The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain - Research Paper Example

18 May The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg Analysis Paper Written by Mark Twain and first published in 1899 in the Harper’s Monthly, ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg’ is a short story that revolves around the people of Hadleyburg, a town devoid of any kind of temptation and desire. The people living in this place do not have any qualms about owning a higher lifestyle or giving into desire and its other subsidiaries to obtain something. The people living in Hadleyburg are honest citizens free of any kind of corruption. However, the story takes a turn when a stranger passes the town and the citizens happen to offend them in their own way. Following this, the stranger decides to teach the entire region of Hadleyburg a lesson by turning them into corrupt citizens. He wants to make them aware of the ‘actual realities’ of life by making them turn to look at the kind of temptations and corruption that life actually contains. The stranger happens to have an entire plan of action in order to go about this process as well. This story has been written by the author as a pun on today’s world and different kind of people living in society. Living in an ideal world or a Utopian land is a concept not really known to mankind. Twain has tried to depict a very ‘clean’ society with citizens free from any bribery and wrongdoing. However, he also put in the character that tries to destroy this kind of perfect imagery and create havoc within the town. Through the eyes of this main protagonist Twain tries to tell his readers how it is impossible to live in a picture perfect world. According to the author, society is made up of all kinds of people, the bad and the good. This story however, gives an image of the good people that a society should ideally contain. Through this, Mark has tried his level best to make people understand that one cannot really live in such a place; and that such a society is not really something that would exist in today’s world. “It is an honest town once more, and the man will have to rise early that catches it napping again.” (Twain, Mark) The word ‘Utopian’ comes exactly from the meaning of this book on a different level. It is used to describe a situation, preferably a place or a region, where everything is perfect; where the people are living together in harmony, not fighting and are happy with everything that they have to offer to the people around them. However, this is not the case in real life because in reality, different kinds of people exist in the world. They each have their own views about living and surviving in the presence of others. Every person has his or her own plans as to how he wants to live his life. Everyone has their own ideal circumstances and itineraries as to what they want to achieve and how they want to go about doing the same. It can also so happen that a person’s plans clash with someone else’s. in today’s world of cut throat competition, it is very tough to find two people not having the same end goals. However, the difference lies in how the different people try to achieve them and the path that they follow in doing the same. Much the same way, in the story, a stranger happens to chance upon the small town of Hadleyburg and meets different people that do not really suit his style of living. This itself, along with other reasons, happens to offend him and make him feel out of place. He is not used to living life with responsibility and action and is a corrupt man trying to make his life in his own way. “Very well, madam, it is no matter. I merely wanted to leave that sack in his care, to be delivered to the rightful owner when he shall be found. I am a stranger; he does not know me; I am merely passing through the town to-night to discharge a matter which has been long in my mind. My errand is now completed, and I go pleased and a little proud, and you will never see me again. There is a paper attached to the sack which will explain everything. Good- night, madam.” He plans to drop of a bag of gold that contains almost $41,000 in the house of a couple living in Hadleyburg by the name of the Richards, and plans to tell them that the money needs to be transported to a man that had helped him to undergo a life changing process by giving him so advice. He also tells them that in order to find out who that man is, anyone who happens to know exactly what the piece of advice was should write to another particular citizen of the town and let them know and claim the money. Through this, the man tries to spread the news of the gold all throughout the town and let everyone know of the heavy money that was lying at stake. Money has been known to be the root of all evil since times immemorial and through this bait, he tries to lure all the citizens and get them to tap and exploit their inner greed and lust for the same and come out in the open with all these negative emotions. The stranger is very much like a Pandora’s Box, waiting to open and spread unhappiness in the world around him. However, according to the author, this was inevitable because people cannot go lives living the way that they were in Hadleyburg. The moral of the entire story is basically that greed and lust come hand in hand with every person however, it depends on the kind of free way that a person provides to these emotions in his own life. The residents of Hadleyburg become very excited as soon as they hear about the money and with time, all of them turn on their dark sides because they want the money for different reasons. Soon, different pieces of advice start reigning from different couples and people all around the town because everyone wants to claim the money. No one is able to understand