American Literature
Local Colorism
- Mark Twain
Mark Twain Questions
1. What does "Mark Twain" mean?
2. How old was Twain when he began writing
stories?
3. What is his first story?
4. What did he do after he left school?
5. How do you know that he loved Mississippi River
very much?
6. What was he famous for?
7. Which universities honored him for his writing?
8. How was his last years of life?
9. What do you know about the three stages of his
thought and works?
Answer to the Questions
1. Mark Twain means 12 feet deep or 3.66 meters
deep.
2. Twain began writing stories when he was about 32
years old.
3. His first story is The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County.
4. He was a printer, a riverboat pilot, a soldier, a gold
miner, a businessman and a newspaper reporter.
5. Three of his most famous books describe people
on this great river. They are The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and
Life on the Mississippi. His penname is about the
river.
6. He was famous for its description of
common people and the way they talked, but
especially for his humor.
7. Yale and Oxford honored him for his
writing.
8. His last years of life was filled with sad
events, loneliness and the loss of much
money.
9. The first one is active and lively; the
second is full of acid and satirical sense; the
third one is pessimistic and cynic.
The Name of Mark
Twain
Twain's real name was
Samuel Clemens."Mark
Twain",which
means"watermark
two",was a call used by
sailors on the Mississippi
to warn shipmates that
they were coming into
shallow water.
Mark Twain (1835 -1910)
Mark Twain was a great American writer,
and he was also a famous speaker.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)
was born in Florida and he was not a
healthy baby. In fact, he was not expected
to live through the first winter. But with
his mother's tender care, he managed to
survive. As a boy, he caused much trouble
for his parents. He used to play jokes on
all of his friends and neighbors. He didn't
like to go to school, and he constantly ran
away from home.
Early life experience
Born in a little town in Mississippi
At 11, he lost his father
At 13, he stopped schooling
Tramp printer
Steamboat pilot on the Mississippi
Confederate guerrilla
Prospector
Reporter on the far western frontier
Traveler abroad
His Marriage
At 34 years old he
married Olivia Langdon
Clemens, daughter of a
New York coal magnate,
a member of the
country’s wealthy elite.
She would be partner,
editor, and fellow
traveler in success and
failure for the next
thirty-five years.
In His Middle Ages
By 1900 Twain had become
America’s foremost celebrity. He was
invited to attend ship launchings,
anniversary gatherings, political
conventions, and countless dinners.
Reporters met him at every port of call,
anxious to print a new quip from the
famous humorist. To enhance his image, he
took to wearing white suits and loved to
stroll down the street and see people
staring at him.
His Later Life
There are many tragic events in his later
life: the failure of his investments, his
fatiguing travels and lectures in order to
pay off his debts, and added to this, the
death of his wife and two daughters which
left him absolutely inconsolable. Some
critics link these tragic events with the
change of style in his later works, from an
optimist and humorist to an almost
despairing determinist.
His Death
Mark Twain died of illness on April 21,
1910. When he passed away, newspapers
around the country declared, “The whole
world is mourning.” By then, Sam
Clemens had long since ceased to be a
private citizen. He had become Mark
Twain, a proud possession of the
American nation.
Mark Twain and the Mississippi
Mark Twain loved the great river so
much that he always went in the
direction of the nearby Mississippi.
Many of his great works are set in
the background of the Mississippi
River,
such as The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer, and Life on the
Mississippi.
Mark Twain’s
Masterpieces
Other
Works
Running for Governor
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note
The Innocent Abroad
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County ( his first story)
The Gilded Age
Following the Equator
Roughing It
The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson
Three Stages of Mark
Twain’s Thought and
Works
active and lively;
full of acid and satirical sense;
pessimistic and cynic.
Writing Characteristics of
Mark Twain
Literature is an art of language. Mark
Twain’s language is artistic and like a
sharp weapon without doubt. Mark
Twain is famous for his humor and
satire.
Mark Twain’s humor is based on the
humor of the Western in America.
He used a lot of colloquial idioms and
colloquial syntax.
He often described persons who was
innocent, simple, naive, and ignorant
as his heroes or heroines.
He used the artistic style of
hyperbole on the basis of the
western traditional humor and made
his writing full of allegories that lay
behind the humor.
His Famous Words
“Wisdom teaches us
that none but birds
should go out early,
and that not even
birds should do it
unless they are out
of worms.”
