Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Reflection: from Two Views of a River by: Mark Twain

This piece by Mark Twain was about how he was a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. He was talking about how dangerous the river is because of all the steamboat travel and how hard it is to navigate a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. He says that he know the River like he knows the letters of the alphabet (Twain). He is disappointed that he does not see the River as a beautiful element of nature. He described the River as he saw it when he first started he job as the steamboat pilot. He was in awe at the beauty of the River. He loved the new world environment. After awhile, he began to not notice the wonderful elements of Nature. He is mad that he no longer sees the river as he did before. He wishes that he should go back and somehow train himself to continue to see the romance and the beauty of the river. The only things that he notices about the river is the landmarks that he needs to navigate the river at night. He is always too focused on the navigation of the dangerous river to notice all of the small details that he first noticed when he started his job on the river. The title of the book shows much significance. I think that the title actually helped me figure out what the story was talking about before I even read it. The two views of the river are both from Mark Twain, but they are at different times in his life. The first view of the river was from the point in time when he was first starting his job. The second view was after he had been working on the river for a long time and lost the ability to see the beauty in the river and surroundings. Twain grew up living by the Mississippi River, so he was very familiar with the nature and surroundings. This story kind of goes with the fact that the works of the Realism time period says that people are influenced by nature (Diamond).


Diamond, Marie Josephine, ed. "realism." Encyclopedia of World Writers, 1800 to the Present. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= GEWW480&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 21, 2012).


Hearn, Lafcadio. "On Life on the Mississippi." New Orleans Times-Democrat, May 20, 1883. Quoted as "On Life on the Mississippi" in Bloom, Harold, ed. Mark Twain, Classic Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCVMT129&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 29, 2012).


Twain, Mark. "from Two Views of the River" Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 554-555. Print.

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