Mark Twain: Satirical Social Critic and Pioneer of the American Vernacular

Darren A. Schweitzer

Saugus High School AP US History and AP English Language and Composition Team Term Paper

Thesis: Living on the Mississippi, traveling to the western United States, witnessing the Civil War, and evaluating the Gilded Age sculpted Samuel Langhorne Clemens' persona of Mark Twain, and inspired his satirical criticism of nineteenth-century American racism, imperialism, and social ideology, all central focuses of his main works. His wit, combined with his sophisticated, succinct writing method, brought an awakening of American literature, and left lasting legacies on American opinion towards social pop-culture, literary criteria, political imperialism, and egalitarian ideology.

I. Introduction

II. Biography and shaping forces of Mark Twain

A. Life on Mississippi River: steamboat pilot, boyhood adventures, printing press

B. Travels to western US: saw booming societies, mistreatment of Chinese workers, stories and tales from west, humor

C. Civil War and implications: promoted racial equality, fought in war, did not support social divide, removes him from Mississippi, makes him travel west, segregation

D. Post-Civil War South: disliked political greed and corruption, satires, moralist, assists and supports Grant, egalitarianism, criticizes new political structure forming, imperialism

III. Predominant arguments and rhetorical/style analysis of Mark Twain's writing and arguments

A. Mark Twain is best known for his satirical humor and critique towards racism, American imperialism, and social distinctions that bound American culture during his age. In his works, he oversteps social niceties to depict underlying American corruption.

B. King Leopold's Soliloquy

1. Strategy: soliloquy format criticizes empirical control in Congo, extensive hyperbole

2. Strategy: satirizes America’s imperialistic exploitation of a country with such a tyrant

C. The Gilded Age

1. Strategy: satirizes political and social corruption of Washington D.C., shows greed

2. Strategy: uses Sellers character to personify this underlying corruption

D. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

1. Strategy: embodies the vulgar speech of the South to show racism, hatred, and bigotry

2. Strategy: episodic narrative, abandons formal plot structure, lacks "unities"

IV. Discussion of the legacies and impact of Mark Twain’s rhetoric: analysis and criticism

A. Popular culture: American persona, pioneer celebrity, influences other writers, "white suit"

B. Literary impacts: praise and criticism, humorist, censorship/vulgar, new satirical approach

C. Political imperialism: Reformation after Civil War, people question political corruption

D. Social ideology: racial discrimination, social abuses and advantages, equality of all men

V. Conclusion

VI. Works Cited

VII. Annotated Bibliography

Mark Twain revealed in a 1906 speech as he approached the final years of his life, "I am working hard…without salary or hope of applause, upon my high and self-appointed task of reforming our national manners, and I ask for your help" (Salamo 23). In such a light-hearted context, it is a remark capable of succinctly defining the driving motives of a man whose writings revealed some of the sorest fallibilities of the crucial nineteenth century transition in American history, as he chose to "play the jester" of the age (Sloane 13). Living on the Mississippi, traveling to the western United States, witnessing the Civil War, and evaluating the Gilded Age sculpted Samuel Langhorne Clemens' persona of Mark Twain, and inspired his satirical criticism of nineteenth-century American racism, imperialism, and social ideology, all central focuses of his main works. His wit, combined with his sophisticated, succinct writing method, brought an awakening of American literature, and left lasting legacies on American opinion towards social pop-culture, literary criteria, political imperialism, and egalitarian ideology.

"If I had known what I was about to require of my faculties, I should not have had the courage to begin."

Mark Twain, from Life on the Mississippi, 1883 (Watkins 81).

