an-analysis-on-the-connection-between-mark-twain-and-his-works英语论文学士学位论文.doc

An Analysis on the Connection between Mark Twain and His Works

Wang Zhifei

A Thesis Submitted to
Foreign Language Department

Under the Supervision of
Associate Professor Hu Yan

Taiyuan University of Science and Technology

June 2007
Contents

Abstracts-------------------------------------------------------------i
摘要----------------------------------------------------------------ii
1. Introduction of the Purpose of this Paper --------------------1
2. Introduction of the Background------------------------------2
2.1. The Social Background---------------------------------------------2
2.2. The Surroundings and Personal Experiences of the Author-4
2.3. A Summary-------------------------------------------------5
3. Analysis of Mark Twain’s Major Works----------------------6
3.1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn & The Adventures of Tom Sawyer--------------------------------------------------------------------------6
3.1.1. On the Characterization------------------------------------------6
3.1.2. On the Creative Use of Dialects---------------------------------8
3.1.3. On the Dialogues between the Figures-------------------------8
3.1.4. On the Details or Psychological Depicts----------------------10
3.2. Some Other Short Novels---------------------------------11
4. Conclusion---------------------------------------------------------12
References-------------------------------------------------13

Abstract
This paper holds a perspective that the social background in which Mark Twain lived and Mark Twain’s personal experiences have an enormous influence on his unique expressional method— disclosing serious social problems in satiric mood — in his great works. In turn, having a proper knowledge about Mark Twain’s relevant information is very helpful to understand his works correctly and deeply. This idea is put forward by taking an analysis of the research on the connections between Mark Twain’s works and the environment he lived in, which built his critical characters of high responsibilities on the society.

Key words:
connection; background; Mark Twain; writings; satire

摘要
在马克·吐温大部分作品中,读者都可以体会到他的一种独特的现实主义表达方式—嬉笑怒骂路不平.本文就马克·吐温所处的时代背景和作者个人的特殊经历对这种表达方式所产生的影响进行分析研究,并且结合其作品提出这样一种观点: 马克·吐温生活的社会背景和其特有的生活经历影响并决定了他的这种风格.反过来说,对马克·吐温个人背景有一定的了解可以帮助读者更好得理解他作品中的深刻内涵.

