"Criticism is a queer thing. If I print 'She was stark naked' - & then proceeded to describe her person in detail, what critic would not howl? - who would venture to leave the book on a parlor table, - but the artist does this & all ages gather around & look & talk & point. I can't say, 'They cut his head off, or stabbed him, ' & describe the blood & the agony in his face."

Mark Twain - Notebook #18, Feb. - Sept. 1879

Mark Twain - A Brief Assessment

As one of America's first and foremost realists a humorists, Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens usually wrote about his own personal experiences and and things he  knew about from firsthand experience. His life spanned the two Americas, the frontier America that produced so much of national mythology and the emerging urban, industrial giant of the 20^th century. At the heart of Twain's achievement is his  creation of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, who embody the mythic America, midway between the wilderness and the model state.

The Gilded Age, came in 1873. It was one of the first novels, which tried to describe the new morality (or immorality) of post-Civil War America. One of the new elements of this novel is that it creates a picture of the entire nation, rather than of just one region. Although it has a number of Twain's typically hu­morous characters, the real theme is America's loss of its old idealism. The book describes how a group of young people is morally destroyed by the dream of becoming rich.

Twain, the third of five children, was born on Novel 1835, in the village of Florida, Missouri, and grew up in t river town of Hannibal, that mixture of idyll and nigh and around which Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn live i adventure-filled summers. Hannibal was dusty and quit large forests nearby which Twain knew as a child and uses in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)w kidnaps Huck and hides out in the great forest. The sit which passed daily were the fascination of the town am the subject matter of Twain's Life on the Mississippi (1?town of Hannibal is immortalized as St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Twain's father was an ambitious and respected mildly successful country lawyer and storekeeper. He v ever, a highly intelligent man who was a stern disci? Twain's mother, a southern belle in her youth, had ; ley Warner,

In 1870, Twain married Olivia Langdon. They finished their Hartford mansion and moved into it in 1871. Their infant son Langdon died in 1872, the year Susy, their first daughter, was born. Her sisters, Clara and Jean, followed in 1874 and 1880. Twain's most productive years as a novelist came in this period, when his daughters were young and he was prospering. His The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was a story about "bad boys? a pop­ular theme in American literature. The two young heroes, Tom and Huck Finn, are "bad" only because they fight against the stu­pidity of the adult world. In the end they win. Twain creates a highly realistic background for the story. We get to know the vil­lage very well with its many colorful characters, its graveyards and the house in which a ghost is supposed to exist. Although there are many similarities between Tom and Huck, there are al­so important differences. Twain studies the psychology of his characters carefully. Tom is very romantic. His view of life comes from books about knights in the Middle Ages. A whistle from Huck outside Tom's window calls him out for a night of adventures. Afterwards, Tom can always return to his Aunt Polly's house. Huck has no real home. By the end of the novel, We can see Tom growing up. Soon, he will also be a part of the adult world. Huck, however, is a real outsider.

Some critics complain that Twain wrote well only when he was writing about young people. They say that his psychology was really only child psychology. This may be true. But in his greatest novel. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain gives the national heart. Most agree , however, that it抯 from even deeper currents. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is Twain's best book because, for whatever reasons, he brought  together in it, with the highest degree of artistic balance, those most fundamental dualities running through his work