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LECTURE 12
A
MERICAN LITERATURE OF THE
19
TH
CENTURY
.
REALISM
1.
Mark Twain. Life and creative work of the writer.
2.
Reflection of folklore traditions in his early works. Periods of his literary activity.
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3.
Contribution of Hamlin Garland, Frank Norris and Stephen Crane to the development of the
American Literature.
4.
O’Henry as an excellent short-story writer.
1.
Mark Twain. Life and creative work of the writer.
S
amuel Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, grew up in the Mississippi River
frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri. Ernest Hemingway's famous statement that all of American literature
comes from one great book, Twain's
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
, indicates this author's towering place
in the tradition. Early 19th-century American writers tended to be too flowery, sentimental, or ostentatious --
partially because they were still trying to prove that they could write as elegantly as the English. Twain's
style, based on vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American writers a new appreciation of
their national voice. Twain was the first major author to come from the interior of the country, and he
captured its distinctive, humorous slang and iconoclasm.
For Twain and other American writers of the late 19th century, realism was not merely a literary
technique: It was a way of speaking truth and exploding worn-out conventions. Thus it was profoundly
liberating and potentially at odds with society. The most well-known example is Huck Finn, a poor boy who
decides to follow the voice of his conscience and help a Negro slave escape to freedom, even though Huck
thinks this means that he will be damned to hell for breaking the law.
Twain's masterpiece, which appeared in 1884, is set in the Mississippi River village of St. Petersburg.
The son of an alcoholic bum, Huck has just been adopted by a respectable family when his father, in a
drunken stupor, threatens to kill him. Fearing for his life, Huck escapes, feigning his own death. He is joined
in his escape by another outcast, the slave Jim, whose owner, Miss Watson, is thinking of selling him down
the river to the harsher slavery of the deep South. Huck and Jim float on a raft down the majestic Mississippi,
but are sunk by a steamboat, separated, and later reunited. They go through many comical and dangerous
shore adventures that show the variety, generosity, and sometimes cruel irrationality of society. In the end, it
is discovered that Miss Watson had already freed Jim, and a respectable family is taking care of the wild boy
Huck. But Huck grows impatient with civilized society and plans to escape to "the territories" -- Indian
lands. The ending gives the reader the counter-version of the classic American success myth: the open road
leading to the pristine wilderness, away from the morally corrupting influences of "civilization." James
Fenimore Cooper's novels, Walt Whitman's hymns to the open road, William Faulkner's
The Bear
, and Jack
Kerouac's
On the Road
are other literary examples.
Huckleberry Finn
has inspired countless literary interpretations. Clearly, the novel is a story of death,
rebirth, and initiation. The escaped slave, Jim, becomes a father figure for Huck; in deciding to save Jim,
Huck grows morally beyond the bounds of his slave-owning society. It is Jim's adventures that initiate Huck
into the complexities of human nature and give him moral courage.
The novel also dramatizes Twain's ideal of the harmonious community: "What you want, above all
things, on a raft is for everybody to be satisfied and feel right and kind toward the others." Like Melville's
ship the
Pequod
, the raft sinks, and with it that special community. The pure, simple world of the raft is
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ultimately overwhelmed by progress -- the steamboat -- but the mythic image of the river remains, as vast
and changing as life itself.
The unstable relationship between reality and illusion is Twain's characteristic theme, the basis of
much of his humor. The magnificent yet deceptive, constantly changing river is also the main feature of his
imaginative landscape. In
Life on the Mississippi
, Twain recalls his training as a young steamboat pilot when
he writes: "I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the eluding and ungraspable objects
that ever I tried to get mind or hands on, that was the chief."
Twain's moral sense as a writer echoes his pilot's responsibility to steer the ship to safety. Samuel
Clemens's pen name, "Mark Twain," is the phrase Mississippi boatmen used to signify two fathoms (3.6
meters) of water, the depth needed for a boat's safe passage. Twain's serious purpose, combined with a rare
genius for humor and style, keep his writing fresh and appealing.
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