A Tip of the hat to Mark Twain
Hello friends,
I’d like to take this moment to tip my hat to Samuel Clemmons, perhaps better known as Mark Twain. I just finished watching a documentary about his life, by Ken Burns, and though I knew bits and pieces about his humble beginnings, his liberal outreach, and the many tragedies that surrounded him, this film gave a new realization of his life; and what affected me most was his constant criticism of humanity (particularly western society), but how, though he chastened society for its countless hypocrisies, I always feel a hint of hope for humanity through individual humans; with individual acts of love. In a beautiful moment near the conclusion of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we find Huck with a great dilemma: Jim is a runaway slave getting ready to steal his wife and child from a slave owner; if Huck doesn’t turn him in to the authorities, the common belief at the time was that he would be risking eternal damnation, yet here is Huck’s thought process, as revealed in the story:
“And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and suchlike times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll go to hell” - and tore it up.”
-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Here Twain shows how, if a person uses the reason they are granted with, they can come to a moral, humane conclusion as to how to act. I feel Twain’s work is particularly important in today’s culture, as we are assaulted by fallacious rhetoric from both sides of the (supposedly) two party system we are mired in; we cannot forget that we are all human, no matter where we live: be it Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Iraq, or anywhere else.
I hold Twain to be a master storyteller because, through his writings and (perhaps more importantly) his lectures, he was able to communicate with the common person of the world. He was hailed as “The Funniest Man in America,” but he used his, sometimes sorrowful, humor to teach and show the dangers we often are seduced into believing.
Mark Twain was not only a master author and creator of tales, but he was also a man who took it upon himself to argue for humanity. Let us not let the passion he had, a passion I sometimes feel bubbling beneath the surface of so many people, fade away. This is not a call for you to stand upon a soap box and shout out your logical thoughts to the world (though I support that passion); instead this is a reminder that we must all be critical of any political and/or social rhetoric that is thrown our way; I hope that we all (myself included) can take the time to examine what we are told to believe, and see this coincides with a basic human respect; that we have the strength, when faced with what seems an immoral choice dictated by society, to be as Huck and say, “If that is my choice, to blindly follow what I am told or to go to hell, alright then, I’ll go to hell.”
That’s my passionate stance for the night. I don’t intend to be preachy, but those are my thoughts for the night. Thank you for reading.
Best,
Lethan