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马克·吐温（Mark Twain,1835年11月30日－1910年4月21日）His major works and styles:原名萨缪尔·兰亨·克莱门（Samuel Langhorne Clemens) ，美国的幽默大师、小说家、作家，也是著名演说家，19世纪后期美国现实主义文学的杰出代表，美国批判现实主义文学的奠基人，世界著名的短篇小说大师。
他经历了美国从“自由”资本主义到帝国主义的发展过程，其思想和创作也表现为从轻快调笑到辛辣讽刺再到悲观厌世的发展阶段。
写作风格熔幽默与讽刺一体，既富于独特的个人机智与妙语，又不乏深刻的社会洞察与剖析。
早期创作，如短篇小说《竟选州长》（1870）、《哥尔斯密的朋友再度出洋》（1870）等，以幽默、诙谐的笔法嘲笑美国“民主选举”的荒谬和“民主天堂”的本质。
中期作品，如长篇小说《镀金时代》（1874，与华纳合写）、代表作长篇小说《哈克贝里·费恩历险记》（1886）及《傻瓜威尔逊》（1893）等，则以深沉、辛辣的笔调讽刺和揭露像瘟疫般盛行于美国的投机、拜金狂热，及暗无天日的社会现实与惨无人道的种族歧视。
19世纪末，随着美国进入帝国主义发展阶段，马克·吐温一些游记、杂文、政论，如《赤道环行记》（1897）、中篇小说《败坏了哈德莱堡的人》（1900）、《神秘来客》（1916）等的批判揭露意义也逐渐减弱，而绝望神秘情绪则有所伸长。
马克·吐温被誉为“美国文学中的林肯”。
他的主要作品已大多有中文译本。
His life:Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, of a Virginian family. He was brought up in Hannibal, Missouri. After his father's death in 1847, he was apprenticed to a printer and wrote for his brother's newspaper. He later worked as a licensed Mississippi river-boat pilot.The Civil War put an end to the steamboat traffic and Clemens moved to Virginia City, where he edited the Territorial Enterprise. On February 3, 1863, 'Mark Twain' was born when Clemens signed a humorous travel account with that pseudonym.In 1864 Twain left for California, and worked in San Francisco as a reporter. He visited Hawaii as a correspondent for The Sacramento Union, publishing letters on his trip and giving lectures. He set out on a world tour, traveling in France and Italy. His experiences were recorded in 1869 in The Innocents Abroad, which gained him wide popularity, and poked fun at both American and European prejudices and manners.The success as a writer gave Twain enough financial security to marry Olivia Langdon in 1870.They moved next year to Hartford. Twain continued to lecture in the United States and England. Between 1876 and 1884 he published several masterpieces, Tom Sawyer (1881) and The Prince And The Pauper (1881). Life On The Mississippi appeared in 1883 andHuckleberry Finn in 1884.In the 1890s Twain lost most of his earnings in financial speculations and in the failure of his own publishing firm. To recover from the bankruptcy, he started a world lecture tour, during which one of his daughters died. Twain toured New Zealand, Australia, India, andSouth Africa. He wrote such books as The Tragedy Of Pudd'head Wilson (1884), Personal Recollections Of Joan Of Arc (1885), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and the travel book Following The Equator (1897). During his long writing career, Twain also produced a considerable number of essays.The death of his wife and his second daughter darkened the author's later years, which is seen in his posthumously published autobiography (1924). Twain died on April 21, 1910.获奖代表作：《哈克贝里·费恩历险记》哈克贝利是一个聪明、善良、勇敢的白人少年。
英语专业本科学期论文题目The Literature Features of Mark Twain's Works学院名称指导教师职称讲师班级学号学生姓名2011 年 4月 28日AbstractMark Twain is a real critics of America，his literature most main feature is humorous、satire，and many works of his literary are full of fantasy hero。
Each of his literature has its unique implication，many of these literature are full of meaning of critical social phenomenon。
He experience the process of United States from “free” capitalism to imperialism of development。
Its ideas and creative also manifests burning satire，then it is becoming pessimism。
In every literature of Mark Twain is almost full of humorous and satire，So in his literary, the main three feature is humorous、satire、fantasy。
The paper will conduct its analysis and descriptions around this three aspects。
To combine a literature and the culture background，only by this can we understand the intonation。
马克·吐温大家熟知的代表作马克·吐温（MarkTwain），美国著名作家和演说家，真实姓名是萨缪尔·兰亨·克莱门（SamuelLanghorneClemens）。
“马克·吐温”是他的笔名，原是密西西比河水手使用的表示在航道上所测水的深度的术语。
【代表作品】《百万英镑》、《哈克贝利·费恩历险记》、《汤姆·索亚历险记》【举例：《汤姆·索亚历险记》内容简介】汤姆幼年丧母，由姨妈收养。
聪明顽皮的汤姆受不了姨妈和学校老师的管束，常常逃学闯祸。
一天深夜，他与好朋友哈克贝里·芬到墓地玩耍，无意中目睹了一起凶杀案的发生。
因为害怕被凶手发现他们知道这件事，汤姆、哈克贝里带着另一个小伙伴一起逃到一座荒岛上做起了“海盗”，弄得家里以为他们被淹死了，结果他们却出现在了自己的“葬礼”上。
经过激烈的思想斗争，汤姆终于勇敢地站出来，指证了凶手。
不久之后，在一次野餐活动中，他与他心爱的姑娘贝姬在一个岩洞里迷了路，整整三天三夜饥寒交迫，面临着死亡的威胁。
后来终于成功脱险，和好友哈克一起找到了凶手埋藏的宝藏。
【文学特点】马克·吐温的作品有三个特色：第一，他在西部幽默传统的基础上，发挥极度夸张的艺术想象。
第二个特点是：作品常常以第一人称“我”为主人公，这个“我”像中国相声里的主人公一样，扮演各种喜剧性人物。
他们大都天真、老实、无知，思想单纯，什么事都一厢情愿，结果常常事与愿违。
马克·吐温用天真老实人做主人公是有意识的。
主人公总是怀着某种理想或某种单纯的想法，但在现实中处处碰壁，说明他这个理想是不现实的，行不通的，而他越不明白这一点，就越现出理想与现实之间的差距。
第三个特点是幽默里含有讽刺。
他在《自传》里总结他写幽默小说的经验，说“为幽默而幽默是不可能经久的。
幽默只是一股香味儿和花絮。
我老是训诫人家，这就是为什么我能够坚持三十年”。
An Analysis of the Writing Styles of Mark TwainHis colloquial Language and Satire in the Adventures of Huckleberry FinnI. The Background of Mark Twain1.1 Mark Twain and His ExperienceMark Twain, pseudorym of Samuel langhone Clemens, was brought up in the town of Hannibal, Missouri, near the Mississippi River. He was twelve when his father diod and he had to leave school. He was successively a printer’s apprentice, a tramp printer, a silver miner, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and a frontier journalist in Nevada and California. This knocking about gave him a wide knowledge of humanity. As one of America’s first and foremost realists and humorists, Mark Twain usually wrote about his own personal experiences and things he knew about from firsthand experience. His life spanned the two Americas, the frontier America and the emerging urban, industrial giant of the twenty-century.As a witness of the civil war, Twain saw clearly the great changes in nation’s economic development and political life. With the final victory over the South the North once again enjoyed its wielding power in the nation’s administration. Now the acute conflict at home was undermined and the American people again focused their full attention on re-construction after the war. Because most majority of the slaves were emancipated, the slave-based economy of the defeated South had its prosperity became rootless. In this case, clusters of groundless southern poor whites and the newly freed slaves headed directly of indirectly for the new-liberated cities to seek opportunities. It may be called the ‘Gold Rush’ rejuvenated, or rather, it was so-called the ‘American Dream’ by some critics. Twain also could not help rushing to the west to will his American dream. He once believed the idea of development and industrialization since it would modernize the young country and encourage the enterprising spirit of the American who had long been famous for it. He was firmly enthralled by such fever, so once again he held an optimistic attitude towards the post-westward expansion. He drew much inspiration from the unparalleled and magnificent event and spoke highly of its decision-makers and its people.1.2 The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnThe best work that Mark Twain ever produced is, as we noted earlier on, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It tells a story about the United States before the Civil War, around 1850, when the great Mississippi Valley was still being settled. Here lies an America, with its great national faults, full of violence and even cruelty, yet still retaining the virtues of ‘some simplicity, some innocence, and some peace.’ The story takes place along the Mississippi River, on both sides of which there was unpopulated wilderness and a dense forest. It relates the story of the escape of Jim from slavery and, more important, how Huck Finn, floating along with him and helping him as best he could, changes his mind, his prejudice about black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man and as a close friend as well.At the heart of Twain’s achievement is his creation of Huck Finn, who embodies that mythic America, midway between the wilderness and the modern super state.1.3 A General Introduction to the MississippiThe Mississippi is not only Mark Twain’s life stage but also American society’s stage. It flows through the middle of America; it’s one of the greatest rivers in the world. In Twain’s early years, the geographic core was the great valley of the Mississippi River, and the Mississippi is the main ar tery of transportation on the young nation’s heart. In 1857, young Mark Twain entered thatworld as a cub pilot on a steamboat. Later, when he wented to write something, this land provided him with many plentiful writing materials.II. Analyzing Two Writing Styles of Mark Twain (in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) Mark Twain was the first important writer to consistently use the American speech rather than England’s English. His honor, whether it was aimed at pure entertainment or at social satire, was irresistible. His realism, and details influenced many later American novelists. That was why Ernest Hemingway once said “all modern American literatures came from one book written by Mark Twain called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” And it became Twain’s masterpiece. Mark Twain’s three years’ life on that returned to the Mississippi left such a fond memory with him that returned to the theme more than once in his writing career. Huckleberry Finn is a veritable recreation of living models, and is H uck’s book, not Jim’s. The two major characters, Huck and Jim, represent the two sides of the dilemma: Huck strikes out for an absolute freedom, while Jim requires, in order to gain his own freedom, that Huck qualify his freedom by entering into the pursui t of Jim’s. It starts out as a comedy , an ‘As You Like It’ with a hero drawn from the bottom of society rather than the top. Huck and his father, Jim, the swindlers(the Duke and the Dauphin), colonel sherburn and the drunkard Boggy-all these characters prototypes in real life. The portrayal of individual incidents and characters achieved intense verisimilitude of detail. Serious problems are being discussed through the narration of a little illiterate boy. The fact that the wilderness juxtaposed with civilization, the people half wild and half civilized, many of whom are worse, vulgar, are brutal. As for the style of the book, the form is based on the simplest of all novel-forms, the so-called picaresque novel, or novel of the road, which strings its incidents on the line of the hero’s travels. But, in this novel, rivers are roads that move, and the movement of the road in its own mysterious life transmutes the primitive simplicity of the from: the road itself is the greatest character in this novel of the r oad, and the hero’s departures from the river and his returns to it compose a subtle and significant pattern. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shows us the major achievements of his art: the masterful use of dialects; humor and pathos, innocence and evil. This novel demonstrates his ability to capture the enduring, archetypal, mythic images of America and to create the most memorable characters in all of American fiction.2.1 Use of Colloquial LanguageThe book is written in a colloquial style, in the general standard speech of uneducated Americans. Moreover, the prose of Huckleberry Finn established the prose virtues of American colloquial speech. It has something to do with ease and freedom in the use of language. Most of all, it has to do with the structure of the sentence, which is simple, direct, and fluent, maintaining the rhythm of the word’s group of speech and the intonations of the speaking voice. Mark Twain’s colloquial style has influenced a large number of American writers.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn displays the major achievements of his art: the carefully controlled point of view, with its implicit ironies expressed through the voice of a semiliterate boy: the masterful use of dialects: the felicitous balancing of nostalgic humorist and realism, humor and pathos, innocence and evil, all united for a journey down the Mississippi that serves as the mythic center of the novel. This novel demonstrates his ability to capture the enduring, archetypal, mythic images of America and to create the most memorable characters in all of American fiction.2.1.1 Vernacular LanguageMark Twain wrote in his unpretentious, colloquial, and poetic style. He used vernacular language, dialect with spelling representing pronunciation. Part of this comes from his interest inhumor. The directness of the language is a very influential point in Twain’s style. Ernest Hemingway in the 20th century said that he had learnt his craft from Mark Twain because if the direct speech and the direct narration that Twain was able to achieve. The hoax and tall tale are also part of twain’s style. Hoax is writing something fantastic and pretending that it were true, much like the tall tale. It tolls as if it were true, and so the reader would laugh that any body could believe such preposterous things, the burlesque making fun of establishes ways of writing.Mark Twain said, “I amend dialect stuff by talking and talking it till it sounds right.” He wanted his writing to have the sound of easy-going speech. In Huckleberry Finn the fountainhead of the American colloquial prose, he wrote seven different dialects and each can be distinguished. If the reader is a linguist, he can examine the different pronunciations that Twain has shown. In his own time, dialect writing was considered humorous. People got a big laugh out of reading these misspell words. Another feature of the book, which helps to make it famous is its language. The book is written in the colloquial style in the general standard speech of uneducated Americans.. Mark Twain’s introductory note on accents is an indication of his conscious attempt to achieve accurate detail. “In this book,” he says, “a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri Negro dialect; the extreme forms of the backwoods southwestern d ialect; the ordinary ‘pike country’ dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity, with t hese several forms of speech.” “Painstaking ” and “not haphazard,” though they possess a humorous ring, denote the conscientious effort on the part of the author, and trustworthiness and familiarity and the author’s awareness of dialects in using which rev eal his attempt to reproduce actual daily speech with a degree of accuracy. A recent and very influential recasting of Huck’s vernacular voice has identified. We may quote a passage from this masterpiece as an illustration:“I took the sack of corn me al and took it to where the canoe was hid, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took the bucket and gourd; took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old son and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot/ I took fish lines and matches and other things- everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place I wanted an ax, but there wa sn’t any, only the one out at woodpile, and I know why I was going to leave that. I fetched out the gun, and now I was done.”The words used here are, perhaps “ammunition” which