Mark Twain Essay

Devin Richardson March 7, 2012

America’s best-loved writer, Mark Twain, began his life of chasing the American dream in which he took after his father in 1835. Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, where he quickly learned after his father died that money would be gone just as fast as it came. He worked three small jobs in his town just to support his family, one being a newspaper route, which would soon be the start of his career. The documentary Mark Twain by David W. Levy demonstrates the difficulties of living during the end of the industrial revolution and exemplifies how people overcame their financial difficulties. “Twain inherited his father’s puritanical morality, particularly as regards financial dealings (both father and son had to work their way out of bankruptcy, and both were determined to pay back every penny.)” (17)
In 1853, Twain fled to St. Louis where he moved in with his sister and her husband, and began working for a newspaper company. Although he loved his job writing for a newspaper, it didn’t take Twain long before he was on the road again traveling this time to Philadelphia, New York, Washington, and Ohio. He always seemed to find a way to have a job in any place that he traveled to which gave him the motivation to keep going. Twain loved to write but also had shared the dream of many young boys to drive a steamboat. This dream was fulfilled in 1857 when he boarded the Paul Jones and headed down the Mississippi river where he paid the pilot of the boat five hundred dollars to teach him how to drive it. In the process of receiving his certificate, Twain became a better observer, learned discipline, and taught himself to remember things better, this would all be beneficial to him when he would become a writer. For all of Twain’s life he was torn between two different words. He was caught between the modern world of business, power, and professional reputation, and on the other side searching for...