Reflecting on Studies in Mark Twain

Close enough.

    The semester has come to an end and in lieu of a discussion of the last work we read for the class (in which Adam is kind of an ass who regards Eve and the rest of Gods creations for a cold scientific perspective, which is a comment on the dangers of looking at the world through a purely scientific perspective) I’d like to reflect on the class as a whole as this class was my first experience with a significant portion of Twain’s works. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve read the works of Samuel Clemens before. I read Huck Finn in a previous class and I saw a horrid film adaptation of the Mysterious Stranger back in high school. However, the breadth of Mark Twain’s works is a fact of which I was unaware. I now believe Earnest Hemingway’s assertion that American literature starts with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is disingenuous at best.

Mark Twain's Contemplation's on Murder

A Preface

            This one will not be as light-hearted as usual because the horrible things that people do to one another is a subject of which I am morbidly fascinated and completely repulsed. Please expect more questions and frustrations than usual, from me, in regards to this topic.

 

A difficult discussion is coming.

            I have written about Mark Twain’s travel writings before on this blog, and, in that previous look at Twain the traveler, he was staring at the Sphinx while experiencing a sublime moment as he pondered the ages observed by the behemoth. This post will look at his travels in the Pacific. More specifically, I’ll focus on an anecdote he told within the chapter on the Pacific in the book Mark Twain on Travel.

Would I Teach Huckleberry Finn in a Public School Classroom?

         This is the question that my professor asked on the last day of our class study of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This novel has been challenged, contested, and ever rewritten once because of a certain racial slur that appears in the novel. I won’t get into why its there or the importance of its presence in the novel because so many academics (there are Mark Twain theorists who have spent their entire CV studying Twain’s novels) have argued that point up one side of the social commentary and down the other, and I have no desire to add a note to the white noise. Instead I’ll just say its there for a reason and changing it ruins the entire point. Anyway this racial slur and the delicate issue of race are the entire point that this book, the American novel as I said previously, faces plenty of contention when people who understand its significance attempt to bring it into a high school classroom.

            Now, when the question was first posed to the class, my first response was that I would teach it because my usual approach when dealing with many delicate issues is to come equipped with a brick. Apparently there are several specimens of teenage stupidity that use the novel’s context as an excuse to take advantage of the slur and ruin this important work of literature for everyone. In my smash-it-with-a-brick approach my expectation is that I’d be teaching a group of high school students who should be capable of getting over themselves for a 50 minute class.

            Do you see the problem with my logic?

Huck Finn's Observational Dilemma

            Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in 1884 and has been hailed as the great American novel. Since its publication Huck Finn has been studied endlessly since then on its societal implications. One of the subjects of analysis in the novel is Huck’s perception of reality. As I said in a previous post, Huck questions the stories and practices he hears and sees. He finds logical inadequacies and picks at them with a thoughtful mind. However, one problem complicates this. Huck can notice and question problems but he has trouble forming conclusions due to his lack of experience and learning. The way I phrased it to some classmates is that Huckleberry Finn is intelligent but ignorant.

            His mindset is displayed quite well throughout the novel but one section struck me in particular. Toward the beginning of the novel he is listening to Miss Watson, the sister of the woman who is taking care of him, teach him about religion. I’m not going to call it Christianity because it is my belief that the past several centuries of Christians, especially in the early United States, entirely missed the point of the Bible and Christianity as a whole. I’ll not go any further with that because I’ll never stop writing if I get going with my many problems with the ‘Murican take on Christianity.

Tom Sawyer’s Reality

            The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a novel that captures the imagination of children and succeeds in its depiction of the young Tom Sawyer. In addition to talking neighborhood children into believing that painting a fence is the most fun a kid could have on a weekend, he also went on many adventures with his new friend Huckleberry Finn. Tom’s vivid imagination flavors these adventures as relying on stories is how Tom contextualizes his world.

For those of you who wished to forget that this movie happened...
Your welcome.

            For one of these adventures Tom approaches Huck Finn, after unsuccessfully trying to recruit other boys from his town, with the prospect of digging for possibly-real treasure, which Tom believes has been buried nearby by possibly-real robbers. The story’s narrator describes this desire as a natural step in the development of a young boy’s imagination. “There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure” (Twain 158) After Tom makes his proposal Huck asks where they should dig for this buried treasure. To which Tom responds that they can dig almost anywhere but the treasure is “hid in mighty particular places” like on islands, under limbs of dead trees, and/or under the floorboards in haunted houses.

Thing Theory in Tow Sawyer

            In the year 1876 Mark Twain published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which is a story about a young boy’s life in a small town. The characters were based on Twain and his childhood friends and the small town serving as the setting for Tom’s adventures is based on Twain’s hometown of Hannibal. The novel does not have a traditional story structure but instead plays out in a series of episodes in Tom Sawyer’s life.

            One of the more famous episodes in Tom’s story appears early in the novel and involves Tom white washing a fence- and by that I mean Tom tricking the neighborhood children into thinking that white washing a fence is not only a fun pastime but a privilege that they should pay Tom to partake in (I know I’m not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, so I’m ending this one with parentheses).

            But what do these children, in a fictional impoverished village based on a real impoverished village in Missouri, have for Tom as payment. They have no money, so what do they have of value? Well, things of course.

Mark Twain's Confrontation with the Sublime

So, relatively early in Mark Twain’s career he traveled around the world having various adventures in various countries and learning important lessons. For instance: German opera is fine apart from the singing, the barbers in Paris are impostors, and the Italians would give Michelangelo credit for the Leaning Tower of Piza if not for its tenuous relationship with 90 degree angles.

Twain wrote two major travel volumes: Innocents Abroad and A Tramp Abroad; the above lessons come from the latter work, which approached the world and travel writing from a different perspective from his former travel writing. The brilliance and humor of A Tramp Abroad stems from his approach as an egotistical American visiting all the longed for places in the world and not being impressed. However, his volume, Innocents Abroad took a much more contemplative look at the foreign countries he visited.

Mark Twain's War Days

           Mark Twain fought in the Civil War—sort of. In “The Private History of the Campaign that Failed” Twain recounts his days in the war. Days in this sense is not figurative as his involvement in the war only lasted a few weeks before the militia he was part of disbanded. His experience during these few weeks was rather uneventful until something happened that gave Mark Twain his fill of war.

When the Civil War broke out Mark Twain was in Missouri, visiting the city of Hannibal in Marion County, where he spent his childhood. When the Union began to enter Missouri the Governor called for militia groups to fight back. Twain banded together with several other men of Marion County to form the Marion Rangers.

This group of soldiers wandered around the neighboring counties staying in the homes of farmers, barns, and campsites. They pack up and move on at the very rumor of approaching Union soldiers.

Twain was a lieutenant in this militia but since no one would take orders from him, his rank was rendered moot. It begs the question what’s the point of a leader without followers. Is someone still a leader if no one follows them? I wonder if Twain considered that question at the time. If he did, he didn’t have much time because his military career was cut short.

Mark Twain on Fenimore Cooper’s Offences to Literature

   When the people think of Mark Twain they think of his regionalist/realist writing style, his interesting stories with colorful characters, and voyages on the Mississippi River. I imagine, however, that his literary criticisms do not come to mind first, if at all, but literary critic is another of the many trades in which Mark Twain excelled. One, rather humorous, example of Twain’s witty criticism chops is titled “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences,” in which Twain holds Cooper to task on the importance of observation, research, and accurate details to support a narrative’s believability.