Advanced English
《高级英语》
(第三版）
第一册
主编：张汉熙
外语教学与研究出版社
Lesson 6
Mark Twain
—— Mirror of America
by Noel Grove
Teaching Points




I. Background information
II. Procedures
III. Text analysis
IV. Questions for discussion
I. Background Information






1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Mark Twain’s life
Mark Twain and his humor
Pen names
His books
Mark Twain’s quotes
Mississippi River
1. Mark Twain’s life







Born: Samuel Langhorne Clemens
November 30, 1835 Florida, Missouri, U.S.
Died: April 21, 1910 (aged 74), Redding, Connecticut,
U.S.
Pen name: Mark Twain
Occupation: Writer, lecturer
Nationality: American
Genres: Fiction, historical fiction, children's literature,
non-fiction, travel literature, satire, essay,
philosophical literature, social commentary, literary
criticism
Notable works: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain headstone in Woodlawn
Cemetery.

When Twain was four, his family moved to
Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the
Mississippi River that served as the inspiration
for the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn. At that time, Missouri was a
slave state, and young Twain became familiar
with the institution of slavery, a theme he would
later explore in his writing.

In March 1847, when Twain was 11, his father died of
pneumonia. The next year, he became a printer's
apprentice. In 1851, he began working as a
typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous
sketches for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper
owned by his brother Orion. When he was 18, he left
Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City,
Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. He joined the
union and educated himself in public libraries in the
evenings, finding wider sources of information than
he would have at a conventional school. At 22, Twain
returned to Missouri.

On a voyage to New Orleans down the
Mississippi, the steamboat pilot, Horace E.
Bixby, inspired Twain to pursue a career as a
steamboat pilot. A steamboat pilot needed a
vast knowledge of the ever-changing river to
be able to stop at the hundreds of ports and
wood-lots along the river banks. Twain
meticulously studied 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of
the Mississippi for more than two years before
he received his steamboat pilot license in 1859.

Missouri was a slave state, considered by
many to be part of the South, and was
represented in both the Confederate and
Federal governments during the Civil War.
Years later, Twain wrote a sketch, "The
Private History of a Campaign That Failed",
which claimed he and his friends had been
Confederate volunteers for two weeks before
disbanding their company.

Twain joined his brother, Orion, who in 1861
had been appointed secretary to James W.
Nye, the governor of Nevada Territory, and
headed west. Twain and his brother traveled
for more than two weeks on a stagecoach
across the Great Plains and the Rocky
Mountains. These experiences inspired
Roughing It, and provided material for The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
Twain's journey ended in the silver-mining town
of Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a
miner.


Twain failed as a miner and found work at a
Virginia City newspaper, the Territorial
Enterprise. It was here that he first used his
famous pen name. On February 3, 1863, he
signed a humorous travel account "Letter
From Carson – re: Joe Goodman; party at
Gov. Johnson's; music" with "Mark Twain".
Twain moved to San Francisco, California in
1864, where he continued working as a
journalist.

His first great success as a writer came when
his humorous tall tale, "The Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was
published in the New York Saturday Press on
November 18, 1865. It was an immediate hit
and brought him national attention. A year
later, he traveled to the Sandwich Islands
(present-day Hawaii) as a reporter for the
Sacramento Union. His travelogues were
popular and became the basis for his first
lectures.

In 1867, a local newspaper funded a trip to the
Mediterranean. During his tour of Europe and
the Middle East, he wrote a popular collection
of travel letters, which were later compiled as
The Innocents Abroad in 1869. It was on this
trip that he met his future brother-in-law.


Charles Langdon showed a picture of his sister,
Olivia, to Twain; Twain claimed to have fallen in
love at first sight. The two met in 1868, were
engaged a year later, and married in February
1870 in Elmira, New York.
The couple lived in Buffalo, New York from
1869 to 1871. Their son Langdon died of
diphtheria at 19 months.

In 1871, Twain moved his family to Hartford,
Connecticut, where starting in 1873, he
arranged the building of a home. While living
there Olivia gave birth to three daughters: Susy
(1872–1896), Clara (1874–1962) and Jean
(1880–1909). The couple's marriage lasted 34
years, until Olivia's death in 1904.


