Mark Twain –
background notes
Personal information
• real name: "Samuel Langhorne Clemens"
• Lived 1835-1910. Events during his
lifetime: the Mexican-American, Civil, and
Spanish-American Wars; the Industrial
Revolution, the settling of the Wild West,
the creation of 22 new states, and the U.S.
population growing by about 500%. (He
lived in interesting times.)
Mark Twain – writing career
• "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County" made him nationally famous in
1865.
• The Innocents Abroad secured his reputation
and brought in enough money to make him
comfortable.
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is his
most famous work. It was famous
internationally, but is controversial today.
Mark Twain the Realist
• Though he's known as a humorist (a funny
guy) Twain's writing often has a dark,
buried edge to it. Some of his characters are
not nice, in very unfunny ways.
Example: Huckleberry Finn's father beats him,
then locks Huck in the house while he goes
out to get drunk.
This negative view of human nature is very
Realist.
Mark Twain the Regionalist
• Twain was from the backwoods of Missouri,
and many of his characters are intended to
represent "how people really were" in
speech and thought. (Hallmark of Realist
style)
• This was a very new and radical way to write
at the time. In American Literature up to this
time, everyone spoke as if they'd all gone to
college. (See "The Devil and Tom Walker")
Example of Regionalist Writing
• Example of dialect from "The Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calveras County":
"He ketched a frog one day, and took him
home and cal'klated to edercate him; …"
The point was to make writing that read
the way real people talked.
"The Lowest Animal"
• The story is an explanation of Twain's
low opinion of mankind (a Realist
attitude)
• The author claims to have performed
experiments that prove people are
beyond hope.
Techniques in the story
Satire: a type of writing that ridicules
people and institutions with the
ultimate intent of changing them.
(Twain's point in "The Lowest Animal"
is serious, but the story itself is not.)
Irony: stating the opposite of what is
meant.
FIN