Mark Twain Author Bio MarkEssay 1Twain War Prayer Charlotte.docx

Mark Twain: Author Bio Mark
Essay 1
Twain War Prayer Charlotte
Perkins Gilman:
Author Bio
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The
Yellow Wallpaper:
Robert Frost: Author Bio Robert
Frost: "Mending Wall" Edwin
Arlington Robinson: Author Bio
Edwin Arlington Robinson:
Richard Cory
Edwin Arlington Robinson:
Miniver Cheevy
Edith Wharton: Author Bio
Edith Wharton: Roman Fever
PLUS:

Mark Twain The Story of the
MARK TWAIN'S BAD BOY
(or TWAIN'S TEXT ONLY)
PAGE: SKETCHES, NEW AND OLD
who teach them to say, "Now, I lay me down," etc., and sing
them to sleep with sweet, plaintive voices, and then kiss them
good-night, and kneel down by the bedside and weep. But it was
different with this fellow. He was named Jim, and there wasn't
anything the matter with his mother -- no consumption, nor
anything of that kind. She was rather stout than otherwise, and
she was not pious; moreover, she was not anxious on Jim's
account. She said if he were to break his neck it wouldn't be
much loss. She always spanked Jim to sleep, and she never
kissed him good-night; on the contrary, she boxed his ears when
she was ready to leave him.
Once this little bad boy stole the key of the pantry, and slipped
in there and helped himself to some jam, and filled up the vessel
with tar so that his mother would never know the difference; but
all at once a terrible feeling didn't come over him, and
something didn't seem to whisper to him, "Is it right to disobey
my mother? Isn't in sinful to do this? Where do bad little boys
go who gobble up their good kind mother's jam?" and then he
didn't kneel down all alone and promise never to be wicked any
more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell his
mother all about it and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by
her with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes. No; that is
the way with all other bad boys in the books; but it happened
otherwise with this Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and
said it was bully, in his sinful, vulgar way; and he put in the tar,
and said that was bully also, and laughed, and observed "that
the old woman would get up and snort" when she found it out;
and when she did find it out, he denied knowing anything about

it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying himself.
Everything about this boy was curious -- everything turned out
differently with him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in
the books.
Once he climbed up in Farmer Acorn's apple-tree to steal
apples, and the limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break
his arm, and get torn by the farmer's great dog, and then
languish on a sick bed for weeks, and repent and become good.
Oh! no; he stole as many apples as he wanted and came down
all right; and he was all ready for the dog too, and knocked him
endways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very
strange -- nothing like it ever happened in those mild little
books with marbled backs, and with pictures in them of men
with swallow-tailed coats and bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons
that are short in the legs, and women with the waists of their
dresses under their arms, and no hoops on. Nothing like it in
any of the Sunday-school books.
Once he stole the teacher's pen-knife, and, when he was afraid it
would be found out and he would get whipped, he slipped it into
George Wilson's cap -- poor Widow Wilson's son, the moral
boy, the good little boy of the village, who always obeyed his
mother, and never told an untruth, and was fond of his lessons,
and infatuated with Sunday-school. And when the knife dropped
from the cap, and poor George hung his head and blushed, as if
in conscious guilt, and the grieved teacher charged the theft
upon him, and was just in the very act of bringing the switch
down upon his trembling shoulders, a white-haired, improbable
justice of the peace did not suddenly appear in their midst, and
strike an attitude and say, "Spare this noble boy -- there stands
the cowering culprit! I was passing the school-door at recess,
and unseen myself, I saw the theft committed!" And then Jim
didn't get whaled, and the venerable justice didn't read the
tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and say
such a boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him to come
and make his home with him, and sweep out the office, and
make fires, and run errands, and chop wood, and study law, and

