Paper Example. Mark Twain, A Significant Influence on American Literary History

Mark Twain established his status as the father of all literature. One hundred years after his death, he remains an influential and controversial figure in the literature on attaining the legendary figure amongst his peers. Many scholars have termed him to be central not only in American life but also in American life. His writings had quite a significant impact on literary critics and readers in general because of how they portray the American experience. His writings were based on the eras of both the realist and romantic times in American literature. Mark's work mostly influenced the society of his readers because the views pointed out in his books brought forward totally different views and gave a new perspective on life (Bridgman 15). The readers of his works are led to arrive at a social commentary of his narratives through his pure, understated style and seemingly artless narrators. The distinct trait of Mark Twain's work was his sense of humor. He was fond of pointing out absurdities of something and making a bit of fun out of it. He did not publish most of his serious work in his lifetime and concentrated on his humorous works. This essay will analyze why Mark Twain had the most significant influence on American literary history.

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Boyhood That Inspired His Works

Born in Florida, Missouri, Samuel Langhorne Clemens came to the world in a village with a hundred people. At around four years of age, Sam's family moved to the Mississippi river banks in Hannibal, Missouri, where his father operated a general store and was later elected justice of the peace and regularly held court sessions. The days in Hannibal were Vital for Sam. He was a keen observer and had quite a sharp memory, which would come in handy to provide him with the inspiration he needed in his writing career when he undertook the name, Mark Twain (Messent 65). Under the name Mark Twain, he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and immortalized Hannibal as St. Petersburg. All the geographical features that he referred to in the book are real. They are all features that visitors can explore today, including The Mississippi River and its islands, the great cave south of town, and Cardiff hill. The town where they were moving had about 700 inhabitants, and by the time he left, the population had risen to more than 2500. That made him familiar to the inhabitants and the community; hence his writing directly related to the town.

Actual people inspired many of the characters in his book "Tom Sawyer," with many of the main characters being close to him during his early life in Hannibal. Some of the examples of the characters included His mother Jane Clemens as Aunt Polly, a girl Laura Hawkins living across the Street from Sam's family inspired Becky Thatcher, His brother Henry and Sister Pamela became cousin Sid and Mary respectively and Tom Blankenship from a low-income family spawns Huckleberry Fin (Messent 69). Across the "Tom Sawyer" book, Sam's childhood is depicted of his school experience and how he spent his time playing in the cave, on the river, and in the hills. In the book, there is a trial scene, and it is believed to have been inspired by his father's courtroom.

Twain's early experiences in life helped him amass mastery in a variety of skills. They ignited his interest in traveling and adventure. His father's death due to pneumonia when he was only 11 years was a big hit to his education. It created quite a financial strain on their family. It meant he could no longer go on with schooling, and he was apprenticed to a local newspaper as a printer's devil (Bridgman 18). However, this exposure was vital to his life as a writer since he greatly built his vocabulary and was exposed to several styles by writing many letters. Twain's exposure to too much of the world enabled him to travel, meet different groups of people, and mingle with different dialects that would be one of the subject matters in his writing later on.

However, he was not good at the printers devil job he struck out from Hannibal, Missouri- which he refers to as St Petersburg in his book "Huckleberry Finn -to try his fortune in the importation of South American coca leaf. There, he met Horace Bixby, a legendary pilot. He would spend quite some time learning about the ways of being a steamboat pilot. He would later lose a brother in a steamboat catastrophe. However, he stayed longer as a pilot since he was quite nervous and was evading the war. He tried his luck in silver mining, but others jumped him. He finally headed to San Francisco as a journalist. Here he had a stroke of luck after a series of attempted jobs (Messent 71). Twain released a nationwide hit informing of comic newspaper sketch known as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog." That made him realize he needed a pen name for the fantastic and more comedic columns that he was writing. He derived his pen name from a dialect that was used during his time at the river. While working at Carson City as a reporter, he met Artemus Ward, a popular humorist. The latter encouraged him to write as much as he could.

Renowned Attributes

Mark twain proclaimed himself an inventor and even took a patent for some of the things that he did. One of the unique attributes of his writing is his iconic works that are timeless and have been inspiring Americans for decades since they were released. However, Twain embraced humor and became one of the most celebrated writers in that niche distancing himself from the formal means of writing. His use of Vernacular in his writing set him apart from the rest of the writers of his era (Wang 1327). That made him unique and gave the readers a sense of emotional and familiar connection to the characters of the novels he wrote. He was authentic in his portrayal of the southern dialect. Writing in Vernacular and trying not to sound stupid required talent, and Mark Twain believed himself to be the best in making things work.

