Prevalent themes in Mark Twain stories are:
Initiation (loss of innocence): Huckleberry Finn runs away with Jim, a slave, and finds out the reality of how people like them are treated.
Garden of Eden (get it?): In Eve's Diary
Alienation: Huck is alienated because of his drunkard father, his filthy appearance, and common demeanor.
Self-reliance: Huck Finn is very self-reliant, as he spends most of his childhood taking care of himself. Tom Sawyer has a home, unlike Huck, but he is also very independent.
Self-Awareness/realization: Eve was aware of herself and everything around her. She was very philosophical and even comes up with axioms. She learned the reason for her love for Adam.
Celebration of the common place: Mark Twain was not a fantastical writer. He was one of the first to successfully incorporate the various dialects of the time.
The Mark Twain short stories selected took place in: Calaveras County in California; Arctic circle; New York City, during finance & business boom; Rome; St. Petersburg/Hannibal; The train car; Huck & Jim travel across the Mississippi Characters:
- Tom Sawyer--Adventurous and clever boy; often tricks the neighborhood kids into doing his work.
- Huck Finn--Is alienated by the rest of the community. Is the same age as Tom Sawyer and becomes his best friend.
- Becky Thatcher--neighborhood girl that Tom has a crush on
- Jim Smiley--A man in Calaveras County who will bet money on anything and everything.
- George Arnold--Starving sculptor that becomes rich once his best friend conduces a ingenious hoax revolving around one of his sculptures.
- James (bad little boy) and Jacob Blivens (good little boy)--Two boys, one who disregards all moral rules and another who strives to live by them. The bad boy is successful, the good one ... dies.
- In "A Fable"--Cat, ass, bear, cow, tiger, lion, leopard, camel, Hathi the elephant
- Adam and Eve--The first two human beings.
- Mark Twain--Often makes an appearance in his own stories, as the listener to a narration from a stranger.
- Esquimau Maiden--Daughter of a rich arctic man who seeks romance.
Style, Technique, Symbolism:
Imagery: Mark Twain was very good at describing setting, but when the characters narrated their own stories, they did not always stop to describe their situation the way a formal narrator would.
Figurative Language: He used a lot of clever lines, sometimes metaphors. Always alluded to things in the outside world and made fun of them.
Diction: Sometimes wordy, specific to each different character. Twain often used characters to narrate stories.
Voice, point of view, tone: His characters were often humorous and they narrated their own stories.
Audience & purpose: Mark Twain was a humorist who poked fun at the human condition. He tried to portray regular American life, devoid of the literal drama of some of his contemporaries' works. Some of his stories were meant to be enjoyed by people who had an intellectual understanding of the current political situation.
