Mark Twain Introduction
What Mark Twain did... and why you should care
"I am a border ruffian from the State of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption. In me you have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man."1
Wow. Super humble introduction there, Mark...
Okay, fine. We guess Twain earned his bragging rights. After all, he's still considered the quintessential American author, William Faulkner called him the father of our literature, and Ernest Hemingway swore there was no better book than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Guess he never read Twilight.
Twain was a dash of the West and a sprinkling of the East, all united by a distinctly American sense of humor. So how did this Missouri rascal-turned-Connecticut Yankee capture the hearts of so many people? Easy.
Devil magic.
No, just kidding. Don't write that in a paper.
For one, Twain had a keen sense of observation and an intuitive understanding of human nature—that's why we still quote him so often, even a century after his death. No matter how serious the subject matter—and his books tackled some pretty heavy stuff—you could always find something to laugh about. And he was hilariously funny, both on the page and in person. We're big enough to admit that he made Shmoop guides sound like eulogies. By the time he died in 1910, he had long been one of the most famous men in America.
When Mark Twain talked, people listened.
The persona he created for himself on the page was sometimes deceptively light-hearted. Mark Twain suffered more than his fair share of tragedies, grieving the untimely deaths of not only his beloved younger brother but also his wife and three of his four children. But this perfect man had a fighting spirit. "It is from experiences such as mine that we get our education of life," Twain wrote. "We string them into jewels or into tinware, as we may choose."2
Lucky for us, Twain chose jewels.