is etymologically French, mostly Anglo-Saxon in origin, and are short, concrete and direct in effect. Sentence structures are most of them simple or compound, with a series of “then” and “ands” and semi-colons serving as connectives. The repetition of the word “took” and the stringing together of things leave the impression that Mark Twain depend solely on the concrete object and action for the body and movement of his prose. What is more, there is an ungrammatical element, which gives the final finish to his style. The whole book approximates the actual speech habit of an uneducated boy from south American of the mid-nineteenth century.The vernacular language in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn initiated the new style of language in American novels, and has had significant influence upon American writers of later generations.2.1.2 Local ColorLocal color as a trend first made its presence in the late 1860s and early seventies. The vogue oflocal color fiction was, the logical combination of a long, progressive development. It was the outgrowth of historical and aesthetic forces that been gathering energy since early nineteenth century. Twain refers to the elements, which characterize a local culture, elements such as speech, customs, and also a particular place. Local colorists concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local character of their regions. They tended to identify and glorify, but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life.Twain depicted social life through descriptions of local places and people he knew best and believed that “the most valuable capital, or culture, or education usable in the building of novels is personal experience.” Yet, sometimes Twain wrote a sentimental story, not because he was sentimental, but because he wanted to show the reader how stupid such a story really was. The reader has to be very careful when he or she reads Mark Twain. Twain often played trick on the reader. He often said things when he meant just the opposite. This is the irony that he got the humor from the Far West. He would do things that he did just to make fun , but the reader might think that he really meant it. Then the reader was the tender-foot who taken in .Mark twain preferred to respect social life through portraits of local places which he knew best and drew heavily from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places. The Adventures of huckleberry Finn is one such example. Finn is living breathing personality. It is through his use of language and his activities that Twain creates character and sets down objective truth: Finn is uneducated; he dislikes civilized ways because they are restrictive and hypocritical he likes. Meanwhile, local color mixed romantic plots with realistic descriptions of things which were readily observed, with the customs , dialects, sights, smell and sounds of regional America. After the Civil war, local color had further developed, In this book, this kind of literature mainly describes the local life, the keynote was optimistic, and the language was narrative humorous. The char acters he created were humorous and full of wittiness. Mark Twin’s work was regarded the witness of America’s pure local life. According to Calkins, “Few American writers have written the same after reading telling.” From my point of view, American literat ure is so charming for this kind of works.Local color became dominate in American Literature(1860-1870). One of the most important writing features of Mark Twain is the use of Local colorism. It is also impossible in the Mississippi River towns through which Huck and Jim journey to imagine being a hero .This in turn makes Sherborn a cold-blooded killer and Huck a saint (and Tom a good). Let me repeat it as a saint，however, Huck is no more bent on social reform, no more optimistic about it, than is sherburn. So local colorism is a variation of American realism, and also a description of a small refined region. Twain, breaking out of the narrow limits of local-color fiction, described the breadth of American experience as no one had ever done before, or since, and he created The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a masterpiece of American realism that proverbs to be one of the great books of world literature.2.1.3 PunIn English paronomasia called pun, means call by a different name. The exact definition is: Humorous use of word to suggest different meanings, or of words of same or similar sound has different meanings. There are five forms of pun: homophonic pun, paranomasic, antalaclasis, sylletic pun, asteismus. In a certain context, pun has several pragmatic functions. Throughout all of Twain’s writing, we see the conflict between the ideals of Americans and their desire for money. But Twain never tried to solve the conflict. He is like a newspaperman who reports what he sees.In this situation, his humor was often rather childish. This may bespeak why the critic P. Abel said:” Twain was a boy and an old man, but never was he a man.”In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we can find many words and phrases that were used vividly to describe the things that happened, such as ‘I went along slow then, and I wasn’t right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I wasn’t. This sentence is very interesting; pun is used to express the author’s mood at that moment. We can also use another kind of language to replace the original, but the effect is so different. So we can conclude that pun played an important role in this novel.2.2 Satire in The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnSatire is a way of criticizing people or ideas in a humorous way to show that they have faults or are wrong, or a piece of writing or play, which uses this style. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain shows satire on southern culture before the civil war, when the Mississippi valley was still being settled. Twain blended two different subjects, the experience of westward expansion and the experience of southern slavery. And he wrote about both regains of the country. His attitudes toward the south were much less pleasant than his attitudes toward the west, because he confronted the south problem of slave of mistreatment of humans by humans. Through the change of the white boy Huck’s attitude toward Jim, a runaway black slave, Twain condemned racial discrimination. Twain made fun of typical American values, yet underneath he felt a brooding pessimism not only about American valuable but also about life itself. It was a dreadful thing to see Human beings be awful cruel to one another. Due to Twain’s own experience, satire is successfully used in this novel. There’s one sign ificant scene which should be remembered, Huck Finn witnesses many instances of cruelty, brutality and hypocrisy in the township along the river Here are four points about his satire in this novel.2.2.1 VanityVanity in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has a perfect embodiment. Twain viewed the poor whites and showed the reader how these no-count whites thought they were better than black slaves. Many share-coppers just able to make enough money to live for these sorts of illusions. Vanity was the only thing that kept them above the slaves. Their standard of living in many cases was beneath that of slaves. The only thing that made them feel good about themselves