Mark Twain Essay, Research Paper

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Jami Russell

Mr. Saylor

English 3 HN

18 November 1999

Mark Twain had an extreme love for the Mississippi River. His dreams were of

becoming a steamboat pilot. Twain inspired others as they looked to him with great

knowledge. He wanted to come home in glory as a pilot more than anything. Events in

Mark Twain?s life come out in his writings and they are displayed in Life on the

Mississippi.

Mark Twain was the first American that appeared west of the Mississippi River.

He was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835. Twain lived along the

Mississippi River in the town of Hannibal until the age of eighteen. After his father?s

death in 1847, Twain became an apprentice at two Hannibal printers. Most of Twain?s

childhood is displayed throughout his work. He recalled his past in The Adventures of

Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (De Veto 51). Twain?s career

began when he was only eleven years old. He worked by editing copies. In 1861

Clemens served briefly as a volunteer soldier in the Confederate cavalry. Later that year

he accompanied his brother to the newly created Nevada Territory, where he tried his

hand at silver mining. After moving to San Francisco, California, in 1864, Twain met

American writers Artemus Ward and Bret Harte, who encouraged him in his work. Later

he found a job as a reporter at Territorial Interprise (52).

Mark Twain had a life full of writing and full of dreaming. Twain had always

dreamed of becoming a steamboat captain and he knew that one day he would

accomplish that goal. He viewed the sight of the mighty Mississippi River as steamboats

passed with all aspects of humanity. Twain?s dream of becoming a pilot never faded,

although many other dreams did. Twain had a passion for the steamboats on the

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Mississippi River. A pilot was an important and popular way of living. Others thought

that it was the best road to take for a career. Mark Twain was determined to become a

steamboat pilot, and he would not return home until he had achieved this. He

day-dreamed as a child and an adolescent about being a great pilot. Horace Bixby gave

Samuel Clemens the name Mark Twain because it meant a depth of twelve feet. Twain

wanted to navigate the Mississippi River. He paid Horace Bixby five hundred dollars to

teach him how to achieve this (Bloom 155).

Not only did Mark Twain have the ability to make others laugh, but he expressed

his thoughts about life and his traumatizing realizations of the past through humor in his

works. Twain?s style of humor has traveled throughout the world over the years. His

broad but subtle humor was tremendously popular (165).

Life on the Mississippi is more than just a book about life on the river. It is also

reflections on Twain?s life. This book is a true experience of Mark Twain?s traumatizing

childhood. It was also a book that was referred to as his ?steamboat book.? Life on the

Mississippi combines an autobiographical account of Twain?s experiences as a river pilot

with a visit to the Mississippi nearly two decades after he left it. The whole town got

excited when a steamboat was coming down the river. The Mississippi River is seen as

the genius Loci of Mark Twain?s imagination. Twain was also a realist when writing his

novels. Others became jealous of Twain and his accomplishments (De Veto 52).

Not only his dreams but also his fears of the past were a part of this book. In

other works of Twain, there was confusion about the audience that would and should be

attracted to it. Some of his books were humerous for children but also serious issues for

adults. While writing the books The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn, Twain was not sure if these were children?s books or those for adults.

In these writings Twain stated that this was a new way of writing because the literary

language was based on the slang of the American society. It took years of writing for the

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completion of these books and they were thought of as masterpieces that could not be

outdone by any other works. The book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck?s

adventures provide the reader with a view of American life along the Mississippi River

before the Civil War. Twain?s skill in capturing the rhythms of that life help make the

book one of the masterpieces of American literature (Clemens 2).

