Mark Twain Research Paper

Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, Samuel L. Clemens wrote under the writer’s name Mark Twain and went on to author several novels, including two major classics of American literature: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark was also a riverboat pilot, journalist, lecturer, entrepreneur and inventor. Mark had died on April 21, 1910 in Redding, Connecticut. Mark wrote magnificent tales about Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and the mighty Mississippi River. Mark Twain explored the American spirit with wit, buoyancy, and a honed eye for truth. Mark became nothing less than a worldwide treasure. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in a small village of Florida, Missouri, while he was the sixth

A decent library was available, and tradesmen such as blacksmiths and tanners performed their entertaining crafts for everyone to see. However, violence was commonplace, and young Sam witnessed much death. When Mark was 9 years old, he saw a local man murder a cattle rancher, furthermore at 10 years old he watched a slave die after a white overseer attacked him with a piece of iron. Hannibal inspired several of Mark Twain's fictional locales, including "St. Petersburg" in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. These imaginary river towns are complex places: sunlit and exuberant on the one hand, but also vipers' nests of cruelty, poverty, drunkenness, loneliness and life-crushing boredom—all parts of Sam Clemens's boyhood experience. Sam kept up his schooling until he was about 12 years old, when—with his father dead and the family needing a source of income—he found employment as an apprentice printer at the Hannibal Courier, which paid him with a meager ration of food. In 1851, at 15, he got a job as a printer and occasional writer and editor at the Hannibal Western Union, a little newspaper owned by his brother,

He loved his career—it was exciting, well-paying and high-status, roughly akin to flying a jetliner today. However, his service was cut short in 1861 by the outbreak of the Civil War, which halted most civilian traffic on the river. As the war began, the people of Missouri angrily split between support for the Union and the Confederacy. Clemens opted for the latter, joining the Confederate Army in June 1861 but serving for only a couple of weeks until his volunteer unit disbanded. n July 1861, Twain climbed on board a stagecoach and headed for Nevada and California, where he would live for the next five years. At first, he prospected for silver and gold, convinced that he would become the savior of his struggling family and the sharpest-dressed man in Virginia City and San Francisco. But nothing panned out, and by the middle of 1862, he was flat broke and in need of a regular job. Clemens knew his way around a newspaper office, so that September, he went to work as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. He churned out news stories, editorials and sketches, and along the way adopted the pen name Mark Twain—steamboat slang for 12 feet of