Mark Twain the Philosopher

Mark Twain the Philosopher

Mark Twain is, according to critics and readers alike, the first great American novelist (Reuben). Throughout his lifetime Twain, born Samuel Longhorn Clemens, held an eclectic mix of jobs, and, wrote a great deal about his experiences and his boyhood. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (AOTS) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (AOHF) are a pair of novels by Twain that: present the new and radical changes in the early 1800s in contrast to the old fashioned ways; mirror Twain's life as a young boy growing up in a one-horse town on the Mississippi River; and, give the reader an idea of his view that the loss of innocence signals the coming of age.

Twain was born in 1835 and Tom Sawyer grew up in the 1840s. Around this time, America, especially the North, was undergoing revolutionary changes in transportation and communication. The river steam boat was invented in 1807 and subsequently took over mass transportation from sailboats using the ocean (Ships). This was a big change from the previous small scale or trans-ocean transport. After the steam boat came the steam train which revolutionized transportation in a similar fashion, and they synergistically opened the West to all people and boosted trade and commerce enormously--not just of the big industrial towns but of the en-route towns and the farms. In 1849, agriculture accounted for over one-half of the nation's economy, whereas today it is one-fiftieth (Agriculture). Canals, turnpikes and clipper ships also greatly affected transport and communication between distant places. The times were revolutionary in that the old ways of taking dirty, bumpy roads long distances with little profit were over. Another sign of the times was slavery...

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...at men can be cruel and so can God, but what one does personally is what is important. Huck came to this same conclusion more smoothly. He had always seen society as bad for him. The social mores of education and religion never did much for him, and social institutions like class structure and manners were even worse. He accepts having to behave civilized, but thinks his own way, for example that slavery is not fair. Mark Twain began writing AOHF before TAOTS, but had to put it aside. When he started up again he wrote TAOTS for money but kept TAOHF in it's pure form. TAOHF is his commentary on: society--that it does no good; on religion -- that only fools believe in it; and on men -- that they do evil but can do good. But essentially the novels are simple local-color stories of boyhood and the journey to manhood in a romantic, and alternatively, in a realist.