“Humor is mankind's greatest
blessing.”
“Against the assault of laughter, nothing
can stand.”
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer
somebody else up.”
“The man
who does not
read good
books has no
advantage
over the man
who can't read
them.”
“Classic--a
book which
people praise
and don't read.”
“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he
never shows to anybody.”
Picture from Dave Thomson collection:
www.twainquotes.com
“The holy passion
of Friendship is so
sweet and steady
and loyal and
enduring a nature
that will last
through a whole
lifetime, if not
asked to lend
money."
Picture from Dave Thomson collection:
www.twainqes.com
“The
dog is a
gentleman; I hope to
go to his heaven, not
man's.”
Picture from Dave Thomson collection:
www.twainquotes.com
"Good breeding consists in
concealing how much we think
of ourselves and how little we
think of the other person."
A Mirror of America
1. “Mirror” here means a person who gives a true
representation or description of the country.
2. Generally speaking, all literary giants in human
history are also great historians, thinkers and
philosophers. Their works often reveal more truth
than many political essays.
3. Mark Twain was one of these giants, and his life
and works are a mirror of America of his time.
A Brief Assessment
Mark Twain is a part of America. His
personal success and failure were
those of America. He moved, along
with America, from innocence to
experience. He was famous for his
description of common people and the
way they talked, but especially for
his humor. Yale and Oxford honored
him for his writing.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Hemingway once wrote: "All modern
American literature comes from one book by
Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn... it's the
best book we've had... There was nothing
before. There has been nothing so good
since."
Satire This novel shows Twain's satire on
southern culture before the Civil War, around
1850, when the Mississippi Valley was still
being settled. Twain condemned racial
discrimination.
Style Vernacular language and dialect.
Local Color Twain depicted social life through
descriptions of local places and people he knew
best.
Significance The carefully controlled point of view,
with its implicit ironies expressed through the voice
of a semi-literate boy; the masterful use of dialects;
the felicitous balancing romanticism and realism,
humor and pathos, innocence and evil. This novel
creates the most memorable characters in all of
American fiction.
Plot (Synopsis)
Huck Finn, a boy of about 12 years, is the son of the
town drunk. Widow Douglas adopts him so that she
can civilize him and raise him to be a gentleman.
Huck dislikes the regular, staid ways of the widow.
Although she is kind and attentive, he is
uncomfortable and feels stifled at her house. He does
not like going to school, attending church, or wearing
neat clothes. Neither does he like being tutored at
home by Miss Watson. When he is no longer able to
put up with the Widow’s ways, he runs away; but
Huck is found by Tom Sawyer, who convinces him to
come back.
Huck and Tom have earlier found a hidden treasure,
which they are allowed to keep for themselves.
Huck’s father comes to know of his son’s prosperity
and returns to St. Petersburg. He wants to take away
Huck’s money, for he feels that it is rightfully his. He
tries to catch Huck a number of times, but the clever
boy always eludes him. One day, the father waits for
him, catches him, and takes him away after a short
brawl. He locks Huck in a cabin in the woods three
miles down the river and regularly beats him.
A couple of months pass. When the beatings get
unbearable, Huck decides to run away from the cabin.
He plans escape and waits for an opportunity. He
saws off a piece of the back wall, escapes through the
hole, and leaves traces of pig blood to deceive his
father into thinking that he is dead. He takes the
canoe and goes to Jackson’s Island, where he spends
three idyllic days. He meets Jim, the Widow’s slave,
on one of his explorations of the island. Jim has run
away from the widow when he overhears her
intention of selling him down the river for eight
hundred dollars.
Huck wants to know the reaction of the people to his
disappearance. He dresses up like a girl and goes to
the mainland. He learns from Judith Loftus, a
newcomer in the village, that the people are
convinced that Jim has killed Huck, since he had
escaped the same day that Huck disappeared. Upset
by the revelation, Huck rushes back to the island and
tells Jim. The two of them board a raft and head
down the river to New Orleans.
On one of their stops at a small town, Huck is caught
in a feud between the Grangerfords and the
Shephardsons; the feud has apparently gone on for
over thirty years. He successfully escapes from them,
only to find that two con men have come on their raft.
The Duke and the Dauphin fool people out of money
at every stop they make; they always manage to get
away just in the nick of time. When Huck thinks that
he has finally gotten rid of the pair, he discovers that
Jim has been sold by the Duke and Dauphin to Silas
Phelps for forty dollars.
