Mark Twain And Jack London Comparison

Both Mark Twain and Jack London describe their experiences with massive earthquakes in San Francisco. Twain’s piece focuses more on the vulnerability of humans in times of chaos, and the brash decision this can lead to. Conversely, London criticizes the attempt humans had made in conquering nature with the development of new technology and machines. Whether it be the differing points of view or the comparison both make of a city to a living being, both pieces describe the relationship between human ingenuity and the effect nature’s power has on the composure of humans and their mentalities.

In describing the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, Jack London criticized humans’ attempts to quell nature by devising new technologies and machines. In

For a last time in paragraph five, he personifies creations of humans, in this case the flames brought about by the burning materials used to build the city. To some extent, this emphasized

In doing so, Twain created a personal connection by implementing first person in the piece, used oxymoronic adjectives to demonstrate the disarray, and consistently contrasted the geometrical destruction with the “living” city. Conversely to London’s essay, Twain utilized first person, especially when describing the early stages of the earthquake. This perspective allowed Twain to reference the distraught nature of others in the city by comparing it to his own state. In the opening line of his piece, Twain wrote, “When I was in San Francisco…” and also provides other examples, although they occurred in the first paragraph. Because he used this tactic, he criticizes the vulnerability of others in his same situation. In and of itself, Twain created a comparison to his state of mind and that of others. Another syntactical anomaly in his piece was the consistent use of oxymoronic adjectives. For example, “I enjoyed my first earthquake,” and “Of the wonders wrought by ‘the great earthquake’” both demonstrate Twain using adjectives which would generally be considered undescriptive of the situation. Similar to the examples of the clothing designer running naked in the street, or the priest fleeing from the church in fear of his life, these instances show parallelism with the overarching idea of