Mark Twain Rhetorical Analysis Essay

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29. In the excerpt, Mark Twain develops the idea that a job can lead to self-knowledge. He alludes to that idea many times in the excerpt. There is a line that isn’t a very obvious one. “In my own mind I resolved to be a down-stream pilot and leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence.” In this line, the narrator says what he realized about himself, he can govern and discipline oneself by reason. Another line that is less murky but still not quite obvious is “I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this new phase of it.” The narrator reveals that he doubts himself in his ability to pilot and realizes he may not be fit for the job and finds out