Huck, in an attempt to rescue Jim, makes his way to
the Phelps farm. To his joy, he discovers that Mrs.
Phelps is Tom’s aunt, and she is expecting Tom to
come visiting anytime. She mistakes Huck to be Tom
and welcomes him.
Meanwhile, Tom also comes to the Phelps farm, but
Huck meets him and narrates all that has happened.
He tells him that Jim is being held a prisoner by Mr.
Phelps, and he intends to rescue him.
Tom immediately jumps at the opportunity of having
some excitement. All that they have to do is steal the
keys and free Jim, but Tom sets up an elaborate plan
for adventure. In the process of freeing Jim, Tom
gets injured and falls sick. Later on, Huck realizes
that Jim was a free man all the while, for Widow
Douglas had set him free in her will. He also comes
to know that Aunt Sally is thinking of adopting him
so that she can civilize him further. He runs away to
the west so he can be “free”.
Major Characters
Huck: Huckleberry Finn is the main character and
narrator of the story. Without a mother and with an
often absent (and drunk) father, he is basically an
orphan who lives with Miss Watson and the Widow
Douglas. Leaving the conservative clutches of the
home, Huck chooses to flee society and enter the
natural world, where he feels most at home. When
he and Jim cross paths in the wilderness, the two
decide to travel together, and both use a raft to escape
the bondage of the land.
Jim: Jim is the escaped slave of Ms. Watson who
encounters Huck in the wilderness and agrees to
travel with him down the Mississippi. Though Jim is
often ignorant and child-like, the profound feelings
he expresses for his family and his overall persona
prove to Huck (and the reader) that he is just as
entitled to liberty as any white person. Jim, however,
is trained by society, and though he believes he
deserves freedom, also considers himself inferior to
whites.
Twain as a Realist
Twain is one of the greatest realists –
possibly The greatest – of all time.
One of the reasons he’s so great is that
he dares to examine the “whys” – why
does society have problems? Why do
characters experience conflicting
emotions? Why do we act the way we do?
Satire In Huck
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this
narrative will be prosecuted; persons
attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;
persons attempting to find a plot in it will be
shot.” – twain’s notice on the first page
Think of all of the things Twain takes on and
portrays as silly or exaggerated – realism,
honor, society itself!
Do you really believe there aren’t any
messages, meanings, or storylines in the
book?
Racism
This hovers over the text at all times, most
obviously when Jim is featured.
How does the text deal with racism? is huck
Racist?
Check out the hypocrisy of the slaveholders,
many of whom are supposed to be
upstanding citizens
Twain published this after slavery was
abolished, but set the action before the war
American Realism(1870-1890)
1. Reasons: civil war, social development.
People sought to describe the wide range of
American experience and to present the
subtleties of human personality, to portray
characters who were less simply all good or
all bad.
2. Realism originated in France. A literary
doctrine that called for “reality and truth” in the
depiction of ordinary life.
3. American realism, different from European
realism, is more varied and individualistic.
American Realism(1870-1890
4. Development of American realism: first
appear in the literature of local color,
arbiter: William Dean Howells. He
defined realism as “nothing more and
nothing less than the truthful treatment
of material”.
5. Important writers: Henry James, Mark
Twain.
American Naturalism: pessimistic realism
1. Naturalism came from France.
2. Reasons: civil war, social upheavals,
Darwinism, hypothesized that over the
millennia, man had evolved from lower
forms of life. Human were special, not
because God had created them in His
image, as the Bible taught, but because
they had successfully adapted to
changing environmental conditions and
had passed on their survivalmaking
characteristic genetically.
Men were dominated by the irresistible
forces of evolution. Men were
conceived as more or less complex
combination of inherited attributes and
habits conditioned by social and
economic forces, by heredity and
environment.
3. Features of naturalist writing:
A. naturalist writers turned literary creation
into a mechanical record of society, in a
way of attempting to achieve extreme
objectivity and frankness. They never
made comments on the characters and
their behaviors.
B. The characters were often figures of low
social and economic classes, with animal
desire, some physically strong but weakwilled figures. There were also some
healthy and lofty persons, but their
ending were miserable.
C. the viewpoint from which the writers
understood problems was amoral, or
non-moral. They stressed men had no
free will, their lives were controlled by
heredity and environment.
D. their material was infinite.