As utilized so often in his works, Twain's relationship with the nearby Mississippi River gave him an outlet for adventure and "was crucial for the influence it had on the very best of his fiction" (Messent 2). Twain's Hannibal, Missouri, boyhood placed him at the core of a rapidly changing American South, influencing his perceptions on the social ideology that he would later criticize. Early on, he witnessed an entrenched racial hierarchy that used the argument of black inferiority as a justification for slavery (Fishkin 130). Twain would later concede the negative effects of his upbringing, noting Hannibal's "oppressive and enervating tone" (Bush 27). However, as a young boy, he found an escape outside of the five hundred person town in the vast, muddied riverbeds of the Mississippi, as he embarked on boyish adventures with fellow friends, later exemplified in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Watkins 13). His days as a steamboat captain on the Mississippi developed his idyllic and dream-like perception of the extravagant river during the 1830's to the 1850's. Twain felt the same "ease and comfort" with the Mississippi as Huckleberry Finn, and he became one with nature while developing an associated identity with the river (Abernathy 24). When returning to the Mississippi in 1882 to complete his literary masterpiece, Twain found the river stripped of its pre-war innocence, just as he had been (15). Thus, his "reminiscing about…the stream" caused Twain and the Mississippi River to become a fused identity, defining the magnificent pre-war era that flooded the waters of the river (Flanagan 2).

However, the Civil War would strip Twain of, at least, physical contact with his beloved river, as he traveled to the West to focus on his pursuit of a literary career. The years from 1861-1866 brought "Twain's development into [a] mature reporter who burst into national prominence" (Sloane 4). Twain would eventually settle in San Francisco, California, developing his frontier humor, meeting fellow humorists such as Artemus Ward and Bret Harte, and writing for state newspapers and magazines (Fishkin 38). At this time, he also witnessed and wrote on the outrageous, brutal treatment of Chinese immigrant workers, leading him to his first rejection from editors, who feared his sharp satire would anger and offend racist white readers (Sloane 5). These five years in the West became a turning point not only towards his reactions to Chinese abuses, but to all racial distinction, segregation, and inequality (Bloom 69). To convey these arguments, Twain opened his writings to the form of unprecedented humor and satire of the West that lifted him to fame (Messent 5). Not only did Twain create major works abroad in the West, but he also reached a national and international status that would allow his future arguments to pervade throughout multi-cultural barriers (12).

Although Twain had minimal involvement in the battles of the Civil War, the social and political issues that the war confronted drastically altered the direction of Twain's writing career and main arguments. The war that took 600,000 American lives split the country with arguments over morality, and as abolitionist voices grew louder, the United States suffered a moral dilemma in regards to slavery ("Civil War" 6). Throughout his career, Twain remained quite reticent on the issues of the Civil War, most likely because the period was a moral transition for him, just as it was for the American people (Messent 4). Twain, however, was capable of distinguishing himself from contemporaries of the time by deriving his morality from physical perception and involving the reader with a "real speaker," an area other realist writers chose not to pursue (Sloane 25). Racial segregation in the aftermath of the Civil War also provided Twain with a literary outlet through which he voiced his opinions using satirical rhetoric, condemning the "socioeconomic class structure" of the newly segregated South (Mitchell 2). Although he aided the Confederacy through the Marion Rangers, a volunteer group, Twain abstained from physical action in the war’s proceedings, but instead constructed the basis of a literary career and surpassed fellow contemporaries by confronting socially agitating issues with an unprecedented, satirical boldness (Fishkin 37).

"In the aftermath of the Civil War, the South was in ruins" with destroyed infrastructures, a new labor force, rampant governmental corruption, and a depleted male population, and Twain chose to sit back and satirize these ever-present flaws of the newly formulated Southern system ("Civil War" 6). From 1865-1876, the Reconstruction period made rapid social progression through the Fifteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act, allowing black men to vote, yet Twain realized that these movements did not eliminate substantial inter-racial gaps within the country ("Historical Context" 2). A year and a half after the end of the war, Twain retuned to the east to cash in on the growing journalism and literature boom (Powers 4). He also devoted himself to aiding Ulysses S. Grant, the unguided war hero placed in the executive office, which had created a population that exploited opportunities to make private gain from public wealth (329). Although "the plantation economy of the South never regained the flavor and importance of its antebellum years," Twain observed the rebuilding, industrializing America turn towards imperialistic values for mass production, and he focused on criticizing this subject in the works of his later years (Watkins 13).

