Mark Twain and a Common Message of the Importance of Independent Thinking - Essay Example

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 in Florida, Missouri, the author widely known as Mark Twain has been one of America’s most famous authors for more than one hundred years. ‘Forced’ to leave school at the age of 12 following his father’s death, Clemens supported himself in the newspaper industry until he fell in love with Mississippi river boats. For several years, he worked very successfully as a river pilot on the Mississippi until his younger brother’s death caused him to leave the profession. “An important part of a river pilot’s craft is knowing the waters and depths, which, for the mighty Mississippi and her reefs, snags, and mud are ever changing. To ‘mark twain’ is to sound the depths and deem them safe for passage, the term adopted by Clemens as his pen name in 1863” (Merriman, 2006). A humorist, a philosopher, a lecturer, an essayist and a writer of stories and poems, Twain infused his stories with a call to a higher understanding, urging his readers to plunge the depths of their understanding and adapt their behavior to a more accurate reflection of their inner beliefs (Railton, 2007). He does this through a multi-layered approach that includes language choice, tone, character development and story structure that all serve to entertain at the same time that they instruct. As a children’s writer, Twain is brilliant at providing short entertaining stories that engage children’s minds, encouraging them to think critically about the reading as well as their own understandings. Through his work, Twain consistently questions the social norms of his time, such as the notion that Indians are inherently savage and evil or that black people are meant to be slaves. Unequal race relations was one of the principle themes in his writings as he constantly questions the true measure of a man and illustrates how the color of a man’s skin has little to do with his ability to do right or do wrong. Whether discussing the differences between people of color and whites or the relative merits of two distinct individuals of equal social distinction, “the thrust was difficult to miss: nurture, not nature, was the key to social status. The features of the black man that provided the stuff of prejudice – manner of speech for example – were, to Twain, indicative of nothing other than the conditioning that slavery imposed on its victims” (Carter, 2008). These sentiments had been present throughout his writing career, but with the stamp of success to validate his words, “Mark Twain began to lay bare truths about racial oppression with a particular vigor, using a new and democratic literary language that would forever change American prose” (Tita, 1998). He also worked to encourage critical thinking within his readers as a means of helping them see for themselves where society’s morals and values fail to live up to their own expectations. One of his most popular and more controversial books has been Huckleberry Finn. In working to defend the book during a recent push to have it removed from a school’s required reading list, one expert in children’s literature argued the ways that the book works to teach critical thinking skills in its content and through its literary elements (Wascoe, 2007). Twain struggled to always question the values of his society, consistently pointing out contradictions in logic or unthinking acceptance of a norm that no longer makes sense. Finally, Twain couched his stories in the proper vernacular of the region from which they came, faithfully capturing the lessons contained within, rather than attempting to rephrase them in the stilted language of the north. Perhaps the best way to illustrate these elements of Twain’s work is to examine more fully some examples. Short Stories – Jumping Frogs A glimpse into Twain’s numerous short stories reveals these concepts through the skillful use of a variety of literary devices. Unlike the novel where each of the details can be fully developed as individual elements and as they contribute toward the whole, every element in the short story must multitask, working to deliver an enjoyable and comprehensive story while also helping to develop all other elements expected in a longer volume. A story such as “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is a prime example of how Twain combines the use of several devices at once to call into question the standardized approach to society and questions the status quo while it also illustrates the central importance of the freedom to use different language forms as a means of conveying ideas. The story begins and ends in the point of view of a narrator as he begins to set the stage for the story he’s about to relate and as he makes a rather hurried exit from the scene. The almost conversational tone of this speaker quickly draws the reader into a close circle of friends with its immediate confidence expressed by the description of Simon Wheeler as “good-natured” and “garrulous” (1). His own humor is of a more sophisticated cynical nature as he hints that his friend may have been setting him up for the experience of the old man, knowing the unique character of someone like Simon had to be experienced rather than described. As he indicates his reason for finding this individual, the speaker distances himself from the town in which he is visiting with his references to his friend in the east and through his use of language. At the same time, this narrator automatically establishes