Story Of A Good Little Boy Analysis Essay

In Mark Twain’s short story “The Story of the Good Little Boy” he describes a little boy being good by trying to make the bad little boys became good resulting in himself being bad. Twain's real name is Samuel Clemens and he worked at many jobs when he was eleven to help support his family when his father died. He was trained to be a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River and piloted boats professionally. This story is about Jacob Blivens who always obeys his parents and was a good boy who studies books and school. His Sunday-school book is his guide to became a good little boy when he tries to help the bad little boys to become good but it always got him in trouble. Jacob dies trying to do the right things just like in the Sunday-school books and prepared so much good to happen that he wasn’t able to successfully achieve anything. By using the critical strategy formalism helps identify why foreshadowing, point of view, and characterisation to explain the story. When you try to help someone you eventually get pulled into the bad that they are doing. That is what this story is all about. Twain is using foreshadowing to give you a look at the story's ending. Foreshadowing is a literary element that hints or

Point of view is a literary term that tell the reader who is reading the story and how it is told. This story is told in an omniscient third person narrator by how Twain words this story. He went from talking about how the boys were taking “him under their protection and never allowed any harm to come to him” to how Jacob “reads all the Sunday-school books; they were his greatest delight” (Twain pg 474). The narrator has total control over how the story is told like someone is telling you in the tone of a wise story. Twain gives you background knowledge on how Jacob was before his to do good act with the boys and how he started doing bad resulting in how ironic the story