Literature is one of the most engrossing and significant expressions of humanity altogether. Literature speaks the language of the imagination. Moreover, the study of literature manifests and improvises the imagination. It is the comprehensive essence of the intellect of a nation. The literature is the immortality of speech. The world of literature adds to the reality. It caters to the whims and fancies of the world. Literature enwraps in itself the aspirations, pain, and passion. It is all the things that the real world is deteriorating in with each passing day. Any literary work is called great when it is charged with meaning to the utmost degree.
source: biography.com
Literature exists because theworld is not enough. It trips you into imagination and presents to you a colossal world of credence fervor and adds to the reader’s perspective. Literature is the expression of the society we live in, just like words are expressions of human beings. Literary works serve as a bridge between the reader and the writer. It transforms the one who reads it towards the conditions of the one who wrote it. It irrigates the creative impulse. The great artwork of literature evidently comes from a great writer. A writer gives direction and guides the reader into a realm of inevitable imagination.
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started”
This renowned quote by the father of American literature implies that to progress, you need to first begin. The key is to break your complex and overwhelming tasks into bits of manageable tasks and then starting on them one by one. With this, let us see how Mark Twain began his journey of showcasing literature never written before. Here, we witness his early life and the tour of his exemplary work in literature. Mark Twain is without a doubt, one of the most distinguished and phenomenal writers that American literature has ever seen. His influence is very much palpable in writing even today.
The Huckleberry Finn, a book by Mark Twain sowed the seeds for the inselberg of American Literature. All of the modern American literature dwells on his exemplary work. Undoubtedly, he is regarded as the father of American literature. American writings form a crucial and maximal part of literary works altogether. This climacteric American writing comes from Mark Twain. His work is a milestone in the history of literature. The literature of America can be classified into two phases viz; before Twain and after him.
As Ernest Hemingway aptly claimed, “There was nothing before. There has nothing been good ever since.”
source: amazon
Early Life
Called by many, the father of American literature, Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30th, 1835 in Missouri, United States. When Samuel was 12, his father passed away due to prolonged pneumonia. During his teenage, he worked for The Hannibal Western Union, a newspaper owned by his brother Orion. Mark Twain became a cub pilot on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. He later became a full-fledged pilot and he thought it was the best time of his life. It was in 1861 when the Civil War broke out, the steamboat trade absolutely came to an end and he was out of the job. Twain served in the Confederate military for awhile. It did not work out for him. As a result, he headed west with his brother. He eventually made his to San Francisco and really began his career as a journalist.
“Good Friends, Good Books, and a Sleepy Conscience – This is an Ideal Life”
Mark Twain gave many such quotations on life and success. His work and ideas were the epitome of how human life should be. Here is a sneak peek into his successful writing career and how his ideal life looked like.
source: amazon
Literary Works
The first big literary break of Mark Twain came in 1865. It was the publication of Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog and was a huge success. It was printed and re-printed all over the country. His first bestseller, Inncocense Abroad was published in 1869. It is still one of the most successful and widely renowned travel narratives of American Literature.
His best-known and most-loved books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1885 are probably the reason for the quotation by Ernest Hemmingway stating that all American Literature comes from Mark Twain. The protagonist, Huck Finn shows the possibility of making genuine moral changes in a world that was dominated by racism and other forms of human folly. It also was the book that was able to capture the vernacular speech of different classes along the Mississippi. This made him the first person ever to introduce such vocabulary into American writings.
Achievements and Outlook
Twain was an immensely prolific writer. He wrote 28 books, a vast number of stories, lectures, and essays. In his last fifteen years, the entire world made him the most celebrated person owing to his impact on his readers. He received honorary doctorate degrees from Gale and Oxford. In 1895 and 1896, so as to pay off debts he did a lecture tour around the world which drew a huge crowd.
America had its first celebrity as Mark Twain. This is because he was so good at capturing the public imagination and tripping them into his writing world. To him having a public image was important. He always wore a white suit when he went on a book tour. In fact, he wanted his pictures to be clicked only in it. He lived by his saying, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” At the age of seventy-four, Mark Twain died at his Connecticut home on April 21st, 1910.
“Do not part with your illusions. when they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”
Twain is one of the towering figures of American literature because he was shrewd, smart, and willing to shoot arrows at the most powerful. People all over the world responded to that and he held onto his position of being great. His addition to American literature remains undeterred. The contributions of Mark Twain in the field of literature are still a source of tremendous inspiration for young writers. His works serve as a sovereign to the field of writing. The literature celebrates, The father of American Literature: Mark Twain with utmost regard and gratification.
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