Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, grew

up in the Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri.

Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn, indicates this author’s towering place in

the

tradition. Early 19th-century American writers tended to be too

flowery, sentimental, or ostentatious — partially because they

were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantly as

the English. Twain’s style, based on vigorous, realistic,

colloquial American speech, gave American writers a new

appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major

author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured

its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm.

Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, grew up in the Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri. Ernest Hemingway’s famous statement that all of American literature comes from one great book, Twain’s, indicates this author’s towering place in the tradition. Early 19th-century American writers tended to be too flowery, sentimental, or ostentatious — partially because they were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantly as the English. Twain’s style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American writers a new appreciation of their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm.

For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century,

realism was not merely a literary technique: It was a way of

speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Thus it was

profoundly liberating and potentially at odds with society. The

most well-known example is Huck Finn, a poor boy who decides to

follow the voice of his conscience and help a Negro slave escape

to freedom, even though Huck thinks this means that he will be

damned to hell for breaking the law.

Twain’s masterpiece, which appeared in 1884, is set in the

Mississippi River village of St. Petersburg. The son of an

alcoholic bum, Huck has just been adopted by a respectable family

when his father, in a drunken stupor, threatens to kill him.

Fearing for his life, Huck escapes, feigning his own death. He is

joined in his escape by another outcast, the slave Jim, whose

owner, Miss Watson, is thinking of selling him down the river to

the harsher slavery of the deep South. Huck and Jim float on a

raft down the majestic Mississippi, but are sunk by a steamboat,

separated, and later reunited. They go through many comical and

dangerous shore adventures that show the variety, generosity, and

sometimes cruel irrationality of society. In the end, it is

discovered that Miss Watson had already freed Jim, and a

respectable family is taking care of the wild boy Huck. But Huck

grows impatient with civilized society and plans to escape to

“the territories” — Indian lands. The ending gives the reader

the counter-version of the classic American success myth: the

open road leading to the pristine wilderness, away from the

morally corrupting influences of “civilization.” James Fenimore

Cooper’s novels, Walt Whitman’s hymns to the open road, William

Faulkner’s The Bear, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

are other

literary examples.

Huckleberry Finn has inspired countless literary

interpretations.

Clearly, the novel is a story of death, rebirth, and initiation.

The escaped slave, Jim, becomes a father figure for Huck; in

deciding to save Jim, Huck grows morally beyond the bounds

of his slave-owning society. It is Jim’s adventures that initiate

Huck into the complexities of human nature and give him moral

courage.

The novel also dramatizes Twain’s ideal of the harmonious

community: “What you want, above all things, on a raft is for

everybody to be satisfied and feel right and kind toward the

others.” Like Melville’s ship the Pequod, the raft sinks,

and

with it that special community. The pure, simple world of the

raft is ultimately overwhelmed by progress — the steamboat —

but the mythic image of the river remains, as vast and changing

as life itself.

The unstable relationship between reality and illusion is

Twain’s characteristic theme, the basis of much of his humor. The

magnificent yet deceptive, constantly changing river is also the

main feature of his imaginative landscape. In Life on the

Mississippi, Twain recalls his training as a young steamboat

pilot when he writes: “I went to work now to learn the shape of

the river; and of all the eluding and ungraspable objects that

ever I tried to get mind or hands on, that was the chief.”

Twain’s moral sense as a writer echoes his pilot’s

responsibility to steer the ship to safety. Samuel Clemens’s pen

name, “Mark Twain,” is the phrase Mississippi boatmen used to

signify two fathoms (3.6 meters) of water, the depth needed for a

boat’s safe passage. Twain’s serious purpose, combined with a

rare genius for humor and style, keep his writing fresh and

appealing.