Mark gave the characters in his novels personality and breathed life into them through his unique but intriguing word choice and style. In "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," Twain successfully communicates the southern way of speech for his various characters through his phonetic spelling of words like "swaller" instead of swallow. He successfully created imagery and evoked a wide range of emotions of each character through the variations in the dialogue of characters. He further kept the language of each character natural, realistic, and consistent (Bridgman 38). The decorous writers of that era wrote with acute formality compared to Twain, who wrote with convincing prose. The use of vernacular in writing had yet to be actualized until Twain's writing. Later, many authors admitted to having been inspired by it.

Influence on Authors

Mark Twain is referred to as the father of literature by some authors who based their books on the works and ideas that Mark had done before. Serious literary critics regard him highly, and he is a subject in many literary analyses and biographies. Among the earliest tributes to Mark Twain was in "Green Hills of Africa" (1935) by Ernest Hemingway. Ernest stated that all modern American literature comes from Mark's book "Huckleberry Finn." He refers to the book as the best source of all-American writing, and there was nothing before it, and nothing has ever been good enough since. Ralph Ellison, author of the "Invisible Man" (1952) which is considered one of the best American novels since World War II. He praises the transformational efforts of Mark to American literature (Wang 1330). He acknowledged the use of regional vernacular speech as a literary expression. The lesson on how to capture manners and folkways that is essentially American for it would be a way of discovering the American national identity.

Mark's influence as a master of vernacular is demonstrated by the novelist Saul Bellow in his novel "The Adventures of Augie March" (1953). The title of the novel is a kind of a tribute to Mark, and it was a breakthrough in the career. The novel is narrated in a very American voice of the author himself filled with hilarious incidents like Twain's work. William Faulkner is often regarded as the best American writer after Mark Twain acknowledged the work of Twain like the other authors after being awarded the Nobel prize for literature, which is the world's most prestigious literary honor (Bridgman 42). He acknowledged Mark as the first American writer and the rest heirs while he debt some of his best work, such as "The Bear" and "Barn Burning" to Mark Twain. Another influence was evident when the Oxford Mark Twain published a twenty-nine-volume set of all publications of Mark. Each volume contained an introduction by a leading contemporary author. Some of them described the important role that Twain played in their discovery and development as writers.

Major Themes He Addresses

Mark Twain's work is described as an idealist and a moralist. These are the repetitive traits that are evident in any written work that he produced. The virtues of comradeship, youth innocence, symbolism, and regionalism of the landscape and the river played a major in his works. Regionalism is evident in Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The setting of the novel itself is paramount in regionalism since it is in a remote place. The writer explores the character's relation to civilization (Messent 68). Tying a story to a specific way of speaking place and time may seem like quite a limiting technique, Twain was able to pull it off. He managed to create a story that feels universal while still observing the specific region setting. Mark uses regionalism to represent the culture and attitudes that people have.

Twain's compassionate depiction of the dangers of conforming to societal customs, desire for freedom to all human beings, and their depiction of the dehumanizing effect of racism made his book feel ahead of its time. Many people have since failed to differentiate between a character's acceptance of slavery to Mark's attitudes towards that topic (Bridgman 53). However, the use of the N-word in over two hundred instances makes many people question whether it should be used in high schools. There have been attempts to remove it from the public libraries due to its needless offense to African Americans. However, various defenders of the novel have clearly stated that Twain had used the words with artistic intentions.

Despite the arguments that justify the use of the N-word in Twain's novel, there remains a lack of understanding into whether and how to teach it in America. The word first appeared in the 17th century coined from the Latin word for black, which was Niger. The word was neutral until it was used in the context of slavery. By the early 19th century, it had become identical to slavery in the United States (Messent 70). The term was often used to differentiate between a white person and a slave. However, the n-word was later described as a term to dehumanize the black people. Twain wrote the "Huckleberry Finn" and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" with full knowledge of the power of the word. He wanted to use it to show how the character Huck grew around the world and would tend to use it unthinkingly.

Conclusion

Mark Twain is one of the best authors of his time. Just like many other authors stated, he is the founder of Literature in America. He created a broad base for the rest of the artists to base their works on. Even though he was not quite as educated as many other authors, his love for writing beat all odds and made him quite an irresistible force in the field of literature. Twain is a bold figure who chose to explore the areas in which many in his era were afraid of pursuing out of fear of being rejected.

Work Cited

Bridgman, Richard. Traveling in Mark Twain.