"I have no race prejudices…I can stand any society. All I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any worse"

Mark Twain (Powers 37).

Mark Twain is best known for his satirical humor and critique towards racism, American imperialism, and social distinctions that bound American culture during his age. In his works, he oversteps social niceties to depict underlying American corruption. "Race haunts many of Twain's writings," and the employment and pursuit of egalitarian qualities in mankind's social structure would serve an omnipresent role, while Twain progressed from his early travel writings to the imperialistic critiques of his later years (Messent 21). He extensively, and almost exclusively, used satirical and humoristic means to pursue arguments of social equality by blending preposterous, hyperbolic jokes with political satire to question the American ideology changing right before his eyes (Sloane 21). However, amongst all of his cutting critiques, Twain always remained rather evasive towards suggesting an absolute method in solving these American faults. His narrative creations were capable of defining the issues of ideal and real freedom, but in this permeating recognition of social error, Twain provided few "imaginative resolutions" (Bloom 57). This reoccurring inability stayed a constant from the transition of his mid-1800's works to his anti-imperialistic focus at the turn of the century, yet Twain's humor registered with his middle-class audience, which allowed him to strike a balance between the commonalities of American culture and the actions of the social aristocracy of the time (Fishkin 198). Thus, Twain found himself in a somewhat fortuitous circumstance in his literary career, able to rhetorically use the humor of the West, the culture of the South, and the abolitionist ideology of the North to encompass the nation as a whole in his works; he represented the full range of social classes that inhabited each region, employing an informal and colloquial writing style to allow his works to consistently progress (Sloane 22).

In his later years, while traveling abroad to Europe, and his 1905 attack on brutality in the Belgian Congo, entitled King Leopold's Soliloquy stood out in Twain's late anti-imperialistic works, because it formulated the thoughts of a empire-obsessed king into a ludicrously villainous interior monologue in order to depict America’s exploitation, and therefore promotion, of oppressed countries for economic gain (Fishkin 46). The piece begins in a vicious outrage, as the king exclaims, "in print I get nothing but slanders--and slanders again--and still slanders, and slanders on top of slanders! Grant them true, what of it? They are slanders…when uttered against a king" (King Leopold's Soliloquy par. 1). Anaphoric repetition of the word 'slanders' depicts King Leopold as a raging, tyrannical oppressor, which is further emphasized when Leopold reveals that his sole grievance is the print's challenges of his authority. From the start, Twain has laced this work with his cutting satire, supported by the fact that Leopold concedes that these slanders are actually true, yet still finds them an outrageous debasement of central authority. Twain then presents the economic asphyxiation this oppressive imperialism has caused, as the king remarks, "for twenty years I have ruled the Congo State…barring out all foreign traders but myself; restricting commerce to myself" (par. 3). At this point, Twain delves into the physical reality of imperialism in the world, which uniquely juxtaposes the hyperbolic, overly extravagant, satirical rage that King Leopold is still enveloped in. Leopold then goes on to criticize the papers for revealing, “…I am wiping a nation of friendless creatures out of existence by every form of murder…and how every shilling I get costs a rape, a mutilation or a life" (par. 4). Simply describing the Congo's people as friendless creature reaches the extent of a gloomy, morose tone, yet the ever-adventurous Twain does not hesitate to stretch further in his statement to include the rape and murder the king upholds by subjecting his people to back-breaking toil for the benefit of the American dollar. After justifying explicitly listed actions the papers had to offer, Leopold formulates a final defense of his slavery by asserting "they…call me 'the King with Ten Million Murders on his Soul.'…When have they heard me say I wanted the respect of the human race?" (par. 15). This hyperbolic statement evokes a reaction of vehement disgust and disdain for the king, as it further highlights that this tyrannical control contradicts and compromises America’s moral integrity. By the end of the piece, Twain has guided his American audience to see the equivalent of imperialistic brutality, realize the morals behind its economically and socially distorted slavery structure, and question whether these abuses should be supported by America simply for economic advancement.