was that they were white. And Twain made the reader laugh at the ludicrous idea that they were held. For Huck Finn, the journey on the raft with Jim was a voyage of moral discovery. At the early stage, Huck Finn looks upon Jim as a Negro slave with a common attitude. However, as they progress down the river, he changes his mind and no longer has prejudice against black people. He gradually comes to see Jim as a human being and begins to accept him as his friend. Yet Huck Finn never fully succeeds in breaking free from the prevailing attitude towards Negroes. As for this part, it’s a large contra st to the other people. Huck Finn rebels against the atrocious king and duke. He is disgusted with their trifling with human beings. It is because that Huck Finn is such a good and noble person that his moral dilemma in helping a Negro slave to escape constitutes a profound condemnation of the way of life and moral values of American south. His conscience has been formed by the morality of St. Petersburg and he never quite succeeds in freeing himself from that society’s corrupt standards. Huck Finn’s formed conscience is the measure of the moral corruption of the community that shaped. So he sinks into an inner struggle. He becomes increasingly caught between his friendship with Jim and the common social standards. Compare with others, Huck Finn’s goodness i s always unconscious and spontaneous, arising out of thedeepest recesses of his nature. He abuse cares about the welfare of others and cannot bear to see anyone suffer. He shows sympathy for the nicest of Peter Wilks and saves money for them. So the opposite character embodies vanity has come into the stage. However, humor could no more be found in Twain’s biter works. On the contrary, it was replaced by bitter satire, and vanity is an embodiment of Twain’s satire.2.2.2 Unquestioning Acceptance of ViolenceThe second object of satire is the genteel upper-class southerner. The genteel upper-class southerners don’t understand themselves, either. They lived a aristocratic life. In the novel, Granger fords are violent and hateful toward other people. Out of senseless perversion of a code of “honor”, they are involved in a feud, one that has been going on for generations with the shepherd sons. Its cause has been forgotten. Every Sunday, the shepherd sons and the Grange fords go to the same church. The shepherd sons sit on one side of their guns against the wall. And they listen to the preacher talk about brotherly love. When the sermon is over, they pick up their guns and they keep an eye on each other as they walk out the door so they will not get shot in the back. The satire is merciless, not only because these people are violent, but because they accept their violence as right. No one wants to reform. Huck keeps asking “Why?” It is just the way life is. This unquestioning acceptance of violence is the reason why Twain condemned southern society. The destruction and tyranny of Huck Finn’s father are other reasons for his escaping and desiring to be free. Huck Finn’s father is a part of that society with Huck Finn’s wishes. In contract to Miss Watson’s hypocr isy, his father presents the brutality and severity of civilization that threaten to destroy Huck Finn. His father believes that money and education are all the things of that time. Huck didn’t accept the violence from his father. Huck Finn’s freedom is mo dified by the presence of his father’s actions. Living in the woods, his father beats him quite frequently and sometimes leaves him locked up in the cabin for a long time. Once when his father returns from town, he is so drunk that he almost kills him. Huck Finn is mature enough to recognize the danger and only when he becomes convinced that his father represents immediate threat to his life does he decide to escape. Throughout his life plans to escape Huck Finn is more concerned for his life than anything else and prefers simply to disappear and begin a new life. Huck Finn’s desire to be free, at it’s deepest levels, and explores the possibility of an individual achieving true freedom in society. He is constantly forced to flee from a civilized society in order to preserve his sense of integrity and identity. It’s only when he is on the river in the group with Jim that flees secure and nature. Having escaped from the feud, he remarks that there is no home like raft and other places seem to be cramped up and smothery but a raft is. And he feels free and easy and comfortable very much on a raft. It is striking that whenever, Huck Finn comes into contact with the people along the river he is forced to assume a false identity. His initial escapes from his own cruel father and the society of St. Perterburry forces him to feign his own death. Brian Donnelly argues that Huck Finn’s true life could only be achieved by dying in the eyes of the people and by escaping down the Mississippi River. This is the way that Huck chose to the problem: violence.2.2.3 CowardThe violence on which southern culture rests is a pretence or illusion to disguise the basic cowardliness of the people and their refusal to act as individuals. Twain felt it even more deeply. People are vi olent, in Twain’s view, because they are cowards. Things are all mixed up in southern society, in any society, based on violence. It is a society without a leader. Twain’s attack on these people is bitter. In the middle part of this novel, the king and the duke were seriously evil; indeed,the long wilks episode is not funny. Had a lawyer Levi Bell, a precursor of Puddn’s head Wilson, not intervened, the outcome would have been dark in the measure of sherburn; in sherburn’s world there are no good people to be ruined. In Wilkses’ world, however, the good people are so powerless as the coward in Brecksville. The hopeless lambs offer no hope of betterment; they only measure its absence. Huck and Jim had left St. Petersburg with high hopes of freedom that are badly set back at cairo. The Willks episode ends in the utter defeat of these hopes. There seems to be no way to escape the duke and the king, the rest we have already discussed. Jim’s captivity is paralleled by Huck’s in thrall to Tom. It is on the very ve rge of the collapse of all possibility of freedom that Huck places his highest bid for it. Indeed, Jim has already been recaptures when Huck finds himself at last making the decision Twain had not been able to make at Cairo: “It was a close place,” he realizes, “I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knew it. I study a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:’ All right, then, I’ll go to hell.’” Let us say the obvious: Twain has chosen the route of social engagement when it’s too late in the story to take it. Huck has decided when he is willing to go to hell, but the harder decision was whether to go to Ohio. All in all, Huck is not a coward, those people who want to use violence to attack others can be called coward. During that years, the whole American society upheavaled strongly, and this novel deeply depicted the experience of this kind of person, under Mark Twain’s writing, coward is so vivid to embody the features of that age. We can pay more attention on sherburn, a merchant and a military man, a double pillar of society—but in a society that does not deserve to be supported. On the contrary, it merits being brought crashing down, for all the reasons Huck has been exposing