sketch, ?Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog? in a New York periodical. The story was very popular and reprinted two years later in Twain?s first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (?Mark Twain: 1835-1910?). Twain wrote satirical letters to two American newspapers, on a trip to Europe; he proved himself very popular and the letters were later collected as the Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrim?s Progress. Twain?s growing reputation as a lecturer established him as the leading American humorist (?Mark Twain: 1835-1910?). Pullen notes:

His experience as a Mississippi pilot and his wandering life as a printer, writer, and jack-of-all-trades gave him the raw material for a successful career as a writer and a lecturer. (Pullen 1956).

In 1874 Twain published his first novel, The Gilded Age written in conjunction with Charles Dudley Warner. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a childhood book about the adventures of a mischievous boy in a Mississippi River town, received wide acclaim (?Mark Twain?). Critics from the Norton Anthology of American Literature note that:

For all its charm and lasting appeal, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is in respects a step backward. There is no mistaking its failure to integrate its self-consciously fine writing, addressed to adults, with its account in plain diction of thrilling adventures designed to appeal to young people (?Samuel L. Clemens? 13).

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer create an interesting myth of the endless summer of childhood pleasures mixed with terror. Clemens hints in the opening sentence of Huckleberry Finn, the earlier novel is important primarily as the place of origin of Huckleberry Finn (?Samuel L. Clemens? 13).

Twain immediately afterward began work on a sequel centering on Tom Sawyer?s friend Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry Finn records Huck?s adventure as he accompanies Jim, an escaped slave, down the Mississippi in a quest for freedom. The narrative focuses on Huck?s developing moral independence from the teachings of his society, critics agree that Huckleberry Finn exceeds Tom Sawyer in the depth of both its characterization and themes (?Mark Twain: 1835-1910?). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took Clemens eight years to write. He began it in 1876 and completed it after several stops and starts, in 1883. He devoted seven months revising the story, which suggest he was aware of the novel?s sometimes-discordant tones and illogical shifts in narrative intention. Huckleberry Finn has encouraged a tremendous amount of popularity since its publication more than one hundred years ago. Critics from the The Norton Anthology of American Literature say: Huckleberry Finn?s unpretentious, colloquial yet poetic style, wide-ranging humor; embodiment of the enduring and universally shared dream of perfect innocence and freedom, recording of a vanished way of life in the pre Civil War Mississippi Valley have moved millions of people of all ages and conditions, all over the world (?Samuel L. Clemens? 13).

During the late 1880?s and 1890?s, Twain suffered a series of major financial reverses, including the loss of thousands of dollars invested in the unsuccessful typesetting machine business; and many of his later works were written with the specific aim of making money. As a result of hardships of the 1890s and the personal tragedies of the early 1900s, which included the death of his wife in 1904 and two of his three daughters (?Mark Twain: 1835-1910?). The literature produced in this period clearly reflects not only his increasing expectations of the worst but also the unrestricted run of bad luck and personal sorrow which he experiences up to his own death on April 21, 1910 (Pullen 1956).

Mark Twain received many awards during his lifetime including being named to American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1904 (?Mark Twain: 1835-1910?). Twain still remains a major figure in American Literature although for partly different reasons now than in his own lifetime. Twain had seen more of America than any other writer of his century, he captured the color, diversity and character of its people in his prose (Pullen 1956). Twain was America?s greatest humorist, yet he ended up mankind?s darkest cynic and most savage critic (Otfinoski 93).