Mark Twain and Me

Mark Twain and Me

There are moments in life where we choose what path we go on and moments where we do not get to choose. These moments change our lives for better or for worse. I have had these event happen in my life of 18 years and Mark Twain had these life changing events like when his father died, the beginning of his life as a river boat pilot and the tragic ending, and hearing his servant Mary Ann Cord’s tell him her story. I will be telling you about these events and how it changed his live as well as some of my own life changing events.

Mark Twain was born named Samuel Langhorne Clements the sixth child in his family. In 1893 the Clemens family moves to Hannibal, Missouri, a riverbank town that is a frequent stop for steamboats traveling the Mississippi (Shmoop). Samuel revered the steamboat pilots and hoped to become one himself (Shmoop). When Sam was eleven his father died and Sam had to drop out of school and help his family with the finances (Shmoop). He started working for his brother, Orion, as a printer and editor for the Hannibal Western Union (Biography.com Editors). Although he was working under his brother Orion, he was not paid adequately and received only a meager ration of food for his work.

This was the point in Twain’s life where he learned how to write on a typewriter and edit news articles. Because he was an editor, he found out what people liked to read and things that caught their attention. He would be able to go in the newspaper business and at 18 he went to New York and Philadelphia and found success in writing articles (The Mark Twain House and Museum). Without his father dying he would have never dropped out of school and found work as a printer/editor, even writing a few articles for people when he was a young boy.

After his success as a writer he remembered as a boy he wanted to be a steamboat pilot and by 1857 he returned to the Mississippi River to start on a new career (The Mark Twain House and Museum). During his apprenticeship he learned all the lingo of a steamboat pilot including the phrase “mark twain” which is when the water was 12 feet deep and indicates safe water (Encyclopedia Britannica). A year later Twain encouraged his brother Henry to be a steamboat pilot with him (Shmoop). While his brother was training to become a pilot he was killed in an explosion on the steamboat Pennsylvania and Twain feels responsible for his brother’s death for the rest of his life (Shmoop). When the Civil War breaks out the trading on the Mississippi River stops and Twain ends his steamboat career and goes to a volunteer Confederate militia for two weeks before it disbands (Burns)

With Samuel Clemens’s travels down the Mississippi he finds his pen name Mark Twain. He also gets to see all the trading of the slaves along the Mississippi River by being the pilot of a steamboat. The Mississippi River is one of the main path for slave trading. He gets used to seeing the slaves being treated as objects and sees nothing wrong with it. He even decides to fight for the Confederates thinking slavery is normal and being born into it, his father owning slaves. Later in life he writes a book on his travels down the Mississippi as a memoir of his years as a steamboat pilot.

For the next couple of years Twain lives his life normally. He moves to the West and establishes himself as a writer writing short stories for the New York Saturday Press (Shmoop). He gives his first public lecture that becomes a hit in 1867 and later he meets his future wife Olivia Langdon (Shmoop). They move to Connecticut having several children two dying and writing a few great books including his first popular book Tom Sawyer (Shmoop). Then while Twain was sitting on the porch of the farm house their servant Mary Ann Cord sits a step below and acts as cheerful as any other person (Burns). He wonders how she has never had any struggles in her life, and asks her, and then gets a rude awakening, finding out that her previous owner ran out of money and was not able to keep her, her husband and their seven kids, so they were all sold into separate homes and forcefully taken away from each other, telling Twain that she hasn’t seen but one of her sons to this day (Twain).

        This is when Twain sees that slavery was not all as good as he was told, and what he saw from his family’s slaves was not the same at every home. Since he has children of his own he could relate to Mary’s story and that is why it struck him so deeply. Twain even wrote the story and published it in Atlantic Monthly, saying this is not his usual comedy wanting others to notice the brutality in slavery (Twain). He even decided to write a book that brought what slavery was actually like to light “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. The story had innuendoes like don’t follow the crowed, they are not always right (Thomas 161-162). You can tell a difference of how he gets the reader to want Huck to save Jim especially when Huck says “‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell’-and tore it up”, Huck makes up his mind to save Jim even if the laws and society say that slavery is right Huck feels that it is wrong and wants to help his friend (Thomas). This shows that Twain was considerably changed by Mary’s words and changed his opinion on slavery.