through the incidents of his journey. This is not a deformable society; one can only curse it and leave. Sherburn curse it and stays, and Twain finds himself approving the cursing and not knowing what to think of the staying. Does he see something of his own situation in Sherburn furious isolation among idiots and knaves? Sherburn, moreover, is not merely an inhabitant of society; as storekeeper and military man, he is presuming ably one of those who shape it. In Huck, Twain depicts on the contrary someone who has no power at all. Homeless and no money soon became an orphan. The real questions were not whether he will leave society but whether he will enter it and to what end? From his onto logical distance, Huck looks at the world of men with natural detachment. At his most critical he feels “ashamed of the human race”. Instead, sherburn sets about shaming the damned human race, hating its inescapable presence. The murder of Boggs, who is the lowest representation of humanity in sherburn’s eyes, expresses that hatred: he tells Boggs to be gone, but Boggs stays and sherburn can’t stand his presence another moment. What sherburn cannot do is himself leave, so as to be, like Huck, peacefully and even compassionately ashamed of the human race—away from it.2.2.4 SlaveAfter reading this novel, this book has been brought to my attention by a surprising assortment of people: blacks and whites. At that time, blacks played a role of slave. The common element in this encounter has not been the kind of people making statements, nor shared opinions or political perspectives, nor even their assessments of the article. Rather, they have been united by a virtually uniform structure in their narratives, suggesting an odd sort of sub-genre. Sometimes these persons report their own experience of reading the essay, and sometimes they describe the experience of one of their students. The reader likes the essay but feels troubled about this, not knowing whether the author is black. Uneducated black slave named Jim, the book relates thestory of the escape of Jim from slavery and, more important, how Huck Finn, floating along with him and helping him as best as he could, changes his mind, his prejudice about black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man and as a close friend as well. Meanwhile, Jim is very kindhearted. All of Huck’s virtues come from his good heart and his sense of humanity, for most of the things he was taught turned out to be wrong; for example, he was taught that slavery was good and right, and that runaway slaves should be reported, so what Huck has got to do is to cut through social prejudices and social discriminations to find truth for himself. Huck starts by believing that blacks are by nature lower than whites-inferior animals of sorts in fact. Through their escape down the river, he gets to know Jim better and becomes more and more convinced that he is not only a man, but also a good man. Thus he ends up by accepting him not merely as a human being but also as a loyal friend.2.3 A Combination of Colloquial Language and SatireTo sum up, fundamentally, Twain is a great American writer. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an outstanding novel; one of the most successful writing styles is a combination of colloquial language and satire. In fact, most of Twai n’s works are the combination of both colloquial language and satire, but The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a case in point. On the other hand, it is his masterpiece as a humorist while the novel also can be eyed as a satire on sentimentality and Romanticism on the other. We have ever seen colloquial language and satire in some works, but no one’s writing is so appropriate like Twain’s. It displays American culture out of the ordinary and the attitude toward the entire society. In this book, the author use the first character to narrate, meanwhile colloquial language as the main writing language has come into the stage, in order to have the effect on vivid writing, satire is come out. In this situation, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn displays the major achievements of his art: writing in a rich and intricate style that supported his intense scrutiny of complex human experience.Ⅲ. The Significance of Mark Twain’s Writing StylesColloquial language and satire are so important in this novel. This image of the quintessential American writing is not really literary goes along with a vision of the great American novel but as a sort of spontaneous telling of unmediated experience. In the same passage Hemingway explains that he has never been able to read Thoreau for being unable to read literary naturalists, only those who are extremely accurate. There aren’t nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, remarks Huck at the end of his story. The heart of Twain’s achievement is his cre ation of Huck Finn, who embodies that mythic America, midway between the wilderness and the modern super state. That was why Ernest Hemingway once said “all modern American literatures came from one book written by Mark Twain called The Adventures of Huckl eberry Finn.” And it became Twain’s masterpiece. In short, neither enlightenment nor retrospection elevates the style or the philosophy of Huckleberry Finn’s narrator into the high culture that has placed the work itself at its pinnacle. Ⅴ. ConclusionAs one of America’s first and foremost realists and humorists, Mark Twain usually wrote about his own personal experiences and things he knew about from firsthand experience. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Twain’s best book because, for whate ver reasons, he brought together in it, with the highest degree of artistic balance, those most fundamental dualities running through his work and life from start to finish. Most of all it has to do with the structure of the sentence, which is simple, dire ct, and fluent, maintaining the rhythm of the word’s group of speech and the intonations of the speaking voice. Mark Twain’s colloquial style has influenced a。
An Analysis of Adventures of Tom Sawyer◇About Mark TwainMark Twain (1835-1910) is a famous American novelist. He specializes in using humor and irony, point out problems sharply and relentless, its creation will be realistic characterizations and lyrical romanticism harmonious unity. His work on the later American literature had a profound impact. Mark Twain is generally considered as a major milestone of American literature.Mark Twain is American literature of the founder of critical realism, the world-famous short story master. He went through the United States from the "free" capitalism to the development of imperialism, his ideas and creativity are reflected from the light make fun of the bitter irony then pessimistic stage of development. Fresh and powerful works of writing, examine with the natural and unique perspective, is considered a landmark in the history of American literature realism works. The late 19th century, with the United States entered into the imperialist stage of development, some of Mark Twain travels, essays, political commentary, and other significance of critical and disclosure had gradually weakened, while the mysterious mood of despair is somewhat elongated. Mark Twain was considered as the "Lincoln in American Literature." His main work has been mostly a Chinese translation.