Mark Twain Part III

Twain returned to the US after his long trips to Europe and around the world.   He was getting older and his health began to decline.   He lost his daughter Susie in 1896 and a few year later his wife and other daughter Jean died, deepening his depression. He died of a heart attack in 1910.

He is remembered for his two great works of boyhood Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, which are still popular.  The first is based on his memories of childhood in Hannibal and Huckleberry Finn was based on a boy he knew back then, who was ragged and barefoot and was admired by the other kids, as being lucky enough to be able to avoid the proprieties and narrowness of small town life.

Huckleberry Finn is about slavery.  Huck as a barefoot penniless boy who is an outsider himself, but white, develops a kinship with the escaping slave Jim as they travel down the Mississippi river on a raft. Huckleberry comes to realise Jim’s humanity and to sympathise with his desire to be free.  Twain himself was an abolitionist but the novel has Huckleberry starting from a position of accepting slavery as normal and right, and coming to change his views.    It also ends with Huck wanting to escape from “civilisation” in a small town and move on out... another theme in American literature.   Twain grew more radical as he grew older, but sometimes hid his more anti-establishment beliefs, such as his feelings against organised Christianity.  He supported women’s rights... and was an Anti-Imperialist, believing that the US and other countries which interfered in the affairs of foreign countries were in the wrong, even if they claimed to have a mission of civilising or improving the lives of the people of these nations.   He was cynical about all sorts of Imperialism and hostile to almost all forms of racism... though in Tom Sawyer he seems to be rather hostile to American Indians such as “Injun Joe” who is the villain of the book.

The ending of Huckleberry Finn has Huck deciding to “light out for the territory” and get away from Tom’s aunt who wants to adopt and “civilise “him... which has been seen as the American male’s desire to escape female influence and to find freedom away from cities and society…