Mark Twain Mississippi River Essay

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The unfluctuating outflow of the Mississippi permeates his eardrums, the wind bushes against his crimson cheeks, while the incense of fresh water saturates his nostrils, he distinguishes the boundless hues of cardinal reds and tangerine oranges of an autumn diurnal course adjoining the monumental Mississippi River. Mark Twain, also known as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, is one of America’s greatest authors. Most of Twain’s books involve steamboats and the Mississippi, does this tie to his own personal experiences he has with the two? Mark Twain was a free spirit with a love for the outdoors, Twain had felt closely tied to the grand Mississippi River. Mark Twain was so tied to the river that he took to his pen name from a river people used to call that meant “ two fathoms deep”. Twain grew up in the city of Hannibal, Missouri a town located directly off of the river. Mark was so in love with the river and steamboats he pursued his dream and at the age of twenty-one he became a riverboat pilot. During the civil war the Mississippi river was closed to all traffic so Twain decided to pack up and head west to Nevada. This is where Twain took to journalism and began to develop the style of writing that made him, so famous …show more content…

Twain had moved from his home town into Memphis, here he witnessed many tragedies on the river.Mark Twain chronicles Life on the Mississippi, his river memoir that is dedicated to his four years of his dream job of steamboat piloting before the Civil War broke out. During the war Twain is still so in love with steamboat piloting that he believed when the union took complete control of the mississippi that they would need a steamboat pilot to run the river. This conflicted within him because Twain was born and raised in Missouri and when they decided to secede from the union Twain was torn between two things he held dear to his

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