◇About the main plot, the hero"Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is one of Mark Twain's four masterpieces. Novel description is Tom Sawyer, led a group of children innocent romance of life. To get rid of dull homework, false teachings and the dull living environment, they made all kinds of adventures. Tom. Sawyer is naive and lively, one day he invited Huck to a graveyard at night to play, witnessed the tragedy of the murder by Indian Joe, through the ideological struggle he exposed the crime of Indian Joe . Indian Joe tried to kill Tom result slip into deep canyons, and die. Tom and Huck found a box of gold buried by Indian Joe, the two shared, has become a millionaire. American hypocrisy and vulgar novels of social customs were hypocritical religious satire and criticism.◇IntroductionThe story happened in an ordinary town besides the Mississippi River in the 19th century, Tom Sawyer was a mischievous child. He could always come up with a variety of pranks which made Aunt Polly feel helpless, and he always tried his best to avoid punishment. One day, Tom met a lovely girl, Becky Thatcher, she was the daughter of Judge Thatcher. Tom started pursuing her when he met her .His love seemed to get a response. There had a child called Huckleberry Finn in the town. His father was always drinking and his parents were often fighting. so he ran out of his family and lived alone. Yet people did not like him, but Tom was his good friend. One day, they appointed to the cemetery where they had seen an unexpected scene. They saw doctors Robinson, Injun Joe and Muff Potter tussle together. In the chaotic tussle Injun Joe killed the doctor, and then put the blame on Porter who was unconscious. Tom and Huck were terrified, they established a blood oath that never leaked the secret. After Porter was arrested, Tom was very guilty, and he often went to see him. At this time Tom was unfavorable in everything .Becky was angry with him and ignored him. Besides, aunt always scolded him and he felt that nobody care about him. So Tom went to a island with Huck and another child by a boat. After a short while they found thatthe people of the village thought they had died. And villagers were searching for their bodies. Tom returned to his aunt at night quietly and found that aunt Polly was sad for his death. Tom felt so ashamed. In the end, they came back when villagers were holding funeral for them. Summer was coming, Tom felt more anxious, because the judge would make a decision to Porter's crime. Tom finally overcame fear and selfishness, then he reported that Injun Joe was the murderer. But murderer escaped at last. Later, Tom came up with an idea to find treasures. Tom and Huck found Injun Joe and his ill-gotten gains. However, they did not know where he hid his money was. When Becky and students got out to have a picnic, Huck had known Joe wanted to harm Douglas because of her husband, who had sent him to prison. Thanks to Huck's message they avoided a tragedy, but Injun Joe escaped again. At this point, Tom and Becky entered a cave when they had a picnic .The hole was so deep that they could not find the way to come back. They met Injun Joe in the cave again. The villagers made great efforts to pull Tom and Becky out of death and then closed the cave. Later, Tom told the villagers that Injun Joe was still inside. When they found him, he had died in the cave. At last，Tom and Huck returned to the cave and found the treasures .◇Character analysisTom Sawyer’s Innocence and RomanceIn The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain managers his delicate pen well to delineate Tom’s romance with Becky Thatcher, a beautiful girl who attracts Tom at their first encounter. Tom immediately loses himself, and he forgets Amy Lawrence, with whom Tom makes engagement before.Tom Sawyer’s WitMark Twain here uses Tom’s whitewashing to express his own thoughts. The difference between play and work, Mark Twain points out that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. He powerfully criticizes the luxury of the aristocratic life. The wealthy gentlemen do not work but indulge themselves in wasting wealth.Tom Sawyer’s HeroismTom becomes a hero. People celebrate their narrow escape, and commend Tom’s brave deeds. Aunt Polly is proud of him too. After a series of adventure, Tom Sawyer’s personality has transformed from a naughty boy to a little hero. Mark Twain shows us a bad boy is possible to be a great hero, while the good boy can merely be a spectator. Mark Twain exagerates Tom Sawyer’s braveness to express his commends to the boy’s heroism, meanwhile, he tries to attack the stubborn traditional educational system. Tom Sawyer is naughty, adventurous, and desirous for freedom. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer actually awakens people’s instinct s that hide themselves in the bottom of heart. No matter how old one is, he is eager to be Tom Sawyer in the other side of his heart.◇The main idea"Adventures of Tom Sawyer" described Tom, a little boy, hating the boring living environment at home and school, longing for adventure and the pursuit of outdoor life. This novel meets the boys for the fame, heroism, gold and silver wealth and adulation of the deepest aspirations, and vividly depicts the scene of life in an American frontier town before the Civil War, not only can people enjoy the beauty, but also can make the nostalgia was tremendous satisfaction. Its description ofTom and other children's behavior and mental activity has universal significance, can inspire many people's interests. Structure of the novel is also complete. It has the "four narrative units" and "four plot lines": the story of Tom and Huck, the story of Tom and Muff Potter, Jackson’s Island and a series of events led to the discovery of wealth. These four plot lines are organically intertwined, so that the book has a strong dramatic color. The novel's more detailed psychological description, the narrator is the view that an adult used to observe the little boy. "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is indeed a good book worthy of appreciation. As a memorial to the early frontier life in the United States, it has a very valuable historical significance, and as an idea of the perfect, the characters vivid novel, it has high artistic value and aesthetic value.。
