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How Did Mark Twain Use Regionalism

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When it comes to literature, regionalism is when a story focuses on characters, dialect, customs, topography, and many other features of a specific region. Some authors you might recognize are Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and Willa Cather. If you don’t recognize those names you might remember their most popular stories like, My Ántonia, O Pioneers, The Luck of Roaring Camp, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. While all of these authors use regionalism, they all use it in different ways. Out of all the three authors I’ve listed, Mark Twain is (in my opinion) one of the most well-known and popular, and just like the other two authors, Twain has his own way of using regionalism, for example, in …show more content…

At the beginning of the book Twain tells us that "In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect, the extremist form of the backwoods South-Western dialects; the ordinary "Pike-Country" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last" (pg. 108). Twain guides us into the scene so we feel as if we are in the story. The grammar, sentence structure and words compose Huck's language and lets the us get a feel for his character and the customs of the region he comes from. The stories he describes throughout the book gives us an idea of the place he lives and travel’s in. Bret Harte’s stories have characters with the traits of the people at the time living in the Wild West. For example, in the book Outcast of Poker Flat the characters in the story are a gambler, a madam, a prostitute, and a town drunk. All of the different characters in the story are similar to people living in that time period and a realistic description of the environment. Another example is The Luck of

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James Henry Hammond is an excellent example of this type of inspiration and Drew Gilpin Faust tells his tale in her book James Henry Hammond and the Old South. Faust examines the life of Hammond and also explores the way of life of the Old South in many different ways in her book. Though Faust does not provide a broad study of the South, she does draw attention to many different features of its past from relations between master and slave to the describing life of a famous politician. All these features present themselves in the life of a man motivated by ambition to be the most important and powerful person in the Old South before the occurrence of the Civil

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Huck does not see Jim as a slave anymore he sees Jim as a friend and he treats him like a friend. Huck would of never done this at the begning of his journey or when he found out Jim is a runaway. He evolved his morality, Twain finished the book after the civil war he did not believe in slavery it

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In Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the reader can see that the protagonist Huck Finn go through the hero’s journey, you can also see through this journey Huck Finn’s character build and changes throughout his adventures. In the beginning of the book Huckleberry Finn is in the town of St. Petersburg on the banks of the Mississippi River. Huck lives with the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson who both take care of him and try to “sivilize” him. His father is the town drunk, and is not a reliable father, he only wants Huck because of the large amount of money he previously found with Tom Sawyer.

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The humor that is present in the first few chapters of the novel some from how Huck does not fully understand the “sivilized” ways of the adults around him. The novel is written in the past tense in order for people to acknowledge that is a recent perspective of his encounters. Huck is not just an observer, he also participates in the events and makes his own decisions based on what he deems to be right and not what society deems as so. Huck is included in order for Twain to voice his own opinions and ideas about society, which is why Huck encounters many of the situations that he does. Huck is an innocent boy that

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This book proves that not everyone who grew up around racism was cruel, as Huck began to love Jim for who he is, despite the society he grew up in. An example of Huck maturing could come from chapter forty, "I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he did say - so it was all right, now, and I told Tom I was agoing for a doctor." (Twain 301). This quote clearly shows that Huck is maturing, and seeing past the color of Jim's skin. The book shows us how hard it was to grow up in a racist society and not be racist.

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Huck was a literary masterpiece, full of dialog so real that it seems real people are speaking, and messy thoughts and emotions about slavery and the deep south. Many of Twain's inner views were expressed and he even based some of the characters on his children. In the 1800’s the book was heavily criticised for it’s bad grammar, unorthodox spelling and punctuation and poor language, (not that it swears but that the words are “trashy and immoral”). Some ideas are also expressed about slavery that were not inline with the attitude of the time, some institutions, even went as far as to ban it. Despite all that, today the book sells 200,000 copies yearly (Ernsberger

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The reader can expect to see the story through Huck’s mind. His perceptions and thoughts of the world around him is important to the narration. An example would be Huck’s thoughts about religion. He was told

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All literature writers have their own style of writing and works that cause their fame; however, few literary writers write their books with the purpose to illustrate a region of their country. Frederic Remington was a writer who did that. Reared in the North, he painted and wrote about the West. Schoolwork was always secondary to his desire to draw and use his imagination. Creating life in the West as a new subject in the art world was his lifelong goal.

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The stories told the city folk what it was like to live in the wild west. As time progressed so did regionalism . From one author to the next you could see these changes . The same basic format with slight changes. From Mark Twain to Bret Harte you can see many similarities and also many differences.

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One cannot prevent them for the reason that they just happen. 2. Term: Regionalism refers to work of Literature takes place in a specific area of the country. This is shown by the author’s use of dialect, explanation of landscape, beliefs and customs of the characters.

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Regionalism is defined as “Literature that emphasizes a specific geographic setting and that reproduces the speech, behavior, and the attitudes of the people who live in that specific region”. There are many examples of regionalism in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, one would be “Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn’t hardly the other slaves. Slaves would come miles to hear Jim talk about it, and he was more looked up to than any other slave in that country…”(6). This is a great example of regionalism because the “N” word was widely accepted and that everyone believed in slavery, subsequently, there is a language quote and how they talk, “Yo’ ole father doan’ know yit what he's a gwyne to do”(15). In addition, authors use imagery to put a picture of what’s happening in the reader’s

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Mark Twain and Kate Chopin were experts at creating regionalist works. Regionalism refers to texts that concentrate heavily on specific, unique features of a certain region including dialect, customs, tradition, topography, history, and characters. It focuses on the formal and the informal, analyzing the attitudes characters have towards one another and their community as a whole. The narrator is particularly important in regionalist fiction for he or she serves as a translator, making the region understandable for the reader.

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To begin, Twain targets Huckleberry Finn's innocence and uses it as a way to show that anyone being raised in a racist, pro-slavery America was conflicted between morals and laws. At first, Huck is a "rebel" in his own mind, so to say, and tries to avoid becoming "sivilized" from the Widow Douglas. He sticks to what he knows, and uses his experience with people and his own judgment to make decisions like an adult, something quite

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Throughout the story words like “I” and “We” are used by the narrator. Huck is not an observer in the story, but he is the protagonist. In this novel the major conflict is Huck growing and maturing as a person, that is why it is best told from his point of view. This point-of-view that Twain wrote the novel in strengthens Huck’s characterization.

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The journey of American writing and how it shaped way we think and write. There are so many new things to look forward to and the exciting new adventures that were around in the new country. From Emily Dickinson and her way she discovered her own path to life. She uses romanticism in writing using nature to be a symbol of her freedom. Mark Twain brought a comedic view to the excitement and freedom of the frontier, with his travels throughout the west.

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