himself as being of a class somewhat above that of Simon, again primarily through his use of language. In statements such as “he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me” (1), the narrator contrasts himself sharply against the less complicated vocabulary of Simon. Through this introduction, then, the reader is given a mental image of a highly educated, widely traveled civilized gentleman who remains fashionably cynical of his friends and not altogether appreciative of the amusements of his lesser-educated fellows. Although the scene in which our narrator finds himself is adequately described through his own words, it is through the narrative of Simon himself that this world, and the story itself, truly comes to life. By switching the point of view to Simon, Twain is able to paint a graphic image of the rustic surroundings that wasn’t quite grasped by the more tainted words of the narrator. The rolling paragraphs, each seeming to tell a story of its own, are punctuated with plenty of small town vernacular that not only serve to emphasize the smallness of the town and its limited entertainments, but also serve to further flesh it out, providing a more concrete picture of Angels and the type of simple men that inhabit it. Not overly concerned with his choice of words, Simon allows his thoughts to ramble from one story to another while he tells the narrator a little about the man Jim Smiley, who was quite an amusement of his own while he lived there. As he warms more to his subject, he describes “a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you’d think he warn’t worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal something” (3). The poor grammar, the choice of subject and the appraisal of a man who apparently owns nothing “worth a cent”, all contribute to the image of the town. Through this type of language, the reader is constantly reminded of the dusty towns of the mining west and the lawlessness of their daily activities and amusements, yet it does so in a friendly, appreciative manner that would have been impossible from the lips of the narrator. Through this simple technique of switching points of view and use of language details such as vernacular and speaking styles, Twain is able to capture a moment in time of the old west even as he succeeds in providing an entertaining tale. The fact that the story of the jumping frog from the title occupies less than half of the five or so pages of the tale is itself indicative of the rambling, disorganized nature of the small mining town that could never have been illustrated through the more educated and regulated brain of the narrator. The concept of the jumping frog is reinforced through the structure of the story and becomes a referent for Simon only after the reader has employed critical thinking skills to understand how the concept of a jumping frog relates to the characterization of the old man. As in most of his stories, short or long, Twain manages to resist a ‘standardized’ voice and used his unique means of expression to masterfully present a fully faceted image that works to encourage critical thinking, criticize wholesale condemnation of groups perceived to be somehow ‘less than’ by some arbitrary measure and examines where true value and morality lies. Roughing it Presenting himself as himself, Twain writes about his adventures in the far west in his book Roughing It. It is written in a strong vernacular style that retains the character of the man himself through cutting humor, frequent tangents and characteristic tall-tales interspersed among the narrative. During his travels, Twain necessarily heard stories about the American Indians, perhaps even meeting them himself. Throughout this book, he frequently calls into question the stereotypes of Indians he knew ‘back home.’ He does this primarily through his use of tone. One instance in which this can be seen occurs early in the book when he and some friends are traveling by coach through hostile Indian country. He describes the care they took to ensure their survival by buttoning down the curtains and ensuring that their weapons were at the ready. However, when the coach is attacked, it is night and no one can see the attackers clearly. As they “lay there in the dark, listening to each other’s story of how he first felt and how many thousand Indians he first thought had hurled themselves upon us … And we theorized, too, but there was never a theory that would account for our driver’s voice being out there, nor yet account for his Indian murderers talking such good English, if they were Indians” (60). Twain’s tone highlights the concept that the men in the coach never considered that their attackers might have been the outlaws they were rather than savage Indians with inexplicable abnormalities. Referring back to the merits of his work in general, it can be seen that through this sort of cynical tone, made possible by his own refusal to conform to ‘academic’ standardized language and formatting, Twain questions the social impression of the American Indians by critically examining his own ideas and experiences to expose the very human nature of an invaded people. In doing so, he exposes the tendency to think in terms of standardizing all life by subduing differences. His chosen means of expression encourages the mental gears of the reader to turn as well, encouraging critical thinking in his reader as they puzzle out the joke they know is hidden within the lines. This same cynical tone is adopted throughout the book when it comes to questions of value as well as race. For example, Twain will wax eloquent upon the observable merits of a particular horse and his high monetary value, but then follow this up immediately with a humorous description of how this same horse is utterly useless for the purposes to which Twain intended to put him. As a result, this ‘valuable’ horse is valueless because he cannot do the job for which a horse is required. By combining these two issues under the same tone of voice, Twain finally manages to throw doubt upon the values and morals of his own society through his own experience. