Samuel Langhorne Clemens, whom readers know as Mar Essays - Fiction

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, whom readers know as Mark Twain, has written many novels including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876; The Prince and the Pauper in 1882; Puddin' Head Wilson in 1883; and Twain's masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which was completed in 1883. Throughout Mark Twain's writings, Twain had written about the lifestyle in the South the way it was in truth and detail. Mark Twain was not predjudice in his writings, instead he stripped away the veneers of class, position, religion, institutions, and the norms of society through his use of setting, language, and characters. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 and died on April 21, 1910. He was raised in the South on a Missouri Frontier and when he was only four year of age he moved to Hannibal, a large Southern town on the banks of the Mississippi River.Raised in the slave state of Missouri, Mark Twain grew up with slaves. His father owned slaves and his uncle actually owned twenty slaves. He saw the way slaves were treated on the everyday bases especially when he went to his uncle's farm for the summer. At a young age Mark Twain witnessed a slave being killed just because he did one thing wrong. These things in his childhood lead me to believe that Mark Twain felt bad for African Americans and feels that they should be free. American should start to realize that African Americans are our equals. The Mississippi River is a key element in his two novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Both the characters Tom and Huck are similar to Twain in their spirit of adventure. Throughout his writings Twain wrote about the oppression of the rich and poor, the strong and weak, and the proud and humble. In his autobiography he wrote "All negroes were friends of ours and those of our own age were inface comrades." Mark Twain could not find the realistic acceptance of friendships, loyalty, and courage in the adulthood of societies, and because of this he would always use a boyhood view of the world to contrast the adult hypocrisies. Mark Twain was honest and knew that he could only write from a realistic perspective and could not accept these hypocrisies of society . Mark Twain had paid much attention to detail in his descriptions of the South. In 1876 he had been placed at the head of the best seller lists for his release of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The time period of the book exists just prior to the civil war, although it was written just after the war. In this book the reader is asked to see and judge the ante-bellum world through Huck's perception of it. It is written in a first person narrative form told by a teenage boy by the name of Huck Finn. He is living with Miss Watson and Widow Douglas who have adopted him. He decides that civil life is not for him and that he is going to run away. At the beginning of his adventure he runs into Miss Watson's runaway slave Jim. Instead of turning Jim in, Huck goes against society and makes a decision to help Jim break free from slavery. As they travel together, Huck learns more and more about Jim and starts to understand that the common stereotype of black people is wrong. Huck see s there is no different than anyone else. He starts to see that Jim is a loving caring person just like anyone else. My argument is that Mark Twain portrayed Jim in this way because that is how he really felt about slavery. He felt that African Americans are our equals and that the act of slavery should not be allowed. Twain depicts many of the white people in this story as thieves, murders, or all around bad people. He never once says anything bad about Jim even though he would normally be stereotyped as the person that would do all these things merely by the color of his skin. Mark Twain portrays his feelings through this story. Race is the underlining theme in this story. If you read