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Mark twain's influences
An essay about mark twain life
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Biography of Mark Twain
Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835 under the name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens as “the sixth living child of John and Jane Clemens” in the town of Florida, Monroe County, Missouri (Cox 7). While there his father operated a general store and tried fruitlessly to create an invention to bring him riches. Therefore, before long, the store failed and John Clemens moved the family to Hannibal, Missouri which Mark Twain would make famous. Little Sam, as he was called in his younger years, was never particularly close to him family with the exception of his mother who he greatly admired and looked up to. At this time Twain five siblings, his three brothers “Orion, Benjamin, and Henry, and his [two] sisters, Pamela and Mary” (Cox 9).
A prevalent influence in his young life was slavery as his father either “owned or rented slaves” whenever the money was available (Cox 9). He felt great sympathy for the slaves and had difficulty sleeping one night while he listened “to the groans of a captured runaway slave tied up in a nearby shack (Cox 13). Despite his strong feelings and later condemnation of slavery, when twain was young he was unaware that there was any issue with slavery as no one spoke of it as anything but right, holy, and proper. As he grew older he was still left uneducated to the immorality of slavery, yet he also knew even without foreknowledge that it was wrong. The influences slavery had on him were later very clearly expressed in one of his most popular novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain’s young life was rather straightforward. His only formal education was a private school in Hannibal, which he grew great contempt for rather quickly. Then he spent his summers on his uncle’s farm, wh...
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...marrying Olivia and having three daughters, he began to write his most memorable books and stories yet. He wrote literary masterpieces that forever shook and changed the face of American literature for all time. Because of all of his hardships and his extensive influence in the literary field, Mark Twain was and will forever be one of the greatest writers to have ever lived and impacted the face of literature as we know it.
Works Cited
Cox, Clinton. “Mark Twain.” New York: Scholastic Inc., 1995.
Marshall, Donald G. "American literature." World Book Advanced. World Book, 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2013.
Marshall, Donald G. "Twain, Mark." World Book Advanced. World Book, 2013. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Twain, Mark. “The Prince and the Pauper.” New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1881.
"Twain, Mark, 1835-1910." ProQuest Biographies. 2006: n.p. SIRS Renaissance. Web. 18 Nov 2013.
Perkins, Geroge, and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Magill, Frank N. Magill's Survey of American Literature, Volume 5. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1991. 29 Apr. 2011
...n American Literature. By Henry Louis. Gates and Nellie Y. McKay. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 387-452. Print.
Perkins George, Barbara. The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Twain’s novel was greatly influenced by the times and criticizes the imperfections in society. These errors in society were subjective to the current events during the Gilded Age. The following show the effects of the current times that influenced the context of the novel. One of America’s leading historians of America in the west, Patricia N. Limerick well elaborates on what happened in the Gilded Age. The following quote fro...
Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida . At age four, his family of nine moved to the banks of the Mississippi River in Hannibal , Missouri . His family was happy there but not all of his memories of the river were particularly pleasant. Because Missouri was one of the fifteen slave states it was subject to racism and Twain grew up witnessing lynchings, mobs, racism and general inhumane treatment of African Americans. One of Twain’s most horrible memories was “the murder of a defenseless slave by a ruthless slave master and of course, the grim sight of shackled slaves was itself a near-constant along the docks of the river” (Howard). The sightings at the river were not Twain’s only experience around African American slaves though as his own father and uncle both owned slaves. “When Twain visited his uncle’s farm, he enjoyed playing in the slave quarters and listening to their tall tales and spirituals, which he kept with him throughout his life” (http://www.marktwainhouse.org/theman/bio.shtml) When Twain left the South forever, he felt that it was his duty to pay back the debt he felt ever white man owed to every black man because of all the cruelness he had seen done to them. Even though the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a sequel to the light hearted novel Tom Sawyer, it shows the darker aspects of growing up next to the Mississippi river in a slave state (Howard).
