Cub Pilot On The Mississippi Racism

Reality and Human Struggle
    Tyranny violates the most basic of human principles and in addition possesses logical flaws. The nineteenth century steamboat industry illustrates a particularly clear variant of such tyranny, as well as showing the folly of those who wish to abide by it. Mark Twain’s “Cub Pilot on the Mississippi” is one of the clearest literary examples of it with examples of human struggle building up to combat, the conflict during combat, and then the absolute terror and miraculous ending which follows the combat.     The cub’s mental battles before he fights with his commander sheds valuable insight into the failure of tyranny to promote progress. In particular, the cub’s daily verbal abuse at the hands of his commander,

Mr Brown, cause a moral quagmire in the mind of the cub. He has been taught by society to endure all possible torment for the sake of obeying authority, however his inevitable instinct is to lash out against Brown. Brown finds fault with everything the cub does, as a result of this the cub devotes his free mental energy to envisioning ways to kill Brown instead of ways to further his training. Brown’s belief of the only way to train an apprentice being excessive cruelty, also gives tension excellent kindling from which to burn from. This build up before the fight between Brown and the cub provides profound insight.        The combat itself provides a deeper level of conflict as the battles have gone from the consciousness of one individual to the outside world. For example, the cub begins to savagely beat his boss, rendering his earlier temperament irrelevant. He does this because Mr. Brown attacked his brother, and due to this his primal rage and fury which had previously been pent up for so long finally become unleashed. His choice to do this, though, represents a final descent from reason in the cub’s mind into the realm of animal rage, where his emotions have overcome his reason. The cub’s mental struggle brought on by his blind trust for what society had ingrained in him, in addition to Brown’s blatant acceptance of his own authority, causes his violent episode with his boss. The immediate aftermath of this struggle also has the cub endure more anguish. He feels this as he believed that attacking a pilot was a federal offense and as such he would be imprisoned. This irrational fear leads him to feel powerless over his fate, to cope with this he lashes out against Brown by deliberately disobeying him and criticizing his dialect.

The fight in “Cub Pilot on the Mississippi” shows human conflict in one of its most primal forms.    The ensuing aftermath between the cub’s brawl with Brown contains further mental and literal clashes. The captain’s reaction is equal parts baffling and, for the cub, miraculous. The captain is completely in support of the cub as it is revealed that he hates Brown and as such his only issue is how to promote the cub’s actions whilst repramanding him. He chooses to do this by informing the cub that he supports his actions and will even pay for the cub attacking Brown, so long as the fighting is ashore and not on the steamboat. The remaining conflict is the issue of tradition relating to whether the cub should be sent away from the ship or not. The captain is put in a quandary over this as Brown informs the captain that he will not work on the same vessel as the cub. This struggle between the two is resolved, as the captain informs Brown to leave the vessel. The conclusion of the story yields more conflict and ties the tale together whilst simaltaneously illustrating human discord.    “Cub Pilot on the Mississippi” brilliantly unveils the mental and physical struggles between authority and freedom, from both a

literal and mental basis, from a bygone age. The acceptance of authority causes violence, anguish, and eventually strips one man’s occupation away from him. The main lessons from these clashes is that of accepting reason over emotion, and that of blind obedience leading almost certainly to despair and destruction.