"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes" is just one of many notable quotations from the writings of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. More commonly known as Mark Twain, the famous American writer and humorist is best remembered for the novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His writing is marked by a unique style of humor and satire. It is also significant for the way it critiqued the social, moral, and political aspects of society. Samuel Clemens was a very colorful character who became the most popular American celebrity of his time.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, in a small village named Florida, Missouri. At the time of his birth, Halley’s Comet was visible in the sky. His parents were John and Jane Clemens, and Samuel was the sixth of seven children in his family. John Clemens was a lawyer who had gained considerable wealth as a land owner in Tennessee. Due to bad business decisions and unfortunate events, however, the family fortune was lost, and when Samuel Clemens was still a baby, the family moved to the river town of Hannibal, Missouri. It was this town and his experiences there that inspired his most famous books, particularly The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Samuel’s father died in 1847 and left the family with a lot of debt. It was at this time that the creative interests and talents of Mark Twain began to emerge.
At the age of eleven, after having completed the fifth grade, Samuel Clemens went to work at his brother’s newspaper. He worked as a printer’s apprentice and even did some writing. Some of the most controversial stories in the paper came from the mind of Clemens—usually when his brother was out of town. Clemens continued to earn a living working for newspaper companies in St. Louis and New York City. Yet in 1857, his love of the Mississippi River drew him back, and he decided to become a steamboat captain. He thoroughly enjoyed this profession and described his experiences in his book Life on the Mississippi. Unfortunately, the Civil War put an end to all boating on the river, and thus, ended Clemens’ career aboard steamboats. However, it was his experiences on the river that gave him his pen name and inspired his future works.
After leaving his beloved Mississippi River, Samuel Clemens volunteered as a soldier in the Confederate army. His time as a soldier, however, was brief. He quit after just two weeks and was soon on his way to Virginia City, Nevada, to work with his brother again. There, he wrote for the Territorial Enterprise, a local newspaper, and on February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous travel story with the pen name "Mark Twain" for the first time. The imaginative name comes from the language of steamboat sailors. The Mississippi River is shallow and the depth of the water was measured using a pole with a mark every six feet. "Twain" is an old word meaning "two," so when the sailor checking the depth of the water saw that it covered only two marks on the pole, he would yell out, "Mark twain!" as a warning. From the familiar cry of the steamboats on the Mississippi, the writer Mark Twain was born.
Mark Twain wrote numerous novels and short stories during his career. But the two works that gained him the most fame were The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. These novels were his masterpieces, but of the two, Huckleberry Finn is recognized as the more exceptional piece of literature. It is considered one of the first great American novels because it addresses the social and moral norms of the day like no other work before it. Tom Sawyer was published in 1876, and unlike Huckleberry Finn, it carries no clear social message, but simply follows the exploits of two boys. However, Tom Sawyer has been, and continues to be, popular among youthful readers. The main characters of both books are said to be based on Twain’s own childhood friends.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884, also draws upon Mark Twain’s own life, including his experience of Southern slavery. In truth, Mark Twain’s father owned one slave and his uncle owned several. As a child, Mark Twain spent countless summers playing in the slaves’ houses, listening to their stories, and singing and celebrating with them. Huckleberry Finn is narrated by the title character named Huck, a thirteen-year-old boy who journeys down the Mississippi River with his friend Jim, a runaway slave. This novel is a story of discovery and friendship. White characters are depicted as foolish or cruel in comparison to the black main character, who is wise and unselfish. It was controversial in its time and continues to be so today.
Mark Twain also toured the world as a reporter and lecturer. He traveled to Hawaii as a reporter for The Sacramento Union, and then to Italy and France. Throughout his travels, he published works making fun of American and European prejudices and manners. His fame and fortune continued to grow. In 1870, he was financially secure enough to marry his sweetheart, Olivia Langdon, whom he had been courting for two years. The couple had four children together but lost three to illness. In 1897, a false obituary was written about Twain declaring him dead. He responded in his typically humorous fashion by stating that "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
During this period of his life, Twain made a number of bad investment decisions and lost most of his money. In order to restore his wealth, he frequently traveled around the world on lecture tours. In 1904, while the couple was living in Italy, Twain’s wife became ill and passed away. After her death, Twain returned to the United States.
In his later years, Mark Twain’s works became darker in tone. The deaths of three of his children and of his wife had an indelible impact on his life and writing. His writing, shaped as always by his travels and experiences, now focused on human greed and cruelty. It grew increasingly critical of government, and some people even labeled him a traitor. Not all of his work was published during his lifetime because some magazines and newspapers were afraid doing so would damage their reputations.
But whether his words were light and humorous or dark and critical, Mark Twain never stopped observing and writing about all the things around him. He wrote of both romance and reality, and described both the positives and negatives of a quickly changing world. In 1909, Twain wrote, "I came in with Halley’s Comet . . . and I expect to go out with it." And so he did. He died at the age of 74 on April 21, 1910, one day after the comet had passed.