Although less renowned than Twain's other novels, The Gilded Age, co-written with Charles Dudley Warner in 1873, used satire and a critical tone to depict American Reconstruction, in the aftermath of the Civil War, as a time of corrupt and issueless politics, making the lower social classes question the moral integrity of the aristocracy and government that was reforming America (Gould 1). Following a Tennessee family's attempt to get rich quick by selling their 75,000 acres of land to the federal government, Twain and Warner's mashed together piece guides the reader through "crooked senators, money grafting lobbyists, toadying journalists, sinister bosses, and lecherous committee chairmen" (Powers 26). Just as in his other works, Twain confronts his grievances from the beginning, as he describes the main character Colonel Sellers: "The Colonel's tongue was a magician's wand that turned dried apples into figs and water into wine as easily as it could change a hovel into a palace and present poverty into imminent future riches" (The Gilded Age 56). Using a metaphor and biblical reference, Twain purposely defines Sellers as a formulaic politician with the capability of construing words for direct political advantage. Twain even gives Sellers a ludicrous comparison to Christ's powers, yet it is effective in portraying the absolute extent of corruption that is native to the character. Confronting scheming, underlying motives in Washington politics, Twain writes, "The Colonel had entire confidence in Harry's influence with Wall street, and with congressmen, to bring about the consummation of their scheme…' Don't let 'em into the thing more than is necessary'"(159). Twain thus depicts the American government as an easily corruptible system, where even a small Tennessee family boy has the possibility of penetrating and influencing its decisions. In this first work of fiction, Twain has created an intertwined plot and a serious tone, a feature he would later break away from in his later narratives (Bloom 63). However, the presence of satire still overwhelms the piece, and Twain even mocks Washington D.C. as an economic wasteland as he describes "the capitol; gossips will tell you that by the original estimates it was to cost $12,000,000, and that the government did come within $27,200,000 of building it for that sum…you could not help seeing Mr. Lincoln, as petrified by a young lady artist for $10,000" (The Gilded Age 170-171). Twain brings factual, numerical evidence to support his views on Washington D.C. and satirizes its unnecessary extravagance; the common reader would be apt to notice the ridiculously, extensive capital poured into the nation's capitol, while realizing it could be spent elsewhere for the progression of the unstable country. The Gilded Age eventually relinquished its title to name and define the post-Civil War era as a time when aristocratic politicians concealed personal intentions to the public by arguing that their pursuits were meant for America’s advancement and development.

Although ample credit must be given to each of Twain's literary creations throughout his career, most of his works fail in comparison to provide the embodiment of the nineteenth century American social criteria of rampant racism, hatred, and bigotry that is established in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Written in the wake of Reconstruction, the novel equates the force of pre-war black conditions to post-war, while it develops an internal, moral struggle for Huckleberry who has bonded with the enslaved African, Jim ("Historical Context" 2). Twain also uses the standard, colloquial speech of the South to add a realistic aspect to the piece and portray a shift in Huckleberry's civility from beginning to end (Abernathy 20-21). The inception of the novel shows Huckleberry Finn as an uncivilized, uneducated child bound by the restrictions of civility around him, as Huckleberry explains, "The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me…Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there…All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change" (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1-3). Huckleberry's disdain for the civility of his caretaker defines a racially unenlightened Huckleberry, still subjugated to the civilized, yet racist population, while his desire for an abrupt change in his life foreshadows the moral journey he will take with Jim later on in the book. Twain is setting a comparable precedent for the reader, while utilizing the unedited dialect of the South to portray Huckleberry's existent ties to society.

