PROF.

BOGDAN FEREȘTEANU, ȘCOALA GIMNAZIALĂ ”AUREL SEBEȘAN”

FELNAC

REFERAT PENTRU COMISIA METODICĂ PE SEMESTRUL AL II-LEA

CHILDHOOD IN THE WORKS OF MARK TWAIN

In The Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway asserts that “all American literature
comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn”.

Twain’s books are about adventures and relationships and their heroes’ pleasure derives
from their forgetfulness of trouble. “Being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable”.

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn nature itself is full of contradiction, just like
human nature. Words like “lovely”, “wild”, “glory” and “sin” can be attributed to them both. In a
notebook entry of August 1885 Mark Twain described Huckleberry Finn as ‘a book of mine
where a sound heart and a defeated conscience come into collision and conscience suffers
defeat.’ The main character does right, but cannot think right, which is the reverse of what is
normally human.

In The Circus Animals’ Desertion Yeats writes that “great books begin in the foul rag-
and-bone shop of the heart” and that meant for Twain particularly his knowledge of complicity
in slavery and his inheritance of original sin.

Mark Twain’s writings can be described –among other things- as humorous, fresh and
open-minded, which are some of the best things young America had and it still has to a certain
extent.

In his preface to Tom Sawyer the author says: “Although my book is intended mainly for
the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that
account, for part of my plan has been to try pleasantly to remind adults of what they once were
themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked and what queer enterprises they
sometimes engaged in.”

This is the reason I chose this subject for my paper as I believe we, too, are looking for a
reminder of childhood in a world obsessed by competition, development and perfection, which
are seen nowadays almost as a religion, where the intellect is praised as god and ruler and the
heart – its humble subject. We plan everything in detail, we hurry through our daily chores and
implicitly though our lives and we forget to live simply and adventurously, like Tom or Huck.
This is why it is said that “the longest distance in the world is between a person’s mind and their
heart.” The irony is that we “imported” our modern way of life from the same U.S.A. of Mark
Twain’s, but with which I don’t think he would agree very much.

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 Reading Huckleberry Finn one may think of slogans like “Follow your heart” or “Carpe
Diem”, taken not in a selfish, egotistical sense, but rather to ponder things as they come and
decide with a child’s heart to do “whichever comes handiest”. Huck’s struggle reminds me of
Hamlet’s words:

“Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer

The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,

Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them…”

Critic Stuart Hutchinson says: “Huckleberry Finn’s superiority is that it can always bear
its author’s profoundest concerns, as we immediately see in the last two paragraphs of Chapter 1
when Huck feels ‘so lonesome I almost wished I was dead’. To get Shakespeare off its back
Huckleberry Finn will comically demolish Hamlet’s “To be or not to be soliloquy, “the most
celebrated thing in Shakespeare”, but this literal demolition follows the creation of an American
equivalent in these initial paragraphs.”

Like in Orwell’s 1984, Twain’s novels also send a powerful warning regarding a
totalitarian state and society, but while Euripides says: "When a good man is hurt, all who would
be called good must suffer with him", Twain comes with another solution, similar to that of
Roberto Benigni in the movie La vita e bella: an adventurous game of survival, not frentic, but
fun.

We can find several contrasts in Twain’s works:

 Past vs. Future;

 Childhood vs. Adulthood;
 Freedom vs. Slavery, not only physical, but also that of conscience.

Works cited:

1. Ernest Hemingway, The Green Hills of Africa, Jonathan Cape, London, 1936
2. Stuart Hutchinson, Introduction and Notes to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn,
Wordsworth Classics, 2001
3. Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act, Vintage Books, New York, 1972