Books Guide

TH E M E S

Mark Twain

The "father of American literature" seen through his most beloved works

Meet Samuel Clemens

The Innocents Abroad

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Samuel Clemens a.k.a. Mark Twain was born and raised in small-town Missouri.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910)

A gifted raconteur, distinctive humorist, and irascible moralist, he transcended the apparent limitations of his origins to become a popular public figure worldwide . He spent his life observing his surroundings, and his writing provided images, romantic and real, of a changing world.

"He was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs." -William Faulkner

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The Innocents Abroad marked a shift in how Americans viewed Europe- and themselves. The book challenged notions of Europe as the epitome of culture and revealing an evolving American identity. Themes

The Innocents Abroad

This humorous chronicle of Twain's excursion through Europe with a group of American travelers made him the best-selling author in the world.

• Conflict between history and the modern world

• Satire of European culture and American naivety abroad

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Tom Sawyer changed the course of children’s literature in the United States. It present the first deeply felt portrayal of boyhood, insisting that childhood is a fundamentally important aspect of life and not just a stepping stone on the road to adulthood. Themes Youth and friendship Moral maturation Social hypocrisy

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)

This beloved bildungsroman centers on a smart, mischievous young boy living in a town along the Mississippi River, modeled on Mark Twain's own hometown.

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Significance

"[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn] was a book, as many critics have observed, that served as a Declaration of Independence from the genteel English novel tradition. Huckleberry Finn allowed a different kind of writing to happen: a clean, crisp, no-nonsense, earthy vernacular kind of writing that jumped off the printed page with unprecedented immediacy and energy; it was a book that talked. Huck's voice, combined with Twain's satiric genius, changed the shape of fiction in America"

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry Finn tells the story of two characters’ attempts to emancipate themselves. Huck desires to break free from the constraints of society, while Jim is fleeing a life of literal enslavement. Initially, Huck doesn’t question the morality of slavery but over time develops an inner conviction that he can’t return Jim to slavery. Despite feeling guilty for acting in a way his society considers immoral, Huck decides he must treat Jim not as a slave, but as a human being.

-Dr. Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Professor of American Studies and English at the University of Texas

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Themes

• Racism & slavery
• Morality, shame & empathy

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At this moral climax of the novel, Huck contemplates his feelings after composing a letter to reveal Jim's whereabouts:

Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:" All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up."

and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old

"l felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms,

I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done." "No -- is that so? Oh come, now -- lemme just try. Only just a little -- I'd let you , if you was me, Tom. Say -- I'll give you the core of my apple." "Well, here -- No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard -- " "I'll give you all of it!" Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash.

Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result. Ben said: "Say -- I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of course you'd druther work -- wouldn't you? Course you would!" Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said: "What do you call work?" Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly: "Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer." "Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you like it?" The brush continued to move.

"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?" That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth -- stepped back to note the effect -- added a touch here and there -- Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said: "Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little." Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind: "No -- no -- I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful;

Samuel Clemens chose the pen name Mark Twain to reference his time as a riverboat pilot:

Mark: An impression made on a line used to measure the depth of a river Twain: "Two" fathoms (or 12 feet) Mark Twain: A nautical term to indicate water was deep enough for travel

money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece--all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round--more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt Polly, she is--and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before. Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the

We have made it interesting for this Roman guide. Yesterday we spent three or four hours in the Vatican, again, that wonderful world of curiosities. We came very near expressing interest, sometimes–even admiration–it was very hard to keep from it. We succeeded though. Nobody else ever did, in the Vatican museums. The guide was bewildered–non-plussed. He walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up extraordinary things, and exhausted all his ingenuity on us, but it was a failure; we never showed any interest in any thing.

There is one remark (already mentioned,) which never yet has failed to disgust these guides. We use it always, when we can think of nothing else to say. After they have exhausted their enthusiasm pointing out to us and praising the beauties of some ancient bronze image or broken-legged statue, we look at it stupidly and in silence for five, ten, fifteen minutes–as long as we can hold out, in fact–and then ask: “Is–is he dead?” That conquers the serenest of them.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Childhood

Satire

Morality

Society

When we arrived at the garden in Asnieres, we paid a franc or two admission and entered a place which had flower beds in it, and grass plots, and long, curving rows of ornamental shrubbery, with here and there a secluded bower convenient for eating ice cream in. Crowds composed of both sexes and nearly all ages were frisking about the garden or sitting in the open air in front of the flagstaff and the temple, drinking wine and coffee or smoking. Ferguson said there was to be an exhibition. The famous Blondin was going to perform on a tightrope in another part of the garden. We went thither.

for some time afterward. Why will people be so stupid as to suppose themselves the only foreigners among a crowd of ten thousand persons?

Here the light was dim, and the masses of people were pretty closely packed together. And now I made a mistake which any donkey might make, but a sensible man never. I committed an error which I find myself repeating every day of my life. Standing right before a young lady, I said:“Dan, just look at this girl, how beautiful she is!” “I thank you more for the evident sincerity of the compliment, sir, than for the extraordinary publicity you have given to it!” This in good, pure English. We took a walk, but my spirits were very, very sadly dampened. I did not feel right comfortable