Transcript Mark Twain PWPT

America's Greatest Storyteller
Biographical
Information
 Hannibal, Missouri
 Population of 1, 000
 80 miles north of St. Louis
 On the Mississippi River
 This place helps older Twain create his setting for Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Learning to understand the life of
Mark Twain
 Missouri was a slave state by constitution
 The famous Missouri Compromise in 1820
 Introduced young Clemens to two dark things about the
reality of human existence
Slavery
 Death
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Careers
 Newspaper writer
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New York
Philadelphia
St. Louis
Keokuk, Iowa
 River Boating
 1857: Cub pilot on the
river boat “Paul Jones”
 He work for four years as
a pilot. Earned his
license in 1859
Biographical Information
Twain had a deep passion for the Mississippi River. The
Mississippi River is used as the setting for his book, The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain writes:
“When I was a boy there was but one permanent
ambition among my comrades on the west bank of the
Mississippi River, that was to be a river boat pilot.”
As a child, what did you have a passion for: do you still
have that passion?
Write your answer on your note paper on the back. Write
4-6 sentences.
Understanding Mark Twain
In 1870, at age 35, marries Olivia Langdon.
 Olivia was part of a prominent abolitionist
family.
 Her family helped to influence his writings
and views.
 He later made an acquaintance with
Frederick Douglass.
As time goes on and life happens…
As Twain got older, his works got darker, mirroring the
reversal of fortunes in his own life.
 Bad health
 Bankruptcy
 Olivia’s bad health
 Children's health issues
 The death of his daughter, Susie
Realism:
Style and Voice
 Realism
 Period of American Literature 1865-1900
 A literary style that is faithful to representing actuality.
 Opposes Romanticism which wanted to transcend the
real and find the ideal
 Realists focus on the immediate, the here and now
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Real descriptions of the common, the average, the every day.
Realists authors believe that plot and form should be avoided.
Fiction truthfully representing life should be concerned with
ethical issues more that plot or form.
Characterization is central to the novel.
Tone is often comic, frequently satiric and seldom grim.