Critical Analysis Of Twain's Two Views Of The Mississippi

Two Views of the Mississippi” provides an interesting and descriptive insight into the mind of a veteran in steam boating. In life human reasoning is guided by perspective and experience that go on through our day to day lives. Decisions are often based on how one comprehends situations leading to a particular behavior. While it is argued that learned abilities often morph to instincts due to the repeated practice, some situations defy the actual meaning of norm forcing one to act depending on their understanding of the situation at hand. If for instance, one is a trained and experienced driver, when faced with the possibility of an accident, such an individual relies not just on the experience but their instinctive abilities. Regardless of

He initially enjoyed and loved the environment he worked in, but with time he got used to the beauty until it developed into something more than just beauty. He does not state what exactly the beauty has developed into but one can guess that the beauty has become normalcy. Despite the loss of beauty due to the repeated experiences in steam boating, Twain acknowledges that the river has life threatening dangers that come along with the job. The paper analyzes Twain’s “Two Views of the Mississippi River” elaborating on the conflict in the passage and discussing the quality of writing depicted. The analysis will also examine the figurative language used and its relevance in communicating the author’s message that he wants to convey to the audience to understand the bigger

A “speechless rapture” is a reference to how he felt in his enchanted like thinking about the river. Rapture in Christianity is often used to describe a moment of great suffering where wailing and smashing of teeth will be experienced by sinners. The author puts speechless rapture in the light that at one moment some humans are suffering while the others are seeing the beauty that the entire universe gets to see. The Rapture in Christianity is also the time in which the people that believe in the higher power of God are wiped away from earth while others stay suffering on this planet. The author then reveals that the appreciation of the river’s beauty ceased in the course of his steam boating work. He no longer saw the glories and charms that the moon, the sun and the twilight shone on the river’s face. The personification of the river creates a very intense but yet straightforward image of the river. Twain then notes that his lack of understanding didn’t really have a foundation to begin with and he should have been more critical of the river from the start. The sunshine was bound to evaporate the river waters creating wind, the log floating conspicuously implied that the water level in the river was rising and a slanting mark was an indication of a deceiving threat that posed a danger to a steamboat pilot like himself. The tumbling