关键词：
联系；背景；马克·吐温 ；作品 ；讽刺

1. Introduction of the Purpose of This Paper
All the literary works are fictitious to certain degree. But why there able to be so many pieces and they attract so many readers as well as producers? It is the nature of literature, whose strong effects on people, even on the whole society, is uncountable. Literature is not just a group of words composed together to tell a story or present an idea or a kind of emotions. It is the best and effective way to dwell on people’s wishes, desires, love, and hatred. Generally speaking, the purpose of literature is to inspire and satisfy human beings’ spiritual demands. These are too much injustice, failures, despair, and unpredictable frustrations in the real world. So in order to fulfill the quest of perfect dreams, someone would like to turn their whole attention to how much they possess. They obtain self-satisfaction from any proud feelings and conveniences brought by them, while others resort to pursuing a higher demand, which refers to the spiritual demands as their survival choice. They are invisible world only existing in our minds by people’s image abilities, which is hardly available in real lives. However, this world provides people with a comfortable shelter to release their depression and stress to have a short refreshment and regain of courage.
In terms of the advantages mentioned above about literature, a result can easily be got that it is inevitable to get access to those literary works and it’s necessary to cultivate personal corresponding abilities to comprehend their themes. Looking back the progress of human spiritual civilization and reflecting the temporary conditions and tendency of modern literature, a colorful, multilateral, multicultural forum has been formed in front of us. More and more different races, nations, religions have been partners in the global literature and have established a wilder unity of literature .To keep up with the universal development and well communicate with in the coming international world, we’d better learn the exotic cultures through these foreign masterpieces.
The writer concerned in my paper is Mark Twain, who was famous in American literature in 19th Century and specialized in ironic style. Most of his works indicate social problems deeply and directly. They were compiled by seemingly trifles but embodied the author’s criticism of the social reality. The materials used mostly took a foot of the author’s self-experiences, the observations on the behaviors of people living around and some interesting things heard of accidentally. The language to compose the stories was so humorous and profound that it not only amused the readers greatly, but ridiculed and criticized values and practices of adult world towards which the characters were heading—hypocrisy and the essential childishness. In a word, under the affection from both the society and the personality, Mark Twain used his own unique style—satire—to express his affections as well as criticism of the reality and created so many popular figures in American literature.
2. Introduction of the Background
2.1 On the Social Background
Mark Twain, the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born in 1835 and died in 1910, which happened to be a revolutionary period in American both politically and literarily. The Civil War broke out in 1861, which marked a change in America. Before the Civil War, America had been essentially a rural, agrarian isolated republic whose idealistic, confident, and self-reliant inhabitants for the most part believing in God. After the Civil War, the United States was transformed into an industrial and urban nation. On the surface, there is all security, elegance, security, and comfort but economic power became more and more concentrated in the hands of the few. Great wealth nation became a land of contrasting wealth and poverty; political and commercial corruption grew widespread. All these made its people begin to question the assumptions shared by the Transcendentalists— natural goodness, the optimistic view of nature and man, benevolent God. In the meantime, the Romanticism was disappeared after the civil War, just as they turned away from Puritanism at the close of the 18C. A new inspiration came over them. Instead of thinking about the mysteries of life and death, people’s attention was now delivered to the interesting features of everyday existence, life itself held a challenge. A zest of living naturally, completely, and even boisterously became the vogue. Thus new attitude was characterized by a great interest in the realities of life. Therefore a new spirit—realistic attitude—emerged in American literature, which started a new period in American writing known as the rise of Realism. In many ways, the WWI dimmed American optimism, and pioneers settle new territories in the west, writers now focused on the differences between the various regions of the United States rather than on a steady vision of the expanding country. Many outstanding writers called for the describing local life realistically. Such as William Dean Howells, Bret Harte, a story teller who brought the raw camps and settlements of the far west to life in The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Mark Twain.
Realism is the theory of writing in which familiar aspects of contemporary life and everyday scenes are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner. It stresses truthful treatment of materials. It is anti-romantic, anti-sentimental, and without interest in nature, death, etc. Writers would describe the charm of human characters reacting under various circumstance or authors picture the pioneers of the Far West the new immigrants, and the struggles of the working classes. By the 1870s New England Renaissance had wanes. Hawthorne and Thoreau were dead, Emerson and Longfellow were old and feeble, and even Melville had ceased to publish. This indicated that the age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was by and large over. Instead a host of new writers and poets appeared. They are William Dean Howells; Henry James; Mark Twain & Francis Bret Harte. It was difficult to point out the first realist among American writers, but Bert Harte was often given credit for the starting of the movement, though most of these great writers of the period were not educated formally, their haphazard education enabled them to find their individual and appropriate styles as well as subjects. (汪 冷，2003:7)
The realists believe that the purpose of the portrayal of American life is to produce reality. So they depict life around them, identify their characters, from their surroundings and sometimes achieve psychological penetration. They write about individual characters, confronted hardships and moral dilemmas. Their writings expose the values of common humanity; Life appears as it is, not picturesque, adventurous, heroic eras of life. The narrators in their novels stand back, and try not to let their own emotions gain the way of which their works give to the readers. They just present the reader what the characters do instead of telling the reader what it means in their writings. As time passed, Romanist’s optimism was replaced by the philosophical realism. With Howells, James and Mark Twain active on the scene, realism became a major trend in 1870s and 1880s of American literature.
In a word this historical period fostered a new literary tendency — realism, and called for a group of writers to represent and develop it. So they turned up, including Mark Twain. In another word, the social circumstance determined and restrained the people’s moral values or judgments. Besides, this special background makes the realists’ existence possible and reasonable.
2.2. The Surroundings and Personal Experiences of the Author
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, more wildly known by the pen name of Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri, on the 30th November 1835. His father was a local layer. Their economic conditions were unhappy. So he received only a basic public school education before beginning to work. He was the first major American writer to be born away from the east coast and grown up in a small town on the banks of the Mississippi. After his father’s death in 1847, he worked as a printer in his brother’s print shop. At the age of 18 he left school and begun his 3-year restless travel, earning his living as a printer in St Louis, Chicago, NY, Philadelphia, and other places. In 1857 he was attracted by the lure of river life of the Mississippi, and became a steamboat pilot. It is from this work that he got the idea of his penname. It was a nautical team used by sailors to report soundings to the ship’s officers. One of his best works, Life on the Mississippi, is built around at that time. Then he worked on the Mississippi riverboats as a pilot, this temporary life also gave him considerable materials for several of his works, including the raft scenes of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and all of the materials for his autobiographical Life on the Mississippi. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was based on Twain’s personal memories of growing up in Hannibal in the 1840s. In his preface to the novel he states that “most of the adventures recorded in this book really happened” and that the character of Tom has a basis in “a combination of 3 boys whom I knew.” Indeed, nearly every figure in the novel comes from the young Twain’s village experiences: Aunt Polly shares many characteristics with Twain’s mother; Mary is based on his sister; Pamela and Sid resemble his younger brother-Henry; Huck, the Widow Douglas and actual Injun Joe also have real-life counterparts, although the actual Injun was more of a harmless drunk than a murder. When the Civil War begun, the riverboats ceased operation, and after a brief trial of soldiering with a group of confederate volunteers, he went with his brother to Nevada and California, where he made his living as a job printer, a mining prospector and a journalist. He earned his recognitions as a writer in 1865 with the short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country. Which was based upon storied he heard in the mining camps. In 1867, he was sent to Europe by a Californian newspaper. The result of this trip was a series of newspaper articles later published as a book called Innocents Abroad (1869), a humorous narrative that ridicules foreign signs and manners from the point of view of American democracy, who scorns the sophisticated and ravels in his own national advantages.
In 1870 he married Olivia Langdon and settled down in Hartford, Connecticut. Then his most productive years as a novelist came. During the following period he published several books of satire and travel.
In 1895, at his age of sixty, Twain lost all of his money through an unwise investment. He refused to become despondent, however, and set out on a lecturing tour around the world to collect another future. Then his personal tragedy came. While he was lecturing in Europe, his daughter died, his wife suffered a serious breakdown from which she never recovered and even his own health was falling. All these disastrous events led him to pessimism. Twain blamed himself for these trudges. His pessimism and skepticism about human nature grew deeper. His last writings revealed the deep grief over his personal losses and reflected deep cynicism and disillusionment with this world. For instance, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburn (1900), What Is Man (1906), and The Mysterious Strangers (1916), exuded an air of savage despair. At the age of seventy-two he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature by Oxford University. He went to England to receive the degree. Three years later he died in Connecticut on the 21st April 1910.
From the introduction of Twain’ life, we can come to a conclusion that most of his works came from his experiences. He adopted a lot of slang to express his true feelings and opinions about the events happened around him. Meanwhile, formed his theory of localism and partly through his colloquial style.
2.3. A Summary
Under the strong influence of the realism and regionalism at that time, Mark Twain chose a genuinely colloquial and Native American speech to compose his works, which earned his outstanding humorist and satirist in American literature. And on him personal private conditions, his wealthy traveling and living experiences made a great contribution to his literal production. Besides, his moral values formed when he lived in his little town were full