Assignment topic: Mark twain writing style

Subject: American literature

Submitted by: Rida
BS English 8th semester
Roll no: 16001
Submitted to: Ma’am anila

Mark twain
Writing style
Certainly twain has an inimitable style.  His accomplished use of dialect is always salient;
however there are other techniques that he uses that somehow differ from other writers.  For
instance, his social commentary is much more subtle than the satire of other writers.  After all,
there have been many a reader of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," "A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court," or "The Prince and the Pauper" who have enjoyed these
narratives told by seemingly artless narrators without realizing Twain's cynicism toward society. 
A simple line from "Connecticut Yankee" such as
The old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic. Even to
Tears; but he did the shedding himself
Points to this cynicism. As one critic has remarked,
The rich comedy of his narratives is often undercut by
a darkness and a depth of seriousness which give his
Works an ambivalence, an ambivalence which reflects
Twain's own divided nature. 
In the descriptions of the escapades of the Duke and the King in "The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn," for example, the reader also perceives the criticism and disappointment in the
predatory nature of man who would exploit people when they are most vulnerable, such as after
the death of a loved one.  With his artless narrator--another trademark--Twain describes how the
two scoundrels take advantage of the Wilks' family whose father dies.  The king quickly sells the
slaves.  When they are separated Huck notices the grief of the family at losing their servants:

I thought them poor girls and them n--s would break

Their hearts for grief; they cried around each other, and
Took on so it most made me down sick to see it.  The
 Girls said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family
Separated or sold away from the town....I couldn't a
Stood it all...if I hadn't knower the sale weren’t no
Account and the n--s would be backing home in a week or two.

Themes
Mark Twain uses many of the same themes in his writing. His novels express the importance of
perseverance, loyalty, bravery, and friendship.
Anti-Imperialism
Twain’s popularity rose in conjunction with a sea change in American geopolitics as the 19th
century moved into the 20th century. Traditional American isolationism from outside
engagement was engendered in part simply to keep up with the Joneses of the world. This was a
period of global imperialist expansion from England to China and Twain saw the sinister
potential for devastating consequences with the acute vision of a psychic. The tone and nature of
the many essays which espouse his anti-imperialist views ranges from the broadly satirical (“A
Defence of General Funston”) to exercises in irony that grow increasingly darker in form and
content (“To the Person Sitting in Darkness”).
The Hypocrisy of “Civilized” Society
When Huck plans to head west at the end of the novel in order to escape further “civilizing,” he
is trying to avoid more than regular baths and mandatory school attendance. Throughout the
novel, twain depicts the society that surrounds Huck as little more than a collection of degraded
rules and precepts that defy logic. This faulty logic appears early in the novel, when the new
judge in town allows Pap to keep custody of Huck. The judge privileges Pap’s “rights” to his son
as his natural father over Huck’s welfare. At the same time, this decision comments on a system
that puts a white man’s rights to his “property”—his slaves—over the welfare and freedom of a
black man. In implicitly comparing the plight of slaves to the plight of Huck at the hands of Pap,
Twain implies that it is impossible for a society that owns slaves to be just, no matter how
“civilized” that society believes and proclaims itself to be. Again and again, Huck encounters
individuals who seem good—Sally Phelps, for example—but who twain takes care to show are
prejudiced slave-owners. This shaky sense of justice that Huck repeatedly encounters lies at the
heart of society’s problems: terrible acts go unpunished, yet frivolous crimes, such as drunkenly
shouting insults, lead to executions. Sherburne’s speech to the mob that has come to lynch him
accurately summarizes the view of society Twain gives in Huckleberry Finn: rather than
maintain collective welfare, society instead is marked by cowardice, a lack of logic, and
profound selfishness.
Empathy
The theme of empathy is closely tied to the theme of guilt. Huck’s feelings of empathy help his
moral development by enabling him to imagine what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes. The
theme of empathy first arises when Huck worries about the thieves he and Jim abandon on the
wrecked steamboat. Once he’s escaped immediate danger, Huck grows concerned about the men:
“I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for murderers, to be in such a fix.” Huck’s concern
drives him to go and find help. Another significant example of empathy in the book comes in
Chapter 23, when Huck wakes up to Jim “moaning and mourning to himself.” Huck imagines
that Jim is feeling “low and homesick” because he’s thinking about his wife and children: “I do
believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I
reckon it’s so.” Despite the residual racism in this comment, Huck’s capacity for empathy has a
strong humanizing power.

Adventure
Ironically given the book’s title, the theme of “adventure” in The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn tends to conjure a sense of immaturity and childish make-believe. The book begins by
pointing backward to its prequel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the boyish exploits that
resulted in Tom and Huck striking it rich. Chapter 2 continues this type of adventure, with Tom
and his “Gang” of highwaymen. This spirit of adventure as play follows Huck beyond St.
Petersburg. But the real-life situations Huck and Jim find themselves in frequently demonstrate
that adventure is not what Tom and his games have made it out to be. The first of these situations
occurs in Chapters 12 and 13, when Huck gets excited about a wrecked steamboat, but quickly
flees upon discovering that three real murderers are hiding out there. By the end of the book,
when Tom returns and tries to enforce an overly complicated and “romantical” plan for Jim’s
escape, the very foundations of adventure have come to strike Huck as childish and unrealistic.
Even so, Huck retains some lust for adventure, which he demonstrates when he declares his
intent to leave Pikesville and “light out for the Territory.”
Humor
Most of Mark Twain's stories contain humor, whether the characters and situations are funny to
begin with or they are made comedic by his own special sense of humor. In Roughing It, Twain
describes what he sees with a flair for creating laughter among ordinary life, using both
metaphors and imagination.
''The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over
it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and
misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. . .
. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want.''
Twain is describing the animal, sympathizing with him, and poking fun at him simultaneously.
He goes on to continue the exaggerated woe of the coyote.
''He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the
fleas would desert him for a velocipede.''
In other words, the fleas prefer a bicycle to a coyote as a mode of transport.
Travel
Mark Twain, with a fondness for travel, crosses both plains and the Rocky Mountains to reach
his destination of Carson City, Nevada. From there, Twain travels to San Francisco and to the
Sandwich Islands of what is now known as Hawaii.
During his travels, Mark Twain is descriptive in his observations of geography, culture, and
environment. ''It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expanses of level
greensward, bright sunlight, an impressive solitude utterly without visible human beings or
human habitations, and an atmosphere of such amazing magnifying properties that trees that
seemed close at hand were more than three mile away.''

The end