1. Mark Twain
( )

2. Life of Mark Twain
Born Samuel Longhorn Clemens in Florida, Missouri on Nov. 30, 1835 (when Halley’s Comet was visible in the sky, so was when he died)
Doing odd jobs after his father’s death from 12 years age (apprentice to a local printer; traveling reporter to several newspapers)
2 years from 1857, apprentice to a captain on a ship on the Mississippi

3. Life of Mark Twain Civil War and Twain participating it (2 weeks)
Beginning sign articles as “Mark Twain” in 1863
Tragic Years for Mark Twain
Bankruptcy after a few investments in 1890s
Daughter Susy’s death of meningitis in 1896
Wife’s death in 1904
Daughter Jean’s death in 1909
Exhausted creative source
Death in 1910

4. Mark Twain’s Literary Career
Works of Humor (1860s-1870s)
A wild humorist in American literature (west humor)
Bold design
Exaggerated style
Colloquial language
Literary and biblical allusions
Funny narrators
Satirical effect and social criticism
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865)

5. Mark Twain’s Literary Career
Social Critical Novels (1870s-1890s)
Peak of Mark Twain’s literary creation
The falsity of American democracy,
falsity of prosperity,
weakness of humanity
Vanity of upper class
Superficiality of individualism
Monetary worship

6. Mark Twain’s Literary Career
The Gilded Age (1873)
The Man that Corrupted Handleyburg (1900)
The Prince and the Pauper (1882).
One-Million Pound Note (1893)

7. Mark Twain’s Literary Career
Anti-Imperialist Works (1890s-)
U.S.A. government’s aggressive imperialist policies
To the Person Sitting in Darkness (1910)
Following the Equator (1891)

8. Mark Twain’s Literary Career
Pessimistically Sentimental Works
Personal disasters
Exhaustion of creative source
What is Man (1906)
The Mysterious Stranger (1916)

9. Mark Twain’s Literary Contributions and Features
inheritance and development of humorous tradition of literature
American literary colloquialism
heavy rural atmosphere and nostalgia
Various kinds of subject matters
sharp insight and rich imagination
sense of justice and democracy

10. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Themes
Racism and Slavery; Reconstruction and Jim Crow
A Story of Initiation: the Intellectual and Moral Growth of Finn
Hypocrisy of “Civilized” Society vs. the Innocence of Nature
Search for Freedom
Pursuit of Extreme Individualism
Desire for a Family

11. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Formal features
Huckleberry Finn as narrator and character
Huck’s rebellion
Huck’s sense of justice
Huck’s language of a 14-year child
Jim as intelligent, compassionate, patient and passive
The Mississippi as a symbol of nature and freedom

12. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Questions
What kind of person is Huck?
What is Huck’s attitude towards slavery?
What does the Mississippi symbolize?
What image is that of Jim?
Is there any element romantic in the novel?