help his wife do household labors, and have all the balance of
the time to play, and get forty cents a month, and be happy. No;
it would have happened that way in the books, but it didn't
happen that way to Jim. No meddling old clam of a justice
dropped in to make trouble, and so the model boy George got
thrashed, and Jim was glad of it. Because, you know, Jim hated
moral boys. Jim said he was "down on them milksops." Such
was the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy.
But the strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time
he went boating on Sunday, and didn't get drowned, and that
other time that he got caught out in the storm when he was
fishing on Sunday, and didn't get struck by lightning. Why, you
might look, and look, and look, all through the Sunday-school
books from now till next Christmas, and you would never come
across anything like this. Oh no; you would find that all the bad
boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get drowned, and all
the bad boys who get caught out in storms, when they are
fishing on Sunday, infallibly get struck by lightning. Boats with
bad boys in them are always upset on Sunday, and it always
storms when bad boys go fishing on the Sabbath. How this Jim
ever escaped is a mystery to me.
This Jim bore a charmed life -- that must have been the way of
it. Nothing could hurt him. He even gave the elephant in the
menagerie a plug of tobacco, and the elephant didn't knock the
top of his head off with his trunk. He browsed around the
cupboard after essence of peppermint, and didn't make a
mistake and drink aqua fortis. He stole his father's gun and went
hunting on the Sabbath, and didn't shoot three or four of his
fingers off. He struck his little sister on the temple with his fist
when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain through long
summer days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her
lips that redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No; she
got over it. He ran off and went to sea at last, and didn't come
back and find himself sad and alone in the world, his loved ones
sleeping in the quiet church-yard, and the vine-embowered
home of his boyhood tumbled down and gone to decay. Ah! no;

he came home as drunk as a piper, and got into the station-
house the first thing.
And he grew up, and married, and raised a large family, and
brained them all with an axe one night, and got wealthy by all
manner of cheating and rascality; and now he is the infernalest
wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is universally
respected, and belongs to the Legislature.
So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school
books that had such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the
charmed life.
[This story was originally published in the Californian
magazine, in 1865, as "The Story of the Bad Little Boy That
Led a Charmed Life." The text here is from MT's republication
of it in Sketches New & Old (1875), and includes the
illustrations drawn by True Williams for that volume.]
Realism, Quoting/Paraphrasing/Summarizing, and Ways of
Reading: Gendered/Feminist Criticism
Realism
Realism is a literary movement that emerged in the nineteenth
century in reaction to romantic idealism with its mysticism and
embrace of intuitive speculation. William Dean Howells, a
novelist and editor of the Atlantic Monthly, noted that the
primary role of the writer is to "tell the truth." That truth,
however, would be variously interpreted in the movement's
several branches. "Naturalism" insisted that human nature has to
be understood in its animalistic roots, while "local colorists"
celebrated the nuances of distinct regions of the country
distinguished by its speech and folk traditions. Bret Harte, Mark
Twain, Willa Cather, Sarah Orne Jewett, Joel Chandler Harris,

and George Washington Cable sought to capture the distinct
nuances, character, and folk motifs of specific cultures tied to
regions of the United States and its western territories. At the
same time, Ambrose Bierce, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and
Henry James experimented with psychological realism,
exploring the psychoses of minds in crisis. (* From Perkins'
textbook).
Author and editor William Dean Howells wrote that the proper
aim of fiction should be Realism, rather than a Romantic
distortion of the world: “The novelist might be greater possible
help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in
their true proportion and relation, but for the most part they
have been and are altogether noxious”.
Realism attempted to portray the world as it was, without
glorified happy endings or unnecessary beautification. Authors
like Edith Wharton and Henry James were masters of telling the
truth about life in society, writing a kind of fiction that became
known as “the novel of manners.” The works often depicted life
in society, among the middle and upper classes in America and
abroad. Class distinctions became fodder for such writers as
Booth Tarkington, Sinclair Lewis, and Theodore Dreiser. As
Realism evolved, it gave rise to both Naturalism and
Regionalism.
Quoting, Paraphrasing, Summarizing
We incorporate source support in a variety of ways. The “Owl at
Purdue” website has some excellent resources and examples of
how to quote, paraphrase, and summarize source material if you
need additional review.
Essentially, remember this: you always want to support your
ideas, whether you are posting to a discussion forum or writing
a paper. However, you don’t want your paper dominated by
quotes. Aim for only about 10% of your total word count as