Mark Twain's(1835-1910) 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 was a great American writer, and he was also a famous speaker. 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 didn't like to go to school, and he constantly ran away from home. He used to be a journey man printer at the age of 18 and a pilot in the Mississippi River. His first novel, The Gilded Age, written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner, was an artistic failure.In 1867, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1867), a collection of short stories, makes Mark Twain's national reputation now well established as "the wild humorist of the Pacific slope". Twain's humour are always hoax, puns, tall tales, straight-faced exaggeration, anti-climax and tricks of travesty and invective. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was an immediate success as "a boy's book" when it was published; its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which Twain wrote some years later, became his masterwork, the one book from which, as Ernest Hemingway noted, "all modern American literature comes."The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written with the idea of lost boyhood. Twain used the first person narration. It is Mark Twain’s greatest achievement. It presents the world’s view of America and has a profound impact on the development of American writing. Twain's influences on American writers of the 20th century was his presentation of native American material, his art of the vernacular idiom, his departure from the tradition of the 19th century gentility, and his sense of alienation. This novel shows Twain's satire on southern culture before the Civil War, around 1850, when the Mississippi V alley was still being settled. Twain condemned racial discrimination. It also shows his satire on the poor whites, their ludicrous idea—they were white and they were better than black slaves, and that his satire on the genteel upper-class southerners—a very aristocratic life and being violent accepting their violence as right. The novel uses vernacular language, unpretentious, colloquial, and poetic style and the directness of the language. Twain depicted social life through descriptions of local places and people he knew best.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the major achievements of his art—the carefully controlled point of view, with its implicit ironies expressed through the voice of a semiliterate boy; the masterful use of dialects; the felicitous balancing of nostalgic romanticism and realism, humor and pathos, innocence and evil. This novel shows his ability to capture the enduring, archetypal, mythic images of America and to create the most memorable characters in all of American fiction.。
Part one : the brief introduction of Mark TwainReal name: Samuel Langhorne Clemens['klemənz]Birth place: in the town of FloridaAt the age of 4：his family moved to a town on the Mississippi River, where two famous books ,The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) were written.He grew up in a wealthy family.in 1847:father died, which made the family in hardship---- he left school,-- worked for a printerin 1851: finished his apprenticeship,he began to work for his b rother’s newspaper, But he thought it was too small----- found jobs in many cities (e.g. New York)in his early twenties: gave up printing career-- a riverboat pilot-- influenced him a great deal, provided him with the pen name Mark Twain. Life on the river also gave Twain material for several of his booksuntil 1861:the Civil War exploded, shut down the Mississippi for travel and shipping---- made his way west---- a silver miner--- journalism.In 1863: sign articles with the name Mark Twain.in 1870.:he got married.（Olivia,）the late 1860s and 1870s：many of his novels were instant bestseller, Twain’s position as a giant in American literary circleson April 21, 1910: Twain diedhe’s not rich,but it didn’t influence his humour,intelligence,and reputation,he is regarded as one of the most famous American.he had a lot of friends,including some famous people.main works:Tom Sawyer (1881) 《汤姆·索亚历险记》The Prince and The Pauper (1881). 《王子与贫儿》Life On the Mississippi （1883）《密西西比河上》Huckleberry Finn （1884.）《哈克贝里·芬历险记》Millions of Pounds《百万英镑》To Run for Governor《竞选州长》Card County Frog《卡县名蛙》名言logionTell the truth forever, such of words you need not recorded you to once say some what.永远说实话，这样的话你就不用去记你曾经说过些什么。
Mark Twain(1835-1910)●Historical BackgroundTwain lived in the stirring(动荡) years in American history ---- the American-Mexican War, The Civil War, the Gold Rush, the western expansion, the American Spanish War, the rapid development of capitalism and later the emergence of imperialism along with the first economic depressions, etc.●Major works by Mark TwainThe Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865) 《加拉维加县有名的跳蛙》Innocents Abroad (1869) 《傻瓜出国记》Roughing it(1872)《苦行记》The Gilded Age (1873) 《镀金时代》A Tramp Abroad (1880) (《国外漫游》)The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) 《汤姆索耶历险记》The Prince And The Pauper (1882) 《王子与贫儿》The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) 《哈克费恩历险记》Life On The Mississippi (1883)《密西西比河上》A Connecticut Yank ee In King Arthur’s Court (1889)《亚瑟王朝廷上的康涅狄格州美国人》A Million-Pound Note (1893)《百万英镑》Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) 《傻瓜威尔逊》The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900)《败坏哈德莱堡的人》The Mysterious Stranger (1916)《神秘陌生人》What Is Man? (1918)《人是怎么回事?》Autobiography of Mark Twain(1959)《马克吐温自传》●CommentsHe is the writer H. L. Mencken called“the true father of our national literature” and America’s most famous humorist and the author of popular and outstanding autobiographical works, travel books and novels.All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. ... There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.----Ernest Hemingway ●Characteristics of His Writinghis style was precise, enviable, and well-crafted. He was a master of irony, turning the tables on those most confident. His ear was finely attuned to nuances of dialect and of the vernacular of different classes and ethnic groups. His characters were alive and fallible.His journalistic proses were filled with terse sarcasm. His use of local color and historical settings to illuminate and shed light on contemporary society has served as a creative inspiration forgenerations of writers to come.●Famous Remarks1、“The best way to cheer your self up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”2、“Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.”3、“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, notman's.”4、“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never showsto anybody.”1Mark Twain ---Mirror of AmericaNoel GroveMost Americans remember Mark Twain as the father of Huck Finn's idyllic cruise through eternal boyhood and Tom Sawyer's endless summerof freedom and adventure. In-deed, this nation's best-loved author was every bit as ad-venturous, patriotic, romantic, and humorous as anyone has ever imagined. I found another Twain as well – one who grew cynical, bitter, saddened by the profound personal tragedies life dealt him, aman who became obsessed with the frailties of the human race, who saw clearly ahead a black wall of night.Tramp printer, river pilot , Confederate guerrilla, prospector, starry-eyed optimist, acid-tongued cynic: The man who became Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens and he ranged across the nation for more than a third of his life, digesting the new American experience before sharing it with the world as writer and lecturer. He adopted his pen name from the cry heard in his steamboat days, signaling two fathoms (12 feet) of water -- a navigable depth. His popularity is attested by the fact that more than a score of his books remain in print, and translations are still read around the world.The geographic core, in Twain's early years, was the great valleyof the Mississippi River, main artery of transportation in the young nation's heart. Keelboats ,flatboats , and large rafts carried the first major commerce. Lumber, corn, tobacco, wheat, and furs moved downstream to the delta country; sugar, molasses, cotton, and whiskey traveled north. In the 1850's, before the climax of westward expansion, the vast basin drained three-quarters of the settled United States.Young Mark Twain entered that world in 1857 as a cub pilot on a steamboat. The cast of characters set before him in his new profession was rich and varied a cosmos. He participated abundantly in this life, listening to pilothouse talk of feuds, piracies, lynchings, medicine shows, and savage waterside slums. All would resurface in his books, together with the colorful language that he soaked up with a memory that seemed phonographicSteamboat decks teemed not only with the main current of pioneering humanity, but its flotsam of hustlers, gamblers, and thugs as well. 