Twain also utilizes the Mississippi River as the main setting of the adventure, allowing Huck to identify with it as he did as a boy as Huckleberry "laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float…The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back…And how far a body can hear on the water such nights!...I heard people talking at the ferry-landing" (35). Twain is incapable of relinquishing his idyllic, dreamy perception of the river, yet he also shows the disruption civilization has on its beauty in the fact that Huckleberry cannot help but hear the voices of revelers in the night. After Jim and Huckleberry embark on their adventure down the river, Huckleberry reaches a moral epiphany tearing up the letter to Miss Watson revealing Jim's location: "… I'd got to decide…betwixt two things, and I knowed it…'All right, then, I'll go to hell'…and never thought no more about reforming" (214). Huckleberry has chosen his emotional connection over society's definition of moral standard, and thus evolved from the racist qualities that had bound him before. However, Twain is unable to leave the piece with an absolute resolution to the racial struggle, because although Jim is a freed man, Huckleberry reverts back to the same state he was in at the beginning of the novel as he states, "Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before" (293). Although he plans to escape society indefinitely, Huckleberry is returned to the still-powerful society ready to leave for another simple adventure. An archetype of many of his works, Twain has left the reader with the moral problem of the time, but has not provided a means to fix it (Abernathy 21).

"I have been thinking & examining, & searching & analyzing…& am vexed to find that I more believe in the immortality of the soul than misbelieve in it"

Mark Twain in a letter to his wife Livy (Powers 615).

The effects of mass approval and celebration of his writings formed an aspect of the writer beyond his human presence, as his life became renowned as the epitome of a true American lifestyle. In essence, "Twain's career presents a facade of unparalleled success: an American dream come true" (Sloane 13). As his fame took hold throughout the world, Twain would embrace these multiple identities to create the "white-suit" persona that established him as an early celebrity in America (Powers 4). Thus, his life encompassed Samuel Clemens the man, Mark Twain the author, and Mark Twain the persona (Messent 17). Twain became revered in America amongst the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., and although his editors' censorships intended to preserve his public appeal, there was no need, because Twain's straightforward, confrontational style was the driving force behind his fame (Fishkin 10). The public became fascinated to such an extent, that even in his time of dire economic stress, his former works sustained his living condition, because they were in such high demand (Bloom 49). The masses clung to Twain's moral integrity, not solely to his fame.

Twain also resonated as a pioneer in the early, murky waters of uncharted American literature, as he "liberated the country's imaginative history,” creating a new American vernacular by combining the miner’s slang of the West with the dialect of poor whites and Negroes in the South (Powers 5;Sloane 24). Clemens was also the first writer to use "in extended writing the fashion we all use in thinking" by inking the thoughts that first registered in his mind, without fear of repercussions of the subjects he utilized (Howells 1). As a result, some critics would denounce his as an immoral, vulgar, and uneducated writer, leading to sporadic banning of his major works (5). However, Twain still preserved his legacy as a literary comic. Instead of intensively focusing on the undesirable and detestable conditions of social minorities, Twain shifted his point of view to form a new literary approach, mocking the notion of honor that their oppressors commonly held for themselves (Abernathy 49).

Twain's struggle with globally expanding imperialism in his later years may have not upended the movement, in light of current events, but his determined pursuit caused the public to heed his warning of imperialistic evils (Sloane 20). In this aspect of his arguments, Twain was readily involved as a participant in the Anti-Imperialist League that opposed the new direction of the United States (Fishkin 248). Above all, Twain feared that American imperialism could lead to the oppression of the minorities abroad, proving the United States to be a devolving back to morals of its previous slave-based society (Powers 6). The works that exemplified this ideology have become markedly relevant to current analysis and debate of American foreign affairs, including relations under the Bush administration (Messent 13). Although Twain may have never witnessed a structural reformation of American imperial trends, he has caused an ongoing scrutiny of the control the government yields in foreign affairs.