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn In one of his most popular novels, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain again questions social norms and values as he tells the story of a young boy named Huckleberry Finn and an escaped slave named Jim. The plot flows naturally as a frame story as the two characters drift down the Mississippi River on a homemade raft in the mid-1800s. A crisis of decision is faced in each situation while time spent traveling provides time for reflection and application of lessons learned. Thus, in this story, Twain instructs the reader through his development of character rather than through tone of voice. From the opening lines, Huckleberry Finn is understood to be highly uneducated and uncivilized but still highly opinionated regarding his view of the world he lives in. Throughout the opening chapter, Huck’s uncivilized ways are contrasted against the genteel ways of the Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. While Huck prefers his “old rags and my sugar-hogshead” (2), admitting that he is “so ignorant and so kind of low-down and ornery” (17), the older ladies insist upon him being dressed decently and gaining some book learning. They spend a great deal of their time trying to teach him the ‘proper’ ways of society, including his manners while in society, his academic subjects and his religious duties. According to the Widow Douglas, Huck “must help other people and do everything I could for other people and look out for them all the time and never think about myself” (17). Although Huck questions some of the seemingly meaningless niceties he’s supposed to observe as silly or shallow, Twain builds on his audience’s expectations that society, with all of its education, manners, fashion and wealth, is the preferred and superior state. However, Huck quickly becomes disillusioned with society as the story progresses. He perceives that while Tom Sawyer has “all the marks of a Sunday-school” (21), he has none of the associated values or depth expected, an observation he will soon come to apply to much of the society he meets in his adventures. In direct contrast to the moralities of society and the contradictions apparent within the actual social group, Huck’s trip down the river gives him a chance to consider the more ‘natural’ approach to morality in which life tends to operate more along a simple golden rule. While the courts are willing to throw Huck back to his father despite the better judgment of some of the townspeople, Jim strives to protect Huck from the ugliness of the world, such as when they discovered Pap’s dead body in the floating house and Jim wouldn’t let Huck look at it. As Huck hears the murderers planning to allow their former partner to drown on the wrecked steamship, he decides it is right and fair to maroon all three men, particularly when he and Jim discover they will need a way off the boat, but then feels guilty about the action and contrives to send someone after them. “I was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would ‘a’ done it” (103). As he drifts down the river and gains a broader perspective of the true value and morality of life, he resolves his own major internal conflict regarding Jim, deciding that owning slaves is not moral at all, and proves the ‘social’ rule of always helping others before oneself by undergoing several adventures simply to try to keep Jim from being sold by the Duke and Dauphin. Throughout the story, Mark Twain illustrates again and again how society’s morals are twisted out of place to the point where they have become meaningless mannerisms rather than acted upon beliefs. Again and again, Huck comes across people who act in direct opposition to the morals they supposedly uphold. During the trip down the river, Huck is forced to question the ideals he’s been taught in society and compare this with his concepts of right and wrong based on a more natural and sincere response to the individual character of the human being. In demonstrating this difference, Twain begins to paint a picture in which the morality of society is compared unfavorably with the more sincere and heartfelt ‘natural’ morality of the golden rule existing upon a sliding scale of relative value. As the reader flows with Huck down the Mississippi River with his trusted friend Jim, Twain is able to take his reader from the more common understanding of empty social morality prevalent in his time and encourage a more natural and individualistic ‘natural’ morality of the senses. Pudd’nhead Wilson Through his novel Pudd’nhead Wilson, Twain strips away the conventional niceties that hide the underlying truths of society but again chooses to do so through a unique literary approach, this time through the use of structure. The book tells two basic stories. The first story is that of Pudd’nhead Wilson. Wilson is a lawyer who came to the town of Dawson’s Landing hoping to make a name for himself as a lawyer. Because of a