who is correct and whose advice is the actual genuine one. Yet another moral has been tried to be shown here; Twain tries to tell his readers through the puns and irony mentioned here about how difficult it is to trust and believe people in life. One comes across different kinds of people, both good and bad however it becomes very tough to try and post faith on someone because of the deeds they might have committed in their past or the kind of actions that they might carry out later in life. (Lowe, Lisa) Every person in the town soon becomes very ecstatic and wants to know who it is that had written the piece of advice. The lust to own the money turns everyone crazy and people are not able to decide who the money should go to. Finally, a meeting is held in the town hall to discern the rightful owner of the money bag and very soon, quite obviously and expectedly, a dispute takes place between two people in the final running for the money. Through this, the author has tried to show how money can end up turning the world around. Money is the cause for more than half of the grief that people feel in their lives. It is something that makes people feel regret and bad emotions; it turns them upside down and promises them things that it cannot provide them with in the end. (Anderson, Benedict) Thus, it is best to stay out of the greed that people usually fall into with money. It is merely a trap that ends up hurting and haunting even the best of people with the best of feelings, intentions and emotions in the world. It is born from evil and if misused, ends up hurting more people that it helps. The final piece of advice that is actually a part of the sack n whose revelation the money was supposed to be distributed is ‘You are far from being a bad man—go, and reform—or, mark my words—some day, for your sins you will die and go to hell or Hadleyburg—try and make it the former’ (Twain, Mark) This is a pun on the entire story taking place in the lives of the residents of Hadleyburg because it goes to say that the people are far from being bad and thus they must go and change their lives. This means that they have not taken any risks in their lives and have always been way too cautious than they should be. People need to grow and mature in life and that can only happen once they see the bad things that life has to offer to them. No society can grow if it is made up only of great people. Every society must have a mix of different kinds of people ready to take on different challenges and initiatives without thinking twice about hurting people. However, at the same time people also need to wary of other people’s emotions and not go around doing things that would hurt or harm other people on a daily basis. (Emerson, Everett) The story thus takes a turn when people finally realise that the stranger had made this plan in order to turn the people of the town against each other and show them what they had been missing out on in terms of their ‘bad conduct’. The citizens finally understand that he had a motive of taking revenge on them because he did not find the entire atmosphere of the town to be suitable for any kind of external factor. He helped them realise that it is good to have temptation sometimes because everyone must sin at least once in their lives in order to understand that it is not worth it and to understand the repercussions of the same. It is not easy to grow as a person without having dome something or the other that a person does not learn from. The moral of this story lies on the fact that one can only adhere from his past and learn from the same if he makes certain mistakes. Only if people are able to do this will they find that the fruits that they finally reap are worth it and they will have felt achievement. One cannot be good without learning how to be bad; this is exactly what the piece of advice written in the bag of gold said. (Briden, Earl F) In conclusion, ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg’ is a short story with a big ending; something that speaks in totality of the kind of sin that God meant to create on Earth, and how the same must learn from its mistakes. If one does not commit a wrongdoing, one will never be able to learn. To think that one can be born a good man is a value not worth measuring because it amounts to no hard work being done in order to earn the title or brand of being someone good. (Archer, William) Therefore, being good is a moral and very normative concept that cannot be achieved unless someone tries to earn it. Through the words of the author, this story has tried to explain exactly that, by putting forth the worst of sins and emotions that a person could feel and how those are also required, much the same way as the good feelings in life are crucial to a person’s existence. Works Cited Twain, Mark. ‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg’. Print. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition, New York: Verso, 1991. Archer, William. "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg- New Parable," inThe Critic, Vol. 37, November, 1900, pp. 413-415. Briden, Earl F. "Twainian Pedagogy and the No-Account Lessons of Hadleyburg," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 28, No. 2, 1991, pp. 125-134. Briden, Earl F. and Prescott, Mary. "The Lie that I Am I: Paradoxes of Identity in Mark Twains Hadleyburg," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1984, pp. 383-391. Emerson, Everett. The Authentic Mark Twain: A Literary Biography of Samuel L. Clemens, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts, Duke University Press, 1996. Quirk, Tom.Mark Twain: A Study of the Short Fiction, New York: Twayne, 1997. Murfin, Ross, and M. Ray Supryia. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary... Read More