Twain's literary pursuit of social egalitarianism would reverberate throughout American culture, and even strengthen racial equality beyond the extent of the black and white conflict within the Unites States. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has sparked ongoing debates that have lasted 120 years, generating deep passion and opinion for human equality (Abernathy 17). Twain's realistic, individualistic, unifying vision created ideal capabilities for the popular reader, sparking the pursuit of improvement among social lines (Sloane 25-27). This encompassing view point has also had an effect in transnational relations, because Twain's fame abroad helps to bond the American social ideal with views of foreign nations (Messent 115). Not only has Twain lessened racial chasms, but he has also struck a balance amongst the upper, middle, and lower social classes by providing ample representations of each in his works (Fishkin 197).

Twain's works may have solely defined the United States as a whole from the 1850's to the turn of the century, as his presence at such a crucial turning point was an unparalleled and influential literary force. Having such an effect on American history, Mark Twain is capable of fitting the persona of the "American Shakespeare" (Powers 6).

Works Cited

Abernathy, Jeff. To Hell and Back: Race and Betrayal in the Southern Novel. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003.

Bloom, Harold. Bloom's Biocritiques: MarkTwain. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.

Bush, Harold K, Jr. Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of his Age. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2007.

"Civil War and Reconstruction." DISCovering U.S. History. Online ed. Detriot: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center-Gold. Gale. Saugus High School. 12 Sept. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodID=IPS>.

Clemens, S.L. King Leopold's Soliloquy. A Defense of His Congo Rule, 2nd ed. Boston: P.R. Warren Co., 1905. 5-10, 12-20, 23-27, 29-30, 32-34, 40-42.

Fishkin, Shelley Fisher., ed. A Historical Guide to Mark Twain. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Flanagan, William G. "Mark Twain is your Pilot." Forbes 155.u11 (May 22, 1995): 286(3). General One File. Gale. Los Angeles Public Library. 12 Sept. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/itx/start.do?prodID=ITOF>.

Gould, Lewis L. "Gilded Age." The Oxford Companion to United States History. Ed. Paul S. Boyer. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Los Angeles Public Library. 13 September 2007 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t119.e0620>.

Historical Context: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." EXPLORING Novels. Detroit: Gale. 2003. Student Resource Center-Gold. Gale. Saugus High School. 12 Sept. 2007 <http//find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?proID=IPS>.

Howells, W.D. "Criticism by W.D. Howells." DISCovering Authors. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center-Gold. Gale. Saugus High School. 12 Sept. 2007. <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS>.

Messent, Peter. The Cambridge Introduction to Mark Twain. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics: in Antebellum and Civil War America. Connecticut: Praegar Publishers, 2007.

Powers, Ron. Mark Twain: A Life. New York, New York: Free Press, 2005.

Salamo, Lin., ed, and Victor Fischer, and Michael B. Frank. Mark Twain's Helpful Hints for Good Living. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004.

Sloane, David E.E. Student Companion to Mark Twain. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Canada: Random House Inc., 1981.

---. The Gilded Age. New York: Random House, Inc., 2006.

Watkins, T.H. Mark Twain's Mississippi. Palo Alto, California: American West Publishing Company, 1974.

Annotated Bibliography

Abernathy, Jeff. To Hell and Back: Race and Betrayal in the Southern Novel. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003.

Abernathy analyzes arguments of racism and segregation within classic American works. His specific inclusion of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn contributed strategies and legacies.

Bender, David L., pub. Slavery: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1992.

A topical book confronting abolitionist and sectionalist view points towards slavery during the Civil War.

Bloom, Harold. Bloom's Biocritiques: MarkTwain. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 2003.

A main source that analyzed Twain's specific literary text, quotes, and arguments.

Bush, Harold K, Jr. Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of his Age. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2007.

A source analyzing religious influences on Twain, and how these teaching affected his moral arguments.

“The Character of Jim and the Ending of Huckleberry Finn.” DISCovering Authors. Online ed. Detroit: Gale 2003. Student Resource Center-Gold. Gale. Saugus High School. 12 Sept. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start/.do?proID=IPS>.

