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Example research essay topic: Years Of His Life Point Of View - 2,154 words

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Mark Twain: Two Fathoms Deeper Than the Rest What is human life? Mark Twain asked in one of his numerous adages. He then promptly supplied the answer: The first third a good time; the rest remembering about it (Gerber 1). Intentionally or not, he was describing his own life, even though it never turned out to be so quite neatly divided. From 1835 to 1866 he led a colorful and relatively footloose existence as a boy, printer, pilot, miner, newspaperman, West Coast bohemian, and traveling correspondent. From 1866 to his death in 1910 he kept recalling the experiences of the earlier years and fashioning them into oral yarns, lectures, newspaper and magazine sketches, travel books, and novels (Gerber 1 - 2).

Unquestionably, the best of his writing developed at least in part out of the good time years, and for this reason, if for no other, the facts of his early life merit considerable attention. The baby who would grow up to be Mark Twain was christened Samuel Langhorne Clemens when he was born in the tiny village of Florida, Missouri in 1835. Four years later the family moved to nearby Hannibal, Missouri, where Clemens spent the next fourteen years of his life. In Hannibal young Sam Clemens grew up on a farm, whose orchards, barns, stables, wandering brook, and slave quarters, where he became friends with several of the slaves, gave him the childhood that would later be chronicled in Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (Leone 15 - 16). In 1847 the boy s father died tragically and unexpectedly.

Sam Clemens soon joined his brother Orion's Hannibal Journal. Orion gave Sam Clemens an opportunity to get into print, and Sam s first published work A Gallant Fireman appeared in 1851 (Vanspanckeren). From 1853 to 1857, Clemens visited and periodically worked as a printer in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, corresponding with his brothers newspapers under various pseudonyms. In 1854 he briefly returned home and was captivated by English history; his opinions would later be expressed in Connecticut Yankee. After a visit to New Orleans in 1857, he learned the difficult art of steamboat piloting, which furnished the background for Old Times on the Mississippi, later included in the expanded Life on the Mississippi.

In 1863 Clemens adopted the now-famous name Mark Twain, borrowed from the Mississippi leadsman's call meaning two fathoms deep safe water for a steamboat (Vanspanckeren). Twain went to San Francisco in 1864. Dubbed the Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope, he achieved a measure of national fame with his story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. A trip to Hawaii in 1866 furnished articles for the Sacramento Union and materials for the first lecture, on his return, in a long and successful career as a public speaker.

The year 1866 also marked the turning point of Twain s life. A trip to the East would refine him somewhat but would never change his essential character. More importantly, Twain s writing from 1866 to 1910 contains recollections about his childhood experiences and beliefs. Therefore, the events in Twain s early years greatly determined the content of the body of his work from 1866 until his death in 1910 (Paine 3).

The influences of Mark Twain s works on American literature are endless. Ernest Hemingway's famous statement that all of American literature comes from one great book, Twain's Huck Finn (Vanspanckeren), indicates the authors towering place in the tradition of American literature. Kathryn Vanspanckeren, analyzing the style of Twain s writing, says: Twain's style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm. (Vanspanckeren) Twain s choice of words is also greatly acclaimed by critics. Justin Kaplan says that although Twain is known for his characters vernacular language, he was very precise in his use of words (45). According to Kaplan, although Twain spoke and wrote American English, distinct from British English, he uses such a pure language in his works that the English have no trouble understanding him (46 - 47).

Twain s ideals which he emphasizes in his writing also are a reflection of his American upbringing. Stuart P. Sherman states that No American has ever enjoyed a more purely democratic reputation than Mark Twain (1). Even to this day, adds Sherman, Twain s works are the prototypes on which an argument for the propagation of democracy throughout the world is based (3). Indeed, says Sherman, Twain is the champion of democracy, the American values of morality, and he has been appointed by Providence to see to it that the precious ordinary self of the Republic shall suffer no harm (6). There are some, however, who question the powers of sustained narrative of Twain s works (Brooks 91).

Van Wyck Brooks says: Mark Twain s... cynicism actually expressed a deep discontent in his soul. This cynicism is reflected in his works, especially those of his old age. (91) Another criticism is directed at the most essential aspect of Twain s work his humor. George Sanderlin states that Twain s humor is extremely uncertain (104).

At its best, according to Sanderlin, it is extraordinarily good, but it is often not at its best. It is sometimes sentimental, sometimes crudely bitter, and sometimes boisterously juvenile. Sanderlin criticizes Twain s humor because it is burly, not fine; broad, not profound; national, not universal (104). Likewise, Twain s use of satire, says Sanderlin, covers a wide range, from the marvelously successful to the utterly ineffective (105). Paine best summarizes the essence, value, and general consensus of all critics on all of Twain s work when he writes: Those who most enthusiastically applaud Twain s work do not suspect him of greatness; he simply seems unpretentious, one of their kind. Mark Twain s work has given to the world one great character: its own and the world should be grateful. (17) The substance and worth of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court are undeniably tremendous.

