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Russell 1 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 Russell 2
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 Russell 3 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 Russell 4 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 Russell 5 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.
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