During his seventeen years in Hartford
(1874–1891), Twain wrote many of his bestknown works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881),
Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).
Twain made a second tour of Europe,
described in the 1880 book A Tramp Abroad.
2. Mark Twain and his humor

“Mark Twain” was the pseudonym of Samuel
Langhorne Clemens. Mark Twain was called “the
father of modern American literature”. Before him there
was only American dialect; after him there comes the
American language He is recognized as the first truly
American writer, the true father of American literature,
comes from his one book – The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn. Ernest Hemingway wrote: “All
modern American literature comes from one book by
Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn…it’s the best
book we’ve had”.

Upon hearing of Twain's death, President
William Howard Taft said:
"Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual
enjoyment – to millions, and his works will
continue to give such pleasure to millions yet
to come... His humor was American, but he
was nearly as much appreciated by
Englishmen and people of other countries as
by his own countrymen. He has made an
enduring part of American literature."

Mark Twain started his writing career as a
teller of tall tales. To a great extent, his
popularity rested on his humor. Before Mark
Twain, humor had been just a technique of
writing, a “fragrance” or “flavor” for the comic
effect of a book, imposing little significance on
the meaning of a book. There gad been
dozens of humorists flourishing in American
literature before Mark Twain, Inheriting his
forerunners’ humorous arts, Mark Twain
became the synthesizer of American humor.

There are two features of Mark Twain’s
humor. One is the language of his language.
Twain’s vernacular characters become more
than figures of fun took on major importance
for future American writers both humorous and
not. Another feature is his hoax. In his
elaboration of the hoax, Twain made his most
marked formal contribution.

However, the real humor is not only meant to
the funny or comic, a real humorist is
definitely not a literary clown, way or buffoon
by making fun of some small in congruities of
people. The real humor should be the
understanding of human nature, forgiveness
of its weakness and love for human life, and it
should impose much significance on the
meaning of the book by attacking some
deeper and more serious implication which
gives breath and solidity to the book.

Mark Twain knew quite well the function of
humor and the task of a humorist: “humorists of
the mere sort cannot survive.” What Mark
Twain wanted to do with humor was to “preach
and teach”, for “humor must not professedly
preach, and it must not professedly teach, but it
must do both if it would live forever.” Thus,
Mark Twain makes it clear that his humor is the
unity of form and content, artistic technique and
the thematic meaning. Behind the comic effect
of his humor is latent, his teaching and
preaching.

What Mark Twain preaches and teaches is
his strong moral sense as a humanitarian. As
he once said of his humor: “the only right
thing was to get in my serious meaning
always, to treat my audience fairly, to let them
really feel the underlying moral that gave
body and essence to my jest.”

The nature: ethical suggestion within comic
coating of humor.

With his ideas about the world changing, his
humor becomes much bitter.

The former optimistic and confident American
has become so furious.
3. Pen names

He maintained that his primary pen name came from
his years working on Mississippi riverboats, where two
fathoms, a depth indicating safe water for passage of
boat, was measured on the sounding line. A fathom is
a maritime unit of depth, equivalent to two yards (1.8
m); twain is an archaic term for "two". The
riverboatman's cry was mark twain or, more fully, by
the mark twain, meaning "according to the mark [on
the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]", that is, "there
are 12 feet (3.7 m) of water under the boat and it is
safe to pass".
4. His books:

The Innocents Abroad 1869
Curious Republic of Gondour 1870
A Burlesque Autobiography1871
Roughing It 1872
The Gilded Age 1873
Sketches New and Old 1875
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876
Carnival of Crime in CT 1877
A Tramp Abroad 1880

1601 1880
The Prince and the Pauper 1881
The Stolen White Elephant 1882
Life on the Mississippi 1883
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1885
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
1889
The American Claimant 1892
Tom Sawyer Abroad 1894
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson 1894
Tom Sawyer, Detective 1896
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Vol 1
1896

