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Ⅱ. Mark Twain and The Adventure of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain is the founder of US critical realism literature, and the world renowned master of short stories. He is good at using techniques, including exaggerating the ugly social phenomena to the readers, and letting them find out what is right, what is wrong by themselves. For this reason, Mark Twain has a lot of audience in the whole world. His works have practical significances, which deserve in-depth analysis. This thesis uses several points to expound Mark Twain’s writing style.
2.1 Mark Twain’s Life Experience
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the latter often called “the Great American Novel.”
Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. After an apprenticeship with a printer, he worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his singular lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. In 1865, his humorous story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” was published, based on a story he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention, and was even translated into classic Greek. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.
Twain was born shortly after a visit by Halley’s Comet, and he predicted that he would “go out with it” too. He died the day following the comet’s subsequent return. He was lauded as the “greatest American humorist of his age” and William Faulkner called Twain “the father of American literature”.