Two Years Later In Twain example essay topic

CLEMENS, Samuel Langhorne 1835-1910 American INTRODUCTION Twain is considered the father of modern American literature and is known in particular for his classic novel The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn (1884). Breaking with the genteel traditions of the nineteenth century, Twain developed a lively, vernacular narrative style which served as the vehicle for his satirical observations concerning human folly and social injustice and which, during his lifetime, led to widespread denunciation of his works as coarse and improper. Subsequently, however, Twain's works have come to be regarded as the first and finest literary expression of the American spirit of pragmatism, egalitarianism, and honesty. Ernest Hemingway wrote: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn... There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since".

BIOGRAPHY Clemens grew up in the Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri, and he later noted that the river and the activities it supported provided some of the happiest moments of his childhood. At age twelve he quit school to become a printer's apprentice; by the time he was seventeen he was also writing stories and sketches for the newspapers he helped print. During the late 1850's Clemens piloted steamboats on theMississippi, a job he held until the river was closed to commercial traffic during the Civil War. After brief service in the Confederate militia, he traveled west, working as a silver miner and reporter in Nevada and California. During this period Clemens began writing under the pseudonym Mark Twain, an expression used by riverboat crews to indicate that the water at a given spot was two fathoms deep and therefore easily navigable. In 1865 he published his first important sketch, "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog", in a New York periodical.

The story was widely popular and was reprinted two years later in Twain " first book, The Celebrate Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (1867), which appeared just as the author embarked on a cruise to Europe and the Middle East. The satirical letters Twain wrote to two American newspapers during this voyage proved immensely popular and were later collected as The Innocents Abroad; or, The NewPilgrim's Progress (1869). The success of this volume and Twain " 's growing reputation as a lecturer established him as the leading American humorist. In 1874 Twain published his first novel, The Gilded Age, written in conjunction with Charles Dudley Warner. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a children's book chronicling the adventures of a mischievous boy in a Mississippi River town, appeared two years later to wide acclaim, and Twain immediately afterward began work on a sequel centering on Tom's friend Huckleberry Finn. According to Twain, Huck was inspired by the real-life Tom Blankenship, and Twain's description of Blankenship in his Autobiography could serve equally well for Huck: "He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good heart as ever any boy had.

His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person-boy or man-in the community". Huckleberry Finn records Huck's adventures as he accompanies Jim, an escaped slave, down the Mississippi in a quest for freedom. Amid abundant social satire provided by the various characters and situations Huck and Jim encounter, the narrative focuses on Huck " 's developing moral independence from the teachings of his society, and critics agree that Huckleberry Finn far surpasses Tom Sawyer in the depth of both its characterization and its themes. Although many of Twain's contemporaries objected to the novel " 's vernacular dialogue, coarse subject matter, and forthright social criticism, Huckleberry Finn was a great popular success.

During the late 1880's and 1890's, Twain suffered a series of major financial reverses, including the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in the development of the unsuccessful Paige typesetting machine, and many of his later works were written with the specific aim of making money. He also resumed lecturing to augment his earnings, and by 1900 he had repaid the vast bulk of his debts. As a result of the hardships of the 1890's and the personal tragedies of the early 1900's, which included the deaths of his wife and two of his three daughters, Twain's natural pessimism deepened into a fatalistic despair, and his work became more introspective and polemic. Critics have noted signs of this developing attitude in Twain's works as early as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, published in 1889, but note that its most overt expression is contained in the essay WhatIs Man (1906), wherein humanity is depicted as inherently foolish and self-destructive. Twain died in 1910, and his Autobiography was posthumously published in 1924. Scholars recognize in Twain a man divided in outlook between comic and tragic perceptions of existence.

Throughout his career he looked back yearningly to the happy days of his youth on the shores of theMississippi, finding in his memories spiritual rejuvenation and inspiration. At the same time he was skeptical about the wisdom of humanity and the possibility of progress in human society. His longing for an idealized past as a haven from an increasingly hostile present is evident in most of his major works of fiction. However, Twain also believed that humanity had been given a chance to remedy its situation in the New World, where the foolish superstitions and false hierarchies of Western Europe could be replaced with egalitarianism and the true progress represented by improved living conditions. As a result, Twain " works offer a compelling vision of the American frontier. In Huckleberry Finn, for example, the frontier as exemplified by theMississippi River allows Huck to escape the moral and social strictures of civilization and, confronted by the awesome power and beauty of nature, to develop an awareness of the importance of such simple values as courage, honesty, and common sense.

Twain remains one of the most widely read authors in American literature, and, from the prime of his career through the present, his work has remained an object of critical puzzlement and public controversy. While quick to praise his wit, inventiveness, and mastery of colloquial language, critics have not reached consensus on the serious elements of Twain's fiction. Scholars have noted that, although Twain addressed a number of political and philosophical topics, especially in his later work, he often appeared to support conflicting sides of the same issues. Twain's detractors, similarly, have censured-and often banned-his work for ideologically varied reasons, accusing it of profanity, misanthropy, and, more recently in the case ofHuckleberry Finn, racism in its characterization of Jim. Perhaps the author anticipated the volatility of his body of work when, in the preface to Huckleberry Finn, he wrote: " [Persons] attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot".

That Twain's oeuvre continues to provoke such interest and debate is testament to the enduring power of its satire and of its ideas. PERSONAL: Born November 30, 1835, in Florida, MO; died of heart disease, April 21, 1910, in Redding, CT; buried in Elmira, NY; son of John Marshall (a lawyer) and Jane (Lampton) Clemens; married Olivia Langdon, February 2, 1870 (died, 1904); children: Langdon, Olivia Susan, Clara, Jean Lampton. CAREER: Writer. Worked as printer's apprentice and typesetter in Hannibal, MO, 1847-50; associated with Hannibal Journal, 1850-52; typesetter, 1853-57; apprentice riverboat pilot, 1857-59; riverboat pilot, 1859-60; secretary and government worker in Nevada, 1860-62; miner, 1862; Territorial Enterprise, Virginia City, NV, reporter (sometimes under pseudonym Mark Twain), 1862-64; Morning Call, San Francisco, CA, reporter under Twain pseudonym, 1864; Sacramento Union, Sacramento, CA, correspondent under Twain pseudonym, 1866; Daily Morning, San Francisco, correspondent under Twainpseudonym, 1866-69; Buffalo Express, editor under Twainpseudonym, 1869-71. Owner of Charles L. Webster & Co. (publishers) in early 1880's. MILITARY / WARTIME SERVICE: Confederate Army during Civil War; became second lieutenant.

AWARDS, HONORS: Honorary M.A., Yale University, 1888; Litt. D., Yale.