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Mark Twain: 

"The American Bard"

Biography (1835-1910)

*Remember: Twains's life was directly translated into his works.

  • He was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835 in the town of Florida, Missouri. That was two weeks after Halley's Cometappeared in its closest approach to the Earth.

  • His father was John Marshall Clemens, who worked as a Tennessee country merchant. His mother was Jane Lampton Clemens.

  • He was one of seven children, and the second to last child born. Unfortunately, a number of Twain’s siblings died throughout their childhood. Only half of his siblings survived—his brother Orion, his brother Henry, and his sister Pamela.

  • In 1839, when he was four, his father moved the family to Hannibal, Missouri, a town by the Mississippi River.

  • In 1846, when he was 11 his father died of pneumonia so he quit school and became a printer’s apprentice with the Hannibal Journal to help support his family. 

  • He continued his work at the Hannibal Journal until 1851, during which time he was made a typesetter and contributed articles and humorous sketches.

  • Even though he didn't go to school as a child for very long, he knew that no matter where he went in life, he could still educate himself by life experiences and by reading at the library during the evening.

  • From the ages of 18 to 22 he worked as a printer, traveling from Missouri to New York, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and St. Louis. 

  • From his experience as a licensed river pilot, he chose the pen name by which he his best known - Mark Twain. The term “mark twain” means it is safe to sail because the water’s depth is two fathoms, or 12 feet.  “Mark one” is six feet, “mark ta-ree” is 18 feet, and “mark four” is 24 feet.

  • Samuel found work at the Virginia City newspaper and began using the pen name “Mark Twain.” Other pseudonyms he used as a writer were Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab, Sergeant Fathom, and Rambler.

  • Growing up in Missouri was the inspiration for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876. Inspired by his youth, Twain penned the clever escapades of a young boy.

This video offers a brief insight into the life of Mark Twain.

The Boy's Amibition

Background:

 Life on the Mississippi is Twain’s happiest book. Written early in his career, Twain was yet to experience the difficulties of his personal life that would later characterize his perception, and contained within it  celebration of his time as a boy and man, as an apprentice and as a Mississippi steamboat pilot, it is a lively, affectionate tribute hardly muted by the fact that the world of the romantic pilots of the Mississippi had disappeared forever during the Civil War and the development of the railroads. The small excerpt, The Boys Ambition, starts by revealing Twains love of the River, but then follows it up with the characterstic humor that Twain is famous for. The story is filled with comic turns. Where Twain, as a boy growing up in a Mississippi River town, and the narrator has the common ambition of becoming a steamboatman.  

 

Main Idea

The boys' child ambition to be steamboatment reflect the American spirit of the time.  The humor and local color that Twain uses also exposes a unique American perspective.

 

Important Literary Techniques:

Twain uses humor to add to his stories. His use of incongruity, hyperbole, and comic language. These elements make the story more entertaining and memorable, but hold within them important truths that make the story uniquely appealing.

Another important aspect to Twain's stories is satire. He makes the hilarious more hilarious with his careful use of satire. An example is the serious tone that Wheeler makes use of in explaining. 

A third important aspect is his use of dialog that contains local color. He is in that way about to make the stories realistic. This also allows for the comical contrasts between charactrers of different backgrounds. By including local dialects he makes his works give a unique picture of the Mississippi river that cannot be found anywhere else.

Synopsis:

The story follows Twain, who is a well educated Easterner.  Twain writes a letter that directly contrasts the level of education displayed in his writing to the fact that he was tricked. He was convinced into  asking Wheeler about a "Smiley" as the letter suggests leads to the hilarious annecdote that is filled with vulgarity and sly wit. This establishes Wheeler as a master of telling tales and the following annecdotes about how a“fifteen-minute nag” fumbles her way to the finish line and the look that Andrew Jackson, ives to Smiley after the defeat by a dog without hind legs are examples of how skilled Twain was in writing cleverly without seeming to be writing at all.

 

Central Theme

Though the eastern and western United States aren’t specifically contrasted in this short story, we get to see the contrast between the educated, refined narrator from the East and the uneducated but slick characters of the West's Angel Mining Camp. The characters in the West love a good tall tale, while the narrator appears to find it pointless and tedious, but this just shows that he lacks the "refinment" to see its qualities.

 

 

 

The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

  • His first claim to fame was an article “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County" that he wrote in 1865 for the New York Saturday Press. It became an instant success and allowed him to secure a job with theSacramento Union. The Sacramento Union commissioned him to visit the Sandwich Islands (now known as the state of Hawaii) to write the first of a series of travelogues that became nationally popular. The following year he traveled to the Mediterranean, Europe and the Middle East.

  • Twain often drew from his life in his writings.

  • His first book, The Innocents Abroad, was published in 1869.

  • Mark Twain had an interesting and diverse literary career. He wrote a total of 28 books along with essays, articles, and short stories.

  • Four of his books were published after his death:

  • A small supporting character became the hero in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1885, which has been called the first "Great American Novel."

The video briefly summerizes the merits of the aspects of the story.

The video summerizes the story by going over its important aspects.

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