Roughing It presents accounts of his less respectable past. Some have thought

this book is the results of Twain marrying a wife that wanted him to live a more

respectable life than he had before. His distinctly bitter The Tragedy of Pudd?nhead

Wilson underscored the change in his attitude, although he continued to put forth the

effort that was expected of him from others. Both of these books are a contrast of

Twain?s attitude in Life on the Mississippi. He unwisely wisely invested a great deal of

money in printing and publishing ventures. In 1893, he found himself deep in debt. He

wearily lectured his way around different parts of the world while making people laugh at

any cost. He recorded all of his experiences. His life was shadowed by the deaths of his

two daughters and the long illness and death in 1904 of his wife. Whatever the reason

may have been, he totally abandoned his idealistic tone of Personal Recollections of Joan

of Arc. Instead he wrote The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, What Is Man?, and The

Mysterious Stranger. The obvious contradiction between the professional humorist and

the declared hatred toward mankind has intrigued commentators. The quarrels about

influences upon him and reflections of American intellect in his writings seem

sometimes to have blurred his ultimate importance as an artist and as American (4).

Although Twain?s popularity was constant, his life was full of financial and

professional disappointment. His life was full of these disappointments because of his

personal tragedies through out his life in the past. After years of success in his

writings, Twain became bankrupt because of the panic of 1893. As Twain grew older,

he became a bitter man. Life on the Mississippi turned Mark twain?s thoughts to his

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past and to recollections before the war. He was much happier when reflecting back on

his younger days of his adventures as a pilot on a steamboat (Twain 67).His best work

is characterized by broad, often irreverent humor or social satire. Twain?s writing is

also known for realism of place and language, memorable characters, and hatred of

hypocrisy and oppression. Twain’s work during the 1890s and the 1900s is marked by

growing pessimism and bitterness. Significant works of this period are Pudd’nhead

Wilson , a novel set in the South before the Civil War that criticizes racism by focusing

on mistaken racial identities and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, a sentimental

biography. The Mysterious Stranger, was an uncompleted piece that was published

posthumously in 1916. Twain’s work was inspired by the unconventional West, and the

popularity of his work marked the end of the domination of American literature by

New England writers. He is justly renowned as a humorist but was not always

appreciated by the writers of his time as anything more than that (65).

Successive generations of writers, however, recognized the role that Twain

played in creating a truly American literature. He portrayed uniquely American subjects

in a productive language. His success in creating this plain but productive language

precipitated the end of American reverence for British and European culture and for the

more formal language associated with those traditions. His adherence to American

themes, settings, and language set him apart from many other novelists of the day and

had a powerful effect on such later American writers as Ernest Hemingway and

William Faulkner, both of whom pointed to Twain as an inspiration for their own

writing. In Twain’s later years he wrote less, but he became a celebrity, frequently

speaking out on public issues. He also came to be known for the white linen suit he

always wore when making public appearances. Twain received an honorary doctorate

from Oxford University in 1907. When he died he left an uncompleted autobiography,

which was eventually edited by his secretary, Albert Bigelow Paine, and published in

1924. In 1990 the first half of a handwritten manuscript of Huckleberry Finn was

discovered in Hollywood, California. After a series of legal battles over ownership, the

portion, which included previously unpublished material, was reunited with its second

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half (Geismai 35).

Mark Twain?s extreme love and passion for the Mississippi River and the

magnificent steamboats that plied through its waters are displayed throughout all of his

writings. Life on the Mississippi is a book that is not only an expression of Twain?s

past but also of life in times of destruction.

Bibliography

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Bloom, Harold. Mark Twain. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986.

Clemens, Samuel L. A Connecticut Yankee in King Aurthur?s Court. New York: Mead

and Company Inc., 1960.

Clemens/Twain, Mark. The Tragedy of Pudd?nhead Wilson. New York: Harper and

Row Publishers, 1964.

De Veto, Bernard. The Portable Mark Twain. New York: the Viking Press, 1946.

Geismai, Maxwell. Mark Twain and the Three R?s. Indianapolis/New York: The

Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.; 1947.

Twain, Mark. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. New York: Harper and Brothers

Publishers, 1896.

Twain, Mark. Mississippi Writings; Life on the Mississippi. New York: The Regents of

the University of California, 1982.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.,

1876.

Twain, Mark. The Celebrated Jumping Frog and Other Stories. Pleasantville, New

York: The Reader?s Digest Association, Inc; 1992.

Twain, Mark. The Innocents Abroad. New York: Evanston: London: Harper and Row

Publishers; 1869.