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Vol 2
1896
How to Tell a Story and Others 1897
Following the Equator 1897
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg and other
Stories 1900
A Double Barrelled Detective 1902
Extracts from Adam's Diary 1904
A Dog's Tale 1904
The $30,000 Bequest 1906
What is Man? and Other Essays of Mark
Twain 1906

Mark Twain's Speeches 1906
Christian Science 1907
A Horse's Tale 1907
Is Shakespeare Dead? 1909
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to
Heaven l909
The Mysterious Stranger 1916 (uncompleted)
5. Mark Twain’s quotes:



A banker is a fellow who lends you his
umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it
back the minute it begins to rain.
A man cannot be comfortable without his own
approval.
An Englishman is a person who does things
because they have been done before. An
American is a person who does things
because they haven't been done before.




Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not
absence of fear.
Do something every day that you don't want to do;
this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing
your duty without pain.
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.
The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The
minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments
slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place.
6. Mississippi River


In the language of the Indians of the Great
Lakes region, Mississippi means “great river”.
Because the Mississippi River flows north to
south, it has always acted as an important
waterway to the Gulf of Mexico and the
Atlantic Ocean. Before the development of the
steamboat most of the commerce was chiefly
downstream to New Orleans
National Geographic

National Geographic Magazine, with a
circulation of more than 10 million copies
annually, is the third biggest only next to TV
Guide and Reader's Digest (more than 16
million ). It is a monthly journal run by the
National Geographic Society based in
Washington DC, a non-profit scientific and
educational organization
Noel Grove —— the author





National Geographic Atlas Of World History
Birds of North America
Earth's Last Great Places: Exploring the
Nature Conservancy Worldwide
Living Planet
Preserving Eden : The Nature Conservancy
II. Procedures
Pre-reading questions




Do you know Mark Twain? Can you give
some information?
What are the masterpieces of Mark Twain?
Can you tell us the stories?
What is the function of mirror? Can you
guess the meaning of “ Mirror of America”?

While-reading activities
While you read this text, keep the question
“why do the author compare Mark Twain to a
mirror” in your mind and try your best to list
the chronology of Mark Twain.
Post-reading questions.





Based on the chronology, do you know why
Mark Twain changed so greatly?
After comparing the whole life of Mark Twain
and the brief development of United States,
what conclusion can you draw?
What are the features of Mark Twain’s works?
What is your understanding of the title “Mark
Twain – Mirror of America”?
III. Text analysis:


The genre and the theme:
This text is an exposition. The theme is that
Mark Twain’s life process reflects the
development of that period and his works
depict the true and vivid pictures of
Americans, therefore, Mark Twain is a
mirror of America.




The structure:
The author organizes the materials according to
the chronological order. The whole text can be
divided into three parts.
Part I: para.1 and para.2: The brief list of the
characteristics of Mark Twain.
Part II: para.3 - para.19: The whole life
experience of Mark Twain.
Part III: para.20 – para.22: The reasons why Mark
Twain became so bitter, disillusioned and cynical.









Writing skills:
Rhetorical devices used in this text:
Metaphor: e.g. Mark Twain – Mirror of America.
Hyperbole: e.g. America laughed with him.
Metonymy: e.g. …but making money, his pen would prove
mightier than his pickax.
Antithesis: e.g. From them all Mark Twain gained a keen
perception of the human race, of the difference between what
people claim to be and what they really are.
Euphemism: e.g. he commented with a crushing sense of
despair on man’s final release from earthly struggles
Alliteration: e.g. It was a splendid population – for all the slow,
sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home.
Personification: e.g. Bitterness fed on the man who had made
the world laugh.


Transition device:
Repetition: At the end of para.15: …as sure
to be studied in American schools to day as
is the Declaration of Independence. At the
beginning of para.16: Mark Twain’s own
Declaration of Independence came from
another character.
IV . Questions for Discussion




1. Why is Mark Twain one of America’s best-loved
authors?
2.Give a brief account of Mark Twain’s experience
before he became a writer.
3. When did Mark Twain become a pilot on a
steamboat?
4. What story did he write that made him known as
“the wild humorist of the Pacific slope”?