Paradoxically, Connecticut Yankee is one of Mark Twain s most humorous books and one of his most somber. On the surface it is an extended tale that satirizes and criticizes the chivalric romances, while underneath it is a summary of Mark Twain s beliefs about human behavior in both the past and the present. The central theme of the book, that progress occurs over time in every society and that a democratic government leads to the elimination of ignorance, fraud, and oppression, is presented in a very innovative way that could only be devised by Mark Twain. The book s hero, Hank Morgan, is suddenly transported from Connecticut into sixth-century Camelot by a blow on the head. The author leaves it up to the reader to dream on how Hank gets into King Arthur s realm. In fact the whole story has the lawless operation of a dream.

None of its prodigies are accounted for, they are to be taken for granted, and are neither explained nor justified. Here he is, a typical, middle-class, American man, foreman of one of the shops in Colt s pistol factory. Full of knowledge about the invention and government of the nineteenth century, he arrives at the court of the epic Arthur. He is promptly recognized as a being of extraordinary powers and becomes the king s right-hand man with the title of The Boss.

However, because he has no apparent lineage, he has no social standing; the most average noble has precedence over him. At the time that the book was written, one s social standing in England was likewise determined by his lineage. Thus Twain attempts to draw the correlation between modern and ancient social structures, and he endeavors to convince the reader of their absurdity. The Boss cannot resist introducing the technology of his time, and he tries to transmit its good intentions onto sixth-century men, with a thousand most astonishing effects. He starts a daily paper in Camelot, he torpedoes a holy well, and he blows up a party of insolent knights with a dynamite bomb. The rest of the story concerns his attempt to bring the downtrodden masses to accept the blessings of American industrial progress thirteen centuries too soon.

The story ends with the Boss s proclamation of the Republic after Arthur s death and his destruction of the whole chivalry of England by electricity. The book is marked by real beauty, by a poetic style worthy of its rich material, and with much sympathetic tenderness as well as frankness of speech. Hank Morgan s attempts of establishing a democracy in sixth-century England prove fruitless, but the language in which Twain writes the account of his adventures vividly recreates the environment and the outlook of the people of the Dark Ages. Although informal in comparison to the other authors of his time, the structure of Twain s novel provides the proper approach by which the message of the story may be relayed effectively. The structure in turn permits such colloquial phrases as But how treacherous is fortune (Twain 231) to occupy the novel extensively and to become the hallmark of Twain s writing. Twain likewise utilizes the metaphor vernacularly for such a serious and impacting work.

For example, Twain compares dogs fighting over bones to the knights of Camelot telling their savage stories of killing; as if their actions had no bearing on anyone human. Twain writes: It was hard to associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forget to shudder. (Twain 10) Though an ingenious tale and a rich and varied satire, Connecticut Yankee is not an example of Twain s highest literary art. At the center of its relative failure is the careless handling of the point of view. Hank Morgan as a character is insufficiently realized.

For example, Hank Morgan, despite his working for the Colt arms factory, employs almost no shop talk. Second, by the end of the novel the character Hank Morgan becomes a conglomerate of confusion because he has to serve too many purposes. He is an intruder in a strange land and yet a know-it-all; an equalitarian and yet a boss. The results of such contradictions and confusions in the point of view show up in the instability of the book s style.

Because of the roles that Twain forces Hank to play, the style is about as patchwork a production as its unstable viewpoint would lead one to expect. Its appeal is in its wordiness, in the variety of its effects. The style is almost never dull, but the excesses become tiring and lose their impact on the reader. Connecticut Yankee also has positive attributes.

Its greatest achievement is its anti utopian quality, which enables Twain to look at society realistically. The novel implies that sweeping reforms in human society are impossible. Moreover, the novel suggests that technological wonders, the greatest achievements of humanity, desensitize the individual to the suffering of others, thus threatening his own integrity. This is evident in the book in the end when the Hank becomes so insensitive that he can view his slaughtering thousands of men as a technological triumph.

For Mark Twain the sense of pessimism and realism, distinctly found in Connecticut Yankee, can be traced back to the first thirty years of his life, which shaped the man whose legacy would endure forever. Mark Twain was more than just an author whose work influenced American twentieth-century fiction. He was a even more than a humorist. He was a philosopher, a prophet, and one of the greatest humanitarians that ever lived. He was honored by Oxford and the great universities of America with literary degrees, but the common people honor him for the cheer and comfort he brought to the world, and for his constant trying to defeat oppression, superstition, and sham with the written word.

Brooks, Van Wyck. The Ordeal of Mark Twain. New York: Dutton, 1920. Gerber, John C. Mark Twain. Boston: G.

K. Hall &# 038; Co. , 1988. Kaplan, Justin. Mark Twain and His World.

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. Leone, Bruno. Readings on Mark Twain. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Paine, Albert Bigelow. Preface.

The Family Mark Twain. By Mark Twain. New York: Barnes &# 038; Noble, 1992. Sanderlin, George.

Mark Twain as Others Saw Him. New York: Coward, McCann &# 038; Geoghegan, 1978. Sherman, Stuart P. Mark Twain, American. Discussions of Mark Twain.

Ed. Guy A. Cardwell. Boston: D.

C. Heath &# 038; Co. , 1963. Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur s Court. New York: Barnes &# 038; Noble, 1992.

Vanspanckeren, Kathryn. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) [ 1835 - 1910 ]. Online. World Wide Web. 11 Oct. 1998. Available web


Free research essays on topics related to: years of his life, hank morgan, mark twain, huck finn, point of view

Research essay sample on Years Of His Life Point Of View

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