poorly timed comment, he instead made a name for himself as an idiot. Determined to overcome this reputation, Wilson stays in town and supports himself doing numerous odd jobs throughout the village. To keep his mind sharp, he becomes interested in the new science of fingerprinting. “He carried in his coat pocket a shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five inches long and three inches wide. Along the lower edge of each strip was pasted a slip of white paper. He asked people to pass their hands through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the natural oil) and then making a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. Under this row of faint grease prints he would write a record on the strip of white paper” (Ch. 2). These collected fingerprints would prove the method by which the lawyer finally clears his name and through which Twain will make his claim that there is little difference between ‘black’ and ‘white’ other than an accepted social standard consistently reinforced. The other story is that of Valet de Chambre. Valet de Chambre, a name that actually makes reference to a toilet, is the son of a woman who, because she is one sixteenth black, is, by law, a slave. “Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a Negro. He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the children apart … [only] by their clothes; for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to its knees, and no jewelry” (Ch. 2). In order to protect her young son, who appears no different than the son of the master, Roxy switches the babies, thus allowing Chambers to grow up as Tom and Tom to grow up as a slave. “Tom got all the petting, Chambers got none. Tom got all the delicacies, Chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar. In consequence Tom was a sickly child and Chambers wasn’t. Tom was ‘fractious,’ as Roxy called it, and overbearing; Chambers was meek and docile” (Ch. 3). Despite the understanding that one boy was white and should be preferred while the other boy was black and should be ‘kept in his place,’ Twain makes it clear which boy was the more valued of the community through the intervention of Judge Driscoll. However, even when Chambers is ‘rightfully’ recognized as being white, it is clear that he will not be able to take his place in upper society because of his lack of ‘upbringing’ or ‘civilizing’ as Huck might say. Thus, Puddin’head Wilson exposes through its structure the sometimes unanticipated assumptions one makes within one’s own mind. The storyline of the lawyer Puddin’head enables Twain to make his common appeal to his reader to employ critical thinking skills regardless of what they do. Wilson works doing whatever he can, but he remembers to keep his mind active through individual research. As he has done in many of his stories, Twain uses the other storyline to call into question the true value of a man as he contrasts the two boys’ characters and the differences in how they are brought up. In doing so, he begins to create doubt in the mind of the reader whether value lies in the blood or in the soul as it becomes clear that the black boy is the morally preferable character. Where these two stories meets is an explosion of ideas as the reader is forced to question their responses to the revelation that the boy labeled black was white and the boy labeled white was black. Do they blame the failure of Tom on his ‘black’ blood, on his coddled childhood or on something else entirely and what does this indicate about their own beliefs? Conclusion Intuitively, intentionally or a combination of both, Mark Twain wove a common message of the importance of independent thinking as a means of protecting the natural morality that ensures justice for all on a peaceful planet throughout his writings. Whether short stories, autobiographies or ‘tall tales’, Twain’s works continue to engage the mind of the reader through his humorous approach to life and language. Once engaged, the mind is then led on a story that encourages critical thinking through the use of tone, structure, character development or a variety of literary techniques intended to reinforce these underlying themes of the true value of a human being and the injustice and immorality of many of society’s most accepted ideas. As the mind discovers this process in the story, it begins to apply it to the self, leading one on a similar process of fundamental questioning of beliefs and perhaps affecting positive social change. Works Cited Carter. “Getting Past Black and White.” Time Magazine. July 3, 2008. January 8, 2009 < http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1820162,00.html> Merriman, C.D. “Mark Twain.” The Literature Network. Jalic, 2006. January 8, 2009 Railton, Stephen. Mark Twain in His Times. Virginia: University of Virginia, 2007. January 8, 2009 < http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/index2.html> Titta, R. “Mark Twain and the Onset of the Imperialist Period.” The Internationalist. (September-October, 1997). January 8, 2009 Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1994 (1884). Twain, Mark. “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. New York: Bantam Books, 1957, pp. 1-6. Twain, Mark. Roughing It. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1817. Twain, Mark. Pudd’nhead Wilson: And Those Extraordinary Twins. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1916. Wascoe, Dan. “Huckleberry Finn wins a first round in St. Louis Park.” Star Tribune. March 21, 2007. January 8, 2009 Read More