Analysis of writing style of Mark Twain 美国文学 学年论文完整版

Analysis of writing style of Mark Twain

Mark Twain was the first important writer to consistently use the Ameri can speech rather than England’s English. His honor, whether it was aim ed at pure entertainment or at social satire, was irresistible. His realism, and details influenced many later American novelists. That was why Erne st Hemingway once said “all modern American literatures came from one book written by Mark Twain called The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin n.”And it became Twain’s masterpiece. Mark Twain’s three years’life on that returned to the Mississippi left such a fond memory with him that r eturned to the theme more than once in his writing career.

Huckleberry Finn is a veritable recreation of living models, and is Huc k’s book, not Jim’s. The two major characters, Huck and Jim, represent the two sides of the dilemma: Huck strikes out for an absolute freedom, while Jim requires, in order to gain his own freedom, that Huck qualify his freedom by entering into the pursuit of Jim’s. It starts out as a come dy , an ‘As You Like It’with a hero drawn from the bottom of society ra ther than the top. Huck and his father, Jim, the swindlers(the Duke and the Dauphin), colonel sherburn and the drunkard Boggy-all these charact ers prototypes in real life. The portrayal of individual incidents and chara cters achieved intense verisimilitude of detail. Serious problems are being discussed through the narration of a little illiterate boy. The fact that the wilderness juxtaposed with civilization, the people half wild and half civili zed, many of whom are worse, vulgar, are brutal. As for the style of the book, the form is based on the simplest of all novel-forms, the so-calle d picaresque novel, or novel of the road, which strings its incidents on t he line of the hero’s travels. But, in this novel, rivers are roads that mov e, and the movement of the road in its own mysterious life transmutes t he primitive simplicity of the from: the road itself is the greatest characte r in this novel of the road, and the hero’s departures from the river and

his returns to it compose a subtle and significant pattern. The Adventur es of Huckleberry Finn shows us the major achievements of his art: the masterful use of dialects; humor and pathos, innocence and evil. This no vel demonstrates his ability to capture the enduring, archetypal, mythic i mages of America and to create the most memorable characters in all o

f American fiction.

2.1 Use of Colloquial Language

The book is written in a colloquial style, in the general standard speec h of uneducated Americans. Moreover, the prose of Huckleberry Finn est ablished the prose virtues of American colloquial speech. It has somethin g to do with ease and freedom in the use of language. Most of all, it h as to do with the structure of the sentence, which is simple, direct, and fluent, maintaining the rhythm of the word’s group of speech and the int onations of the speaking voice. Mark Twain’s colloquial style has influenc ed a large number of American writers.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn displays the major achievements of his art: the carefully controlled point of view, with its implicit ironies e xpressed through the voice of a semiliterate boy: the masterful use of di alects: the felicitous balancing of nostalgic humorist and realism, humor and pathos, innocence and evil, all united for a journey down the Missis sippi that serves as the mythic center of the novel. This novel demonstr ates his ability to capture the enduring, archetypal, mythic images of Am erica and to create the most memorable characters in all of American fic tion.

2.1.1 Vernacular Language

Mark Twain wrote in his unpretentious, colloquial, and poetic style. He used vernacular language, dialect with spelling representing pronunciatio n. Part of this comes from his interest in humor. The directness of the l anguage is a very influential point in Twain’s style. Ernest Hemingway in the 20th century said that he had learnt his craft from Mark Twain beca

use if the direct speech and the direct narration that Twain was able to achieve. The hoax and tall tale are also part of twain’s style. Hoax is wr iting something fantastic and pretending that it were true, much like the t all tale. It tolls as if it were true, and so the reader would laugh that an y body could believe such preposterous things, the burlesque making fun of establishes ways of writing.

Mark Twain said, “I amend dialect stuff by talking and talking it till it s ounds right.”He wanted his writing to have the sound of easy-going spe ech. In Huckleberry Finn the fountainhead of the American colloquial pro se, he wrote seven different dialects and each can be distinguished. If t he reader is a linguist, he can examine the different pronunciations that Twain has shown. In his own time, dialect writing was considered humor ous. People got a big laugh out of reading these misspell words. Anothe r feature of the book, which helps to make it famous is its language