Comparative Analysis of the Writing Styles of Henry James and Mark Twain - Essay Example

Twain’s satirical approach has often drawn a reader’s keen perception around the subject which unfolds its essence in a manner that walks the audience through an adventure of thoughts and sentiments in tale after tale of conveying realism or truths which he and James are seemingly in agreement to explore and deliver with art. Through “The Art of Fiction”, James brings across an insight that necessitates boundless liberty in the process of creating fiction which, according to him, must not be written to bear a rigid structure.

As such, he expresses this argument by stating “Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints.” His experiences manifest in the type of language and content by which he intends to satisfy impressions and scrutinizing intellects that are able to account for the author’s life when James sets himself out to determine a real connection between a human psyche and an emotion based upon wandering an environment of mixed unity and perplexity or of innocence and perversion.

Whenever he tries to communicate the thematic features of his stories, hence, James may be claimed to have profoundly dwelt in rich aspects of truth and the range of flexibility it can be treated with. To this, he further adds “The successful application of any art is a delightful spectacle, but the theory, too, is interesting . Discussion, suggestion, formulation, these things are fertilizing when they are frank and sincere.” On the other hand, Twain’s elements of composition are characterized by intelligently crafted writing made light by a less than peculiar comical relief which almost any reader can readily engage with.

Similar to the method employed by James, a sensible piece by Twain seeks to appeal to the immediate human nature or set of instincts in establishing the substance of theme via the perspective of the main protagonist who normally happens to assume a narrating function. In most of his novels, Twain requires the effort of imparting his own level of consciousness to the reader by projecting its synthesis in the mood and psychology which appropriate characters are designed with. He materializes such concept in “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” which is a humorous narrative written in the first person whereby Twain enables the speaker to elaborate on fine details that register concreteness to memory as on incorporating “he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned his initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm” in reference to Simon Wheeler.

The descriptive endeavor is later discovered to be that unique attribute of Twain in weaving humor out of each stage that inevitably develops significant scene or characterization. Though James occasionally execute around imagery with an adjustable measure of complexity which may be perceived through the kind of setting or climatic plot, his strategy places a capacity for one to look beyond work or phrase construction to see the simple, plain, and essential. Even with double negatives and run-ons that contain a bulk of adjectives where original subjects are rather likely to get lost among prepositional clauses, James maintains the