Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup by Mark Twain - Essay Example

Mark Twain is famous for his humor essays. The influence of the Western folklore was the most important forming factor of the creative activity of the writer. The traditions of the famous American writers such as Harris Haliburton, Artemus Ward, and Petroleum Nasby had a great impact on Mark Twain’s writing. They were the first who showed real life through their characters. Mark Twain found a great material for his creative activity in the works by these authors. Some of the methods of Mark Twain such as the minimum of descriptions, the maximum of action, the dynamics of narration, dialect usage and so on, take their beginning in humor traditions of the 30 – 70-ies. It should be mentioned that Twain’s humor was changing from stage to stage of its development. The essays by Mark Twain are characterized by the special dramatic conflict and it serves as a source of their hidden dynamism. The inner collision of his humour cycle is the contradiction of live, free, energetic life and the system of artificial sides of life. Twain used the methods of grotesque and hyperbole widely. In his interpretation the ‘horror’ actions look funny and humorous. The humor essays of Mark Twain bring reader to the special world. The author releases the energy of life finding it not only in people but also in some other things. Very often different things by nature are together as if they are closely connected. It is a king of reflective method. As an example I will use the essay ‘Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup’ where the spouses McWilliamses live in a silent surrounding of carpets, sinks, glasses, tables and fighting with these things is the main target of life of this family. Mrs McWilliams is right when in all these things she sees the helpmates of thunderstorm, though it is a fruit of her imagination. The author gives strong energy to everything – to the things and characters themselves. Mark Twain considered that even the most easy humour perform some special social task: it is a way to destroy dogmas and all kinds of lie. Mark Twain tried to release human mind from moral, religious and literary standards and show the truth of life. The writer discovered ‘New America’ and found the new features in everyday life. He could give the shade of sensation and unusual vision to the most banal situations. The example of this is Twain’s essay ‘My watch’. The plot of this story is close to the story “Watch” by W.C.Fields. The main character of the story is a poor man who bought watch and spent all his money. He just relied on the shop assistant who promised that the watch was perfect. Then the poor man found out that his new watch was not as good as he had thought before. So the life of this man turns to the endless number of visits to the watch service. Every time the poor man is told that his watch needs to be repaired. The main character realizes that watch becomes the pain of his life. Comparing this story to the similar story by W.C.Fields it becomes clear that the distance between the writers is really great because of accents positions. In the story by Fields the workers of the watch service are similar to each other and in the story by Mark Twain they and their reaction are really different and individual. The writer speaks about watch as about live person. Mark Twain discovers the world and tries to see new features in everything. In addition he wants to show this to the reader. One of the most important methods used by Twain is the special slow rhythm of narration. Thus, in ‘Taming the Bicicle’ one event that is not so important gains the effect of ‘Iliad’. This event has stages: “We got up a handsome speed, and presently traversed a brick, and I went out over the top of the tiller and landed, head down, on the instructor's back, and saw the machine fluttering in the air between me and the sun. It was well it came down on us, for that broke the fall, and it was not injured.” This method helps the readers to see new features of the events of everyday life which seem to be not so important. The writer likes to show life through the character of a simple person who sees the things in their true view. This method is universal for Mark Twain. A simple person is a central character in many stories by Mark Twain. Twain created this character as a specific method of depicting the world. This character is naive, silly and easy and in the right moment they can say something that is really the key to understanding the essay. The way of thinking of the simple person faces the reality and this forms the comic effect. In the conciseness of a simple person all the events have unusual interpretation. That is why Twain likes to be the narrator from the first person. It helps him to show the inner world of the character and to fond the base of conflicts. Generally an image a simple person is widely used in humor. The simplicity of character, their naïve features serve the base for different comic situations and on the contrary are a mask for neglecting the general rules and norms. The image of a simple person is a little bit dangerous for American way of life. This character goes deep in details of American social life. Twain realized the negative features of American civilization and its ability to destroy the moral bases of human beings. Mark Twain gained the fame of the humorist number one in the United States of America. Though Twain was sure that it is impossible to be only humorous in literature, the task of every writer to teach. Twain considered that a humorous essay is really independent when it has the image of the world reality and reflects its special point of view. Mark Twain widely used the method of parody. Twain’s parody is understood as a sign of changing romanticism to realism. The early creative activity of the writer reflects the reality of the world using the folklore models. The writer liked to describe his country. America was a new country which did not have any archaic monuments, scripts and traditions. But Twain had a fresh look at everything that was going on and that was why the monarchy Europe with its feudal past and complicated system of values was not so attractive for the writer. I thinl that Twain’s burlesque, caricature, farce, grotesque, absurdity, the materialization of metaphor, and other features of humour culture of American people became not only the cultural wealth for people but also the fundamentals of realistic poetics. The ‘antiliterary’ features of Twain, his disrespect to literary authorities made the writer closer to people and their life and traditions. In addition to this Twain’s sarcasm has a great part of optimistic spirit. In his early creative activity Mark Twain strongly believed in the special historical mission of the United States of America as an ideal of democracy which is creating great culture. Later the writer would express some doubts in this idea. Mark Twain was the representative of the democratic literary current. The creative activity of the writer became the point of mixture for different art and literary tendencies and that is why the works by Mark Twain can be considered as those which synthesize romanticism and realism. Works cited Churchwell Sarah. Mark Twain: not an American but the American. The Guardian, Saturday 30 October 2010. Twain Mark . Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 Mark Twain (Author) › Visit Amazon's Mark Twain Page Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author Are you an author? Learn about Author Central University of California Press; 1 edition, 2010. Print. Ziff Larzer. Mark Twain. Oxford University Press. New York, 2004. Print. http://www.online-literature.com/twain/ Read More