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Faculty of Legal and Business Studies “Dr Lazar Vrkatić“

SEMINAR PAPER

Samuel Langhorne Clemens

student: MarijanaLazić professor : Dorin Drambarean

Novi Sad, September 2019.

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Introduction

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, was a major American writer from
Missouri. His stories and novels are famous for their humor, vivid details, and memorable
characters.There is no child who hasn’t read “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, both classics in American literature.

MARK TWAIN’S LIFE

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, as the sixth
child of John and Jane Clemens. Four years later the family moved in a little town nearby
Hannibal, where Samuel spent his boyhood years.During his youth, Clemens grew up on the
Mississippi River. Steamboats landed at the port of Hannibal several times a day, and his
boyhood dream rose to become a steamboatman on the river he loved so desperately.His love and
his experiences with the river should later become a heritage and a major content of his
literature.

Life was never easy for Sam’s family. After his father’s death it got even tougher. Sam was a
twelve year old boy when he started working in order to support his family. His first jobs were
helping newspaper printers or helping out his brother, who was in charge of Orion's Hannibal
Western Union. Occasionally, Sam wrote sketches and got them published in the newspapers he
worked for.
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Clemens left Hannibal, at the age of 18, and worked as a printer in New York City and
Philadelphia. The cities in the east were the center of American Literature and allowed him to get
new contacts in another part of the country. He published his gathered experiences and thoughts
about the east in the Hannibal Journal. So, people in the mid west got more informed about the
"other Americans".

At the age of twenty-three Samuel’s dreams became true . In New Orleans, Missouri he received
the pilot license for the steamboat. He spent two years of piloting, until the Civil War halted
steamboat traffic.This period is seemed to be important because this is when Samuel adopted the
pseudonym "Mark Twain", the alter name which is going to follow his work for the next 50 years.
The connection between his life and his writings, once again can be proved here as well. The
fictitious name is a term that means that a river is the minimum depth for a safe navigation.

Clemens returned to writing in 1861, after unhappy months as a volunteer soldier in the
Confederate army. He began working for the Virginia Enterprise. He was paid $ 25 a week for
various kinds of articles, both serious reports and humorous writings.

In 1864 Clemens moved to San Francisco and worked for various newspapers. When his short
story “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” was published in 1865 by the Saturday Press of New
York, it was a great success and Mark Twain became a nationally known humorist. He gave his
first public lecture in October 1866 and it was the beginning of a lecture tour in the western states
to make money and promote his career. Clemens had a natural talent for telling stories and
making speeches.

In 1866, he took a four months trip to Hawaii as correspondent for the Sacramento Union.
Clemens just loved the Islands. In his time there, he earned a lot of money, which gave him the
chance to travel through the far west of America more further.Traveling brought him enormous
knowledge about people and cultures. These can be proofed in every of his writings.
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The folllowing years he spent travelling from the west to the east and from east to west. He
worked as a correspondent for papers on several places in the country and gathered experiences
until he finally wrote his first published book "The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras
County". This book also includes stories from the west coast, from Hawaii and impressions from
his time in Hannibal.Now he was determined to succeed as a writer without the hard life of
journalism.

After this journey, Clemens met Olivia Langdon. They married in 1870 and soon settled in
Hartford, Connecticut. Together they had four children: a son, Langdon, who died as an infant,
and three daughters—Susy, Clara, and Jean. Sam built a huge, "totally odd" house. They enjoyed
a prosperous and happy life together. Nevertheless they were among the most important members
of the polite Eastern Society.

The Clemens family used to lead a very comfortable life. They traveled to Europe and visited
several countries from north to south of the "old continent". These positive foreign influences
gave Twain creativity to write a couple of his well-known books. Among them are "Tom
Sawyer" (1875), "A Tramp Abroad" (1880), and "The life on the Mississippi" (1883). In the year
of his 50th birthday Webster & Co. published "Huckleberry Finn", which is considered Twain's
masterpiece. “Tom Saywer“ and “Huckleberry Finn“ gained international reputation and became
best-selling novels in many countries.Clemens set both of these novels in his native Missouri and
drew heavily on his boyhood memories of growing up in Hannibal.

He examined American culture on the edge of the frontier and dealt seriously with such issues as
slavery, poverty, and class differences. Clemens’s natural wit and keen observations of human
nature—developed and perfected during his years as a journalist—found full expression in his
fiction. Twain’s writing is characterized by broad, often irreverent humor or biting social satire. It
is also known for realism of place and language, memorable characters, and hatred of hypocrisy
and oppression.
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Unlike the English writers who came before him, Twain created a much looser narrative style.
The way characters spoke sounded like real speech, and no two characters sounded the same.
Each had a distinctive voice that told the reader who was speaking. This American novelist
introduced the vernacular style of writing.

Twain's narrative writing style belongs to what people call Southwestern humor. It can be
described by its earthy language, at times crude humor and doses of cruelty as well. Twain's life
in Hannibal introduced him to many of these character types; it was there that he familiarized
himself with character types such as slave dealers, riverboat travelers and gamblers.

For example, one of Twain's most famous characters, Jim in "Huckleberry Finn," starts out as a
stock character but is transformed when Huck starts to see him as a person. This style of writing
marks the ending of Romanticism and the beginning of Realism in American literature.

Conclusion

Twains’ explicit sense of place is articulated in the rugged aesthetic of the American Midwest.
The untouched labyrinth of underground caves, the secrets hidden in the planks of abandoned
houses, and the natural landscape of the American Midwest in the aftermath of a bloody Civil
War, explicitly defines Twain’s work as stories of place. His texts also have an undeniable sense
of place rooted in the speech of his characters. The dialect, speech patterns, slang and syntax of
the dialogue create a palpable experience for the reader. Descriptions of natural sights, smells and
sounds of Missouri, display Twain’s true craftsmanship as a novelist.Twain’s works aren’t just
written texts, but tangible artifacts of both American literary and cultural history. Twain’s critical
eye, and ear, of social observation and political injustices of an often bigoted America, along with
a clever tongue, much like that of his young heroes, has solidified his role as what no less to
be called ‘the father of American literature’.
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The writings of Mark Twain endure on bookshelves and in the hearts and minds of readers around
the world. In his sketches, articles, stories, and novels, he captured the flavor and spirit of
America during the late nineteenth century. More importantly, he wrote eloquently about
universal themes that affect people of all times. His wit, combined with a deep sympathy for
innocent and well-meaning people, came from his humble origins in Missouri. Clemens died at
Stormfield on April 21, 1910, at the age of 74. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira,
New York, next to his wife and children.

Literature :

https://www.biography.com/writer/mark-twain

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Twain

https://historicmissourians.shsmo.org/historicmissourians/name/c/clemens/

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Biography-of-Mark-Twain