Twain’s formal schooling ended after the age of 12, when his father passed away. First learning as an apprentice in a printer’s shop, and then working under his brother, Orion, Twain quickly became familiar with the newspaper trade. Twain indulged in the frontier humor that flourished in journalism at the time: tall tales, satirical pranks, and jokes. However, Twain was restless due to his inability to save his wages, and ultimately switched professions after realizing an old boyhood dream of becoming a river pilot. The profession of riverboat piloting paid well and brought Twain much attention, which he enjoyed. His piloting experiences also allowed him to observe the many kinds of people who traveled aboard the steamboats. He later reported that "in that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally and familiarly acquainted with about all the different types of human nature that are to be found in fiction, biography, or history." He first began publishing under his p...
Emerson, Everett. Mark Twain: A Literary Life. Philadelphia, Pa: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Print.
Mississippi Twain tells us of a man with a dream. As imperfection has it this
Mark Twain had a typical childhood for his time, but his older years were quite different. He was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri to Jane Clemens and John Clemens (“Mark Twain Biography”). Growing up on the Missouri River, he faced poverty, cruelty, and boredom as a child. He wanted to be relieved from his boredom so he asked Horace Bixby, a pilot, to teach him riverboat piloting. Piloting is where Twain adopted his pen name. The term twain means “two fathoms deep,” which is the depth needed for a riverboat to pass through safely. Twain served in the Civil War for a few weeks in 1861, but then dropped out. After that, he went on ...
Samuel Langhorne Clemen, was a very famous writer throughout his years. His pen name, which he is known by today is Mark Twain. He was known for his briliant and clever i deas in writing his stories. He was born in almost an "invisable" village of Florida on novemer 30, 1835. In 1839 the Clemens family moved to Hannibal, Missouri. Soon after that his dad, John marcial Clemens died in the year 1847. Mark wrote book that are famous to this day. He started writing in his early years around 1864-1866. In 1865 he publishged his first story in the paper. This was the start of Twains big career. Mark twain himself was not only a publisher. through his years he was aldso a printer, pilot , soldier, miner, reporter, lecturer, editor, humorist, author, and business man. A majority of these careers helped lead him to be such a great publisher. A good career and life does not develope over night. It takes a lot of hard work and determination. Mark Twain did not only work hard and have determination, but he followed his dream. early in 1848 to 1858, 12 year old Twain became a printer apprentance for Joseph Ament, owner of the Hannibal Courier, which was the start of his life long career. During the years of 1853 to 1857 while he was still woking for Joseph Ament: Mark worked as a printer in St. Louis, New York, Philidelphia, Muscatine, Iowa, and Cinncinati. Working his way up from being a printer Twain became a prospector in Nevada during the years of 1861 to 1862. Then during the years of 1862 to 1864 Mark worked as a reporter and correspondent for Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.
At the young age of twelve, Twain lost his father. Ever since the loss of his father, he began to work in various jobs. From starting as “an apprentice, then a composer, with local printers, contributing occasional squibs to local newspapers” (“Mark Twain”). The early start of responsibility was just the beginning of his career. During the time, he was working for the newspaper, for six years in the newspaper company, he “finally ended up as an assistant to his brother, Orion” (“Samuel Langhorne Clemens.”). He stayed in Iowa by his brother’s side until he
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. When Samuel Clemens was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where he spent his childhood. Clemens first approach to literature was through typesetting for a newspaper in 1851. At the time Orion, his brother, was a newspaper publisher in Hannibal. From 1857 until 1861, he served as the pilot of a riverboat on the Mississippi River. He later used this experience in creating his novels. His first writings appeared in a newspaper on February 2, 1863 under the pen name “Mark Twain.';
The southern way of speech had yet to have been captured skillfully until Twain’s writing. Twain went into detail in L...
PBS. “Mark Twain: Chronology” R. Kent Rasmussen’s Mark Twain A to Z. Web. 09 May 2014. .