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. His four and a half years in the steamboat trade marked the real beginningof his education, and the most lasting part of it. In later life Twain acknowledged that the river had acquainted him with every possible typeof human nature. Those acquaintanceships strengthened all his writing,but he never wrote better than when he wrote of the people a-long the great stream.When railroads began drying up the demand for steam-boat pilots and the Civil War halted commerce, Mark Twain left the river country. Hetried soldiering for two weeks with a motley band of Confederateguerrillas who diligently avoided contact with the enemy. Twain quitafter deciding, "... I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating. "He went west by stagecoach and succumbed to the epidemic of goldand silver feverin Nevada's Washoe region. For eight months he flirted with the colossal wealth available to the lucky and the persistent, and was rebuffed. Broke and discouraged, he accepted a job as reporter with the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, to literature's enduring gratitude.From the discouragement of his mining failures, Mark Twain began digging his way to regional fame as a newspaper reporter and humorist. The instant riches of a mining strike would not be his in the reporting trade, but for making money, his pen would prove mightier than hispickax. In the spring of 1864, less than two years after joining the Territorial Enterprise, he boarded the stagecoach for San Francisco, then and now a hotbed of hopeful young writers.Mark Twain honed and experimented with his new writing muscles, but he had to leave the city for a while because of some scathing columns he wrote. Attacks on the city government, concerning such issues as mistreatment of Chinese, so angered officials that, he fled to the goldfields in the Sacramento Valley. His descriptions of the rough-country settlers there ring familiarly in modern world accustomed to trend setting on the West Coast. "It was a splendid population –for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home... It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day –and when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as usual, and says 'Well, that is California all over. '"In the dreary winter of 1864-65 in Angels Camp, he kept a notebook. Scattered among notations about the weather and the tedious mining-camp meals lies an entry noting a story he had heard that day – an entrythat would determine his course forever: "Coleman with his jumpingfrog – bet stranger $50 – stranger had no frog, and C. got him one –in the meantime stranger filled C. 's frog full of shot and he couldn't jump. The stranger's frog won." Retold with his descriptive genius, the story was printed in newspapers across the United States and became known as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Mark Twain's national reputation was now well established as "the wild humorist of the Pacific slope."Two years later the opportunity came for him to take a distinctly American look at the Old World. In New York City the steamship QuakerCity prepared to sail on a pleasure cruise to Europe and the Holy Land. For the first time, a sizable group of United States citizens planned to journey as tourists -- a milestone , of sorts, in a country's development. Twain was assigned to accompany them, as a correspondentfor a California newspaper. If readers expected the usual glowing travelogue , they were sorely surprised.Unimpressed by the Sultan of Turkey, for example, he reported, “... one could set a trap anywhere and catch a dozen abler men in a night.” Casually he debunked revered artists and art treasures, and took unholy verbal shots at the Holy Land. Back home, more newspapers began printing his articles. America laughed with him. Upon his return to the Statesthe book version of his travels, The Innocents Abroad, became an instant best-seller.At the age of 36 Twain settled in Hartford, Connecticut. His best books were published while he lived there.As early as 1870 Twain had experimented with a story about the boyhood adventures of a lad he named Billy Rogers. Two years later, he changed the name to Tom, and began shaping his adventures into a stage play. Not until 1874 did the story begin developing in ear nest. After publication in 1876, Tom Sawyer quickly became a classic tale ofAmerican boyhood. Tom's mischievous daring, ingenuity , and the sweet innocence of his affection for Becky Thatcher are almost as sure to be studied in American schools to-day as is the Declaration of Independence.Mark Twain's own declaration of independence came from another character. Six chapters into Tom Sawyer, he drags in "the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard." Fleeing a respectable life with the puritanical Widow Douglas, Huck protests to his friend, Tom Sawyer: "I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't work, Tom. It ain't for me ... The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell – everything's so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."Nine years after Tom Sawyer swept the nation, Huck was given a life of his own, in a book often considered the best ever written about Americans. His raft flight down the Mississippi with a runaway slave presents a moving panorama for exploration of American society.On the river, and especially with Huck Finn, Twain found the ultimate expression of escape from the pace he lived by and often deplored, from life's regularities and the energy-sapping clamor for success.Mark Twain suggested that an ingredient was missing in the American ambition when he said: "What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges."Personal tragedy haunted his entire life, in the deaths of loved ones: his father, dying of pneumonia when Sam was 12; his brother Henry, killed by a steamboat explosion; the death of his son, Langdon, at 19 months. His eldest daughter, Susy, died of spinal meningitis, Mrs. Clemens succumbed to a heart attack in Florence, and youngest daughter, Jean, an epileptic, drowned in an upstairs bathtub.Bitterness fed on the man who had made the world laugh. The moralizing of his earlier writing had been well padded with humor. Now the gloves came off with biting satire. He pretended to praise the U. S. military for the massacre of 600 Philippine Moros in the bowl of a volcanic, crater. In The Mysterious Stranger, he insisted that man drop his religious illusions and depend upon himself, not Providence, to make a better world.The last of his own illusions seemed to have crumbled near the end. Dictating his autobiography late in life, he commented with a crushing sense of despair on men's final release from earthly struggles: "... they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; where they have left no sign that they had existed –a world which will lament them a day and for-get them forever.”(from National Geographic, Sept., 1975)。
