Mark+Twain+and+the+Mississippi+River

//** Mark Twain and the Mississippi River **// //Original Author: David Powell, A&S195 SP10 // //Revision Author: //  //"When I was a boy there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades...that was to be a steamboatman." - Mark Twain //  Mark Twain was born on November 30th, 1835 in Florida Missouri and his birth name was Samuel Langhorn Clemens, but more commonly goes by Mark Twain. In 1847, Mark Twain lost his father. Mark Twain was an American author who wrote several books using his childhood experiences growing up along the river, which include: // Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, // wrote in 1884 and // Adventures of Tom Sawyer, // which was written in 1876. Twain also wrote another book called // Life on the Mississippi, // which was originally published in 1883, and deals with Twains youthful experience on the Mississippi as a “Cub” pilot on a steamboat paddling up and down the Mississippi River (Literature Network). Mark Twain though had another importance throughout his life. He was associated with the Mississippi River, and vastly associated with the state of Illinois and Missouri. Clemens, [aka Twain] first signed his writing with the name in February 1863, as a newspaper reporter in Nevada. "Mark Twain" (meaning "Mark number two") was a Mississippi River term: the second mark on the line that measured depth signified two fathoms, or twelve feet—safe depth for the steamboat” (Berkeley). That’s interesting that they mad that little fact of information from his name to know that it was safe for steam-boat traffic to pass through.  “The Mississippi River is the largest and longest flowing river in the United States, and is the largest in North America. The river was discovered by Hernando de Soto in 1542. In his book // Life on the Mississippi, //Twain goes onto say:“Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datable fact which considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newness of our country, and gives her a most respectable outside aspect of rustiness and antiquity” (7). The Mississippi River stretches about 2,320 miles from Lake Itasca, Minnesota, just below New Orleans, Louisiana.  // The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise...- Mark Twain in Eruption //  The river goes back thousands of years when the Native American tribes were dependant upon the river. The Mississippi was called “Great River” or “Big River”, where it got it’s present day name from” (Wikipedia). “Over the course of 50 years, the Mississippi River became American, and people believed that the Mississippi river belonged to the United States, and it became American by 1850.” “Observers outside the political realm agreed that the Mississippi was critical to American development” (Kastor). Before that time, nobody really knew had owned the Mississippi, or what territory it actually was. But, Mark Twain played a major role in the Mississippi River, he essentially made it “famous.” “By the time Lincoln and Davis went to war in 1861, Mark Twain was already publishing his own accounts of life on the Mississippi. But of course, Twain's target was much bigger than the [Mississippi] Valley. He had larger points to make about the entire United States. That he believed he could make his point through the story of the Mississippi Valley speaks volumes to the way the Mississippi had changed in the eyes of so many observers” (Kastor). The Missisissppi river was huge back in those days, and they wanted to be sure that they were able to make their point about how important it was. They were able to send goods and passengers up and down the river, so transportation was big. The Mississippi played a major role in that it was a boundary from west to east. It was sort of the gateway to the west.  The book that relates to the Mississippi the greatest is Twains book, // Life on the Mississippi, // which covered steamboat commerce before [newer] ships replaced steam-boats, and this book was published in 1883 (Wikipedia). In this book, Twain writes about his experiences navigating the mighty Mississippi River, and also the challenges that come with being a “Cub” pilot. It wasn’t easy navigating the Missisissippi,especially at night where there wasn’t any light except moonlight. But, that’s what Twain wanted to be, a pilot. Also, another interesting point about the book is that it is said to be the first book sent to a publisher as typewritten manuscript (Wikipedia). Twain also writes on firsh-hand experiences with the Mississippi River itself. “The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way-its disposition to make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrow necks of land, and thus straightening and shorting itself. More than once it has shortened itself by thirty miles at a single jump! (3). “The Mississippi does not alter it’s locality by cutoffs alone: it is always changing its habitat bodily-is always moving bodily sideways” (4). An interesting side-note about the Mississippi river is that it flowed backwards for a brief period of time during the 1811-1812 earthquakes. There were also temporary dam waterfalls caused by the earthquakes. There is a major fault line that runs close to the Mississippi, and when the plates shifted, it was massive enough to make the river run backwards for a period of time. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">At age 21, Twain became a “Cub” steam-boat pilot in the year 1857. He became a pilot for Horace Bixby. He spent the next two years learning to pilot up and down the Mississippi, but the Civil War ended steam boat operations by halting all river boat traffic, four years later. (Berkeley). He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too far from shore, and so dropped back into disgrace again and got abused” “By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the river, I had learned to be a tolerably plucky up-stream steersman, in daylight, and before we reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of progress in night-work, but only a trifle” (Chapter 6). It sounded like he thought piloting would be a lot easier than it was, but that wasn’t the case. Sometimes the boat wouldn’t cooperate, and or the river wasn’t cooperating, and Twain would be too far from where he wanted to be with the steam-boat. After he was a steam-boat operator for a few years, and the Civil War halted all traffic on the river, Twain went back to writing. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Had the Civil War not interrupted, Twain might have kept up as a pilot. But the Civil War drastically changed America, and how it traded with others. The war helped move Twain from the river valley, but it did not remove his imagination. Although Twain never returned to live in the Mississippi River valley again, he returned though for his writing throughout his life. “And he visited a number of times, most notably in 1882 as he prepared to write // Life on the Mississippi //, his fullest and most autobiographical account of the region and its inhabitants, and again in 1902 when he made his final visit to the scenes of his childhood” (Berkeley). <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Mark Twain passed away in 1910, and in his imagination, he re-visited the Mississippi River valley over and over again. Some of the works that came from his visits are: // The Gilded Age // (1871) “Old Times on the Mississippi” (1874)” (NIU). Even though he never lived in the river valley again, he was still able to visit it, and publish some books about his visits back to the river valley. Some of his works after he visited the river valley were good and others were not so good. He had a few books that never made a hit. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> ** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Works Cited ** <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">[] (Kastor). <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">[] (Berkeley). <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">[] (Quotes). <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">[] (Network Literature). <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">[] (Book). <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Return to The Rivers <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Return to Home <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt;">