Short essay analysis of character interactions in the The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Providing factual evidence of changing politics in the time proceeding the Civil War.

Clemens, S.L. King Leopold's Soliloquy. A Defense of His Congo Rule, 2nd ed. Boston: P.R. Warren Co., 1905. 5-10, 12-20, 23-27, 29-30, 32-34, 40-42.

One of the works utilized in the second movement. One of Twain's prominent anti-imperialistic works.

Copp, Darlene P. "Mississippi's Civil War Heritage." Travel America 16.5 (March 2001): 34. Student Resource Center-Gold. Gale. Saugus High School. 12 Sept. 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?proId=IPS>.

A physical description of Civil War influence in the South.

Dempsey, Terrell. Searching for Jim: Slavery in Sam Clemen's World. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2003.

Rhetorical analysis of Twain's anti-slavery views and the influences that caused him to show opinions on the matter.

Fishkin, Shelley Fisher., ed. A Historical Guide to Mark Twain. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

A work that provided analysis of Twain's historical significance. Aided the third legacies movement.

A descriptive narrative describing the physical features of the Mississippi River.

A historical reference for the economic, political, and social trends proceeding the Civil War.

"Historical Context: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." EXPLORING Novels. Detroit: Gale. 2003. Student Resource Center-Gold. Gale. Saugus High School. 12 Sept. 2007 <http//find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?proID=IPS>.

An analysis of the historical significance of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

An analytical critique on Twain's literary works and the arguments they encompassed.

Johnson, Claudia Durst. Understanding Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996.

A work defining the arguments and literary structure of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

"Mark Twain." Biography. A&E Home Video. New York, New York: New Video Group, 1995.

A short video introduction to the life of Mark Twain.

Mensh, Elaine, and Harry Mensh. Black, White, and Huckleberry Finn. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 2000.

Analysis of racial arguments in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Messent, Peter. The Cambridge Introduction to Mark Twain. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Biography and contextual relevance of Mark Twain's life and career.

Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics: in Antebellum and Civil War America. Connecticut: Praegar Publishers, 2007.

A political analysis of antislavery policies in the North and South.

Powers, Ron. Mark Twain: A Life. New York, New York: Free Press, 2005.

A main source analyzing specific aspects of Mark Twain's life from his birth to his death. Also provided many of Twain's quotations.

Salamo, Lin., ed, and Victor Fischer, and Michael B. Frank. Mark Twain's Helpful Hints for Good Living. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004.

Provided a main quotation to begin the piece.

Sloane, David E.E. Student Companion to Mark Twain. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001.

A biography and literary analysis of Mark Twain and his works.

Trombley, Laura E. Skandera., ed., and Michael J. Kiskis. Constructing Mark Twain. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2001.

A somewhat biased novel criticizing minor nuances of Twain's career.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Canada: Random House Inc., 1981.

The main literary work of the paper. Encompasses Twain's significant racial arguments.

---. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York, New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1995.

A considering literary work that was later denied.

---. The Gilded Age. New York: Random House, Inc., 2006.

The second literary work of the second movement. Exemplifies Twain's sharp criticism of the reconstruction United States after the Civil War.

---. The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It. New York, New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1984.

A considering literary work that was later denied.

---. Life on the Mississippi. New York: New American Library, 2001.

A considering literary work that was later denied.

Watkins, T.H. Mark Twain's Mississippi. Palo Alto, California: American West Publishing Company, 1974.

Showed Twain's bond with the Mississippi River throughout his life. Provided a quote for the second movement and analysis of the Mississsippi's influence

Links

AP Team Term Paper Topics

Mr. Klipfel’s Website

The Official Website of Mark Twain

Twain Quotes

Mark Twain’s Scrapbook at PBS.org (Interactive)

Hannibal.net (Interactive multimedia; rare video footage of Twain)

Mark Twain’s Mississippi (Interactive)