quoted material. So if you are writing a 1000 word essay, you
should have about 100 words in direct quotes.
If you are quoting, choose only the words from your source that
are especially eloquent, purposeful, or revealing. If it’s a
concept or idea that is mundane or that you can say just as well
yourself, don’t quote it: summarize or paraphrase it instead.
Basic biographical information or historical dates should not
appear as quotes. Your quotes should be special. When
analyzing literature, quote lines from your reading to explain
your interpretations.
Don’t use free-standing quotes. Always incorporate quoted
material into your own sentence unless you are using a famous
quotation for a special reason.
Example:
We may be moving toward sanctioning Iran for nuclear
activities. “Sanctions should not be used in a purely punitive
manner to starve an opponent into submission” (Cortright and
Lopez 735).
Instead, introduce quotes with a few words of your own, or
‘weave’ quotes into sentences of your own design:
According to Cortright and Lopez, “[s]anctions should not be
used in a purely punitive manner” (735).
Cortright and Lopez believe that “[s]anctions can help
encourage a process of dialogue” (735). * I have used brackets
because the “S” appears as a capital in the original, but I wanted
to make it lower case.
Cortright and Lopez caution about using sanctioning
improperly: “Sanctions should not be used in a purely punitive

manner to starve an opponent into submission” (735). * Note
that here, I wanted to quote an entire sentence, and I introduced
it with a sentence of my own. In order to avoid a run-on, I
connect the two with a colon.
Sometimes, in order to trim down our quotes to get to our ideal
10% goal, you might need to use ellipses and brackets.
Ellipses- use when you omit words from a quote
Brackets- use when you change words in a quote
According to Freeman, there is “one universal, governing
characteristic of female-lead action films….[which connects]
both anti-patriarchal…and feminist themes” (118).
Three dots indicate that words are left out of the original
sentence.
Four dots indicate that the quote skips an entire sentence.
Use brackets to indicate added or altered words.
Summaries and paraphrases occur when you read information
from a source, then you type the ‘gist’ of that information in a
paragraph of your own without directly quoting. You need to
put an in-text citation at the end of a paraphrase to show that
you are using a source.
It’s essential to know this: a citation at the end of a paragraph
covers the last sentence of the paragraph. It does not cover the
entire paragraph.
In order for your reader to apply a citation at the end to
multiple sentences, you need a ‘signal phrase’ such as ‘ An
article in the Journal of Services Marketing states that…..’ at

the place where the paraphrase/summary begins. In other words,
the paraphrase needs to be “bookended”- with a signal phrase at
the start and a citation at the end. If anything in the middle is
quoted, you need a citation after the quoted line, and a signal
phrase at the start of the next line where the paraphrase picks
up. Look at this example from the OWL at Purdue:
In his famous and influential work The Interpretation of
Dreams , Sigmund Freud argues that dreams are the "royal road
to the unconscious" (101), expressing in coded imagery the
dreamer's unfulfilled wishes through a process known as the
"dream-work" (102). According to Freud, actual but
unacceptable desires are censored internally and subjected to
coding through layers of condensation and displacement before
emerging in a kind of rebus puzzle in the dream itself (117).
Notice how the writer is careful to use signal phrases to
attribute ideas to Freud, even when a sentence does not contain
a quote.
Once you have your essay ready to go this week, take a moment
to familiarize yourself with MLA style. In addition to the
information on setting up your essay that you find in
"Assignments", you can test your knowledge with this fun
little Drag and Drop MLA game.
Ways of Reading
Gendered/Feminist Criticism is a way of looking at
art/literature/songs, etc. with an eye for what the artist might be
saying about men and women explicitly, or what he or she might
not have meant to say but still ended up revealing about gender
norms/stereotypes relevant to the time a piece was created. You
don't have to 'identify' yourself as a 'Feminist' to engage in this
kind of criticism; you just need to be asking these kinds of
questions:
Is the work making a statement about women’s lives? Men’s
lives?

How might the work be different if told from the point of view
of the opposite gender?
Does the work perpetuate or challenge gender stereotypes?
Examining a work with an eye for messages about sexuality,
whether heterosexuality or homosexuality, is also often woven
into this 'school of criticism', and if you are looking for things
to discuss in a work, you might examine what a piece is saying
about the sexual norms of the time and how those norms work
for or against a main character's happiness.
Prev
|
Table Of Contents
|
Next
The Post Civil-War Climate and an Overview of Literary
Movements
The literature in the years following the Civil War was tinged
with Romanticism. As we see with Dickinson and Whitman,
in Romanticism there is a focus on the emotional aspect of life
and the beauty of nature. It is an introspective form of
literature. Romanticism in America owed much to the earlier
Transcendentalists, like Emerson and Thoreau, who believed
that both nature and art were expressions of the divine. These
authors considered man's role in the universe and had an intense
emphasis on personal identity. This quest for identity- for
defining oneself- can be seen as reflective of the psychological

state of the country, as America healed from the rift of the Civil
War and attempted to redefine itself as a nation.
As we move forward toward the 20th century, the nation was
evolving with immigration, further settlement of the West, and
technological advancement that changed transportation,
communication, economies, and ways of life. Our literature
changed too, from a less 'Romantic' view to one much more
realistic and socially aware. Women's rights, the plights of the
lower class and immigrant populations, and the social evolution
from traditional to modern society began to appear in the our
literature and poetry. Realism attempted to portray the world as
it was, without glorified happy endings or unnecessary
beautification.
Both Regionalism and Naturalism took shape within this larger
"Realism" movement. The Regionalists, in a way overlapping
with the Realist authors in their focus on nature, began to give
all of America glimpses inside their specific part of the country,
from geography to dialect. On the other hand, the Naturalists
pointed to one overlying fact that regardless of location, man is
at the mercy of nature. One example of Regionalism is the work
of Willa Cather, who is closely associated with life for
European immigrants on the Nebraska plains and, later, with the
city of Santa Fe. Naturalists include writers like Stephen Crane
and Jack London, who wrote stories of man in conflict with
nature.
World War One brought along a massive shift in our literature,
art, and music. The war began in 1914, and this is about the
time that we date the beginning of the Modern period.
Modernists sought to break free from tradition in many ways.
Wars had marred national sentiment, and there was a movement
to change the old way of thinking. Writers like Ernest
Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald are well-known Modernists.
They used a whole new writing style and had a cynicism and

attitude unlike works of a generation prior.
World War Two and the dawning of the atomic age brings us to
the Post-Modern era, an era that some people think we are still
in. This period is marked by discontent and anxiety, especially
within families. Post-Modern works often depict threats to the
family and to personal happiness. Drug addiction, crime,
divorce, adultery, parent-child conflict, etc. are prominent in
this period. Authors such as Joyce Carol Oates and most other
contemporary novelists fit into this category.
The later part of the 20th century and the start of the 21st
introduced, as a subset of the Post-Modern period, a rediscovery
of multi-cultural literature of earlier decades and a popularity of
multi-cultural authors in contemporary writing, reflecting the
myriad of cultures that make up the American population.
Whitman and Dickinson
Walt Whitman created what was to become one of the most
distinctive of all American poetic forms, "free verse," a pattern
of lines and stanzas without a fixed metrical pattern or ending
rhyme scheme. Such an open form complemented his ecstatic
vision of American democracy and expansion, concepts that he
spiritualized in "Song of Myself," the lead work in his seminal
book of poetry, Leaves of Grass.
Abandoning the conventions of regularity in form and style so
popular in American poetry of the mid-nineteenth century,
Whitman adopted the cadences of music, crafting the organic
and fluid features of open lines, expansive catalogs, the lyrical
flow of imaginary flights, and ecstatic explosions of themes--all
features of his "free verse," a style complementary to Whitman's
purpose of capturing the spiritual energy of the ever evolving
and unfolding American democracy.

Like the poetry of Walt Whitman, who is generally credited
with the development of "free verse," Emily Dickinson spurned
the fixtures and conventions of much of the didactic and
morally rearming and reaffirming poetry of her period. An
enigmatic character, Emily Dickinson was deeply troubled by
the conventional religious concepts that theologians were
addressing in their day and to which she always remained aloof.
Emily Dickinson was often considered a recluse, but exploration
of her close friendships present a far different picture. Her
letters (available under “Additional Resources”) show a woman
reaching out to others who share her interests. In many ways,
she is even a revolutionary of her time. Her works are often
witty, and with no husband or children, her life is not that of the
traditional woman of her day.
Emily Dickinson wrote 1,775 poems, almost all of which were
published after her death. Each of her works is short,
characterized by intense, penetrating, and often ironic insight,
and sometimes even pained obscurity. Together, however, the
volume of the work reflects her obvious genius and poignant
individualism. The subjects of her poetry range across a wide
spectrum of daily experiences common to all people-from
delight in the vision of birds, to grief at the loss of a close
family member, to joy in a winter afternoon.
Using Web Resources to Assist with Poetry Analysis
There is an expectation that, as college students, you will use
online library resources to support formal papers that deal with
literature and poetry analysis.
However, before you get to the 'formal paper' writing stage, you
will read poetry, post to forums about the poems, and have to
think about poetry as a precursor to writing formal essays. In

these early stages of writing, the preliminary writing phase of
the overall writing process that eventually produces an essay, it
is fine to do some general reading and research on the open web
( Google, Bing, etc.).
Ideally, you will consult general websites and articles when
poetry or literature you are reading is especially difficult to
understand. If what you are reading seems to be written in plain
language, there is less need to do 'preliminary research.'
If you must look at websites like Wikipedia, Sparknotes,
Shmoop, etc. to help understand a difficult poem or story, note
the following:
You should NOT use quotes from sources like these to support
your forum posts or formal essays. They are not considered
credible or appropriate in an academic setting.
Each week, this course includes a "Ways of Reading" section in
the Lessons to help fortify you with the tools you need to read
and write about poetry and literature with confidence and
without having to rely on the mediocre analysis you will find on
websites such as those mentioned already.
Use sources like Wikipedia only to help understand the general
context of a poem or story or to help you get comfortable with
your understanding of a particularly difficult, intimidating
work. Don't allow sites like these to extinguish or undermine
your own instincts and ideas. If, for example, Wikipedia says
that the flowers in John Updike's "Chrysanthemums" represent
'x,' but you thought they might mean "y," you might allow
Wikipedia to replace your idea y with theirs: x. I would rather
hear you tell me how you came to think it was Y, what in the
story makes you think Y, and how Y makes sense with the
overall theme or message of the story. Just because Wikipedia
says that the chrysanthemums mean 'X' does not mean that this

is the one and only truth!
Allow sites like those mentioned here to help you to basically
understand what a poem is talking about and to give you
possible interpretations or insights that you might not come up
with yourself. Just know that these interpretations are not
definitive. These sites should open your mind to possible ways
of interpreting works, not close your mind and force you to
think that there is a single interpretation.
I strongly encourage you to make use of Youtube, and the
Favorite Poem Project videos in particular, when reading and
writing about poetry. Videos allow you to hear a poem being
read and to hear people who love a given poem interpret it in
their own way, tell you why it's so meaningful to them, or
visually interpret the poem with images, animation, or other
visual and auditory means, which can be very helpful. People
learn in different ways, and videos can be a powerful tool to
enable you to gain a basic understanding of a poem and to open
your mind to possible ways of interpreting a poem.
Poetry Analysis
How to Explicate Poetry * these guidelines tell you how,
generally, to read and write about poetry. This is not an actual
assignment for you, but you should think about these ideas as a
resource.
I. Read the Poem
Read the poem silently to yourself to develop a sense of the
poem as a whole.
Read the poem aloud or listen to someone reading it aloud to
reinforce your experience of the poem as a whole.
II. Analyze the Text of the Poem

Develop a paraphrase of the poem, framing each complete
thought in your own words.
Identify the units of thought in the poem (in stanzas or shorter
units).
Identify the main ideas conveyed in each unit of thought and the
shifts or breaks between each unit.
Write a preliminary summary--perhaps only a single sentence--
of each thought unit
III. Analyze the Elements of the Poem
Complete a scansion of the poem, identifying the metrical
patterns and the rhyme scheme (if there is one).
Identify any recurring image patterns.
Identify any symbols emerging through the image patterns and
identify their meaning or references.
Identify any unique uses of language.
Identify any breaks in the scansion and explain what seems to
be the reason or purpose of the changes.
IV. Introduce External Support
Identify any features of the author's life or commentary that
seem relevant to the creation, the purpose, the theme, or
motivation for creating the poem.
Identify any historical, social, political, or philosophical
elements that may seem relevant to an interpretation of the
work.
V. Interpret the Poem
Explain what the central "message" of the poem means to you
and identify the elements that have prompted your
interpretation.
Explain alternative interpretations that other readers might draw

from the poem and identify those features responsible.
VI. Evaluate the Poem
Identify criteria (standards) on which the poem should be
judged.
Identify those elements of the poem that relate to those criteria.
Describe what an effective example of the standard would be
like.
Explain why you feel the poem meets or fails to meet the
standard illustrated in your description.
Ways of Reading
Whenever you look at, read, or listen to art, whether it's a
painting, a film, a sculpture, a poem, a novel or any other
creative form, there are 'ways of reading' that are sometimes
called 'critical lenses' or 'schools of criticism.'
These are just different perspectives you can bring to bear on
art, different ways of looking at it and responding to it, so that
you can generate productive, interesting, and fruitful discussion
about that art beyond " I like it" or "I don't get it".
Each week we will look at and try a new form of criticism. This
first week, we are looking at the most basic: Reader Response
Criticism
You might not be aware of this, but our thoughts and insights,
which seem so personal and unique to us, are essentially
manifestations of trends in our culture.
In an attempt at understanding the poems, it is natural in our
postmodern lives to identify with the narrator or central
character. We comprehend through word analysis & intuition
what the narrator is feeling, and then we empathize with the
narrator. If the narrator feels lonely, we think of loneliness in
our own lives, what it has looked like and felt like. In a poem

such as Walt Whitman's "A Noiseless, Patient Spider", we use
our own construct of loneliness and desire to connect to make
sense of the metaphor of the spider casting its web out into the
world, time and time again.
This is not a bad thing.
People who create poems, songs, art, etc. depend on our
association with the narrator, with the setting of a story, or with
the overall theme or message in the story.
It’s natural for us to relate things to ourselves, and it is also
representative of a higher order thinking skill to be able not just
to comprehend the meaning of a poem or story, but to
synthesize the message with lessons we've learned in our own
lives. When we reader-respond, we interact with the work in a
highly personal way. The poem means something different to
me than it does to you because we bring different assumptions,
experiences, bias, personalities, etc. to it. My reading of poem
is not 'right' and yours is not 'wrong'. They are equally valid as
long as you can articulate and support your response.
When you are doing reader -response, you might read a work
and ask yourself these kinds of questions to start coming up
with a 'response':
How does a piece- or just a small part of it- relate to your own
life?
What is it about a work that resonates with you, personally?
How does a piece seem to comment on or matter to
contemporary society as you see it?
In what ways have you experienced similar situations?
Can you connect with the setting, the conflict, the emotional
situation or struggle being depicted?
Do you know someone who has experienced a situation that is
actually or thematically similar to the one described?
Have you ever felt like this?

Answers to these kinds of questions can help you to generate
relevant discussion in the "Reader Response" school of
criticism.
Prev
|
Table Of Contents
|
Next

Mark Twain Author Bio MarkEssay 1Twain War Prayer Charlotte.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

More from infantsuk

More from infantsuk (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Mark Twain Author Bio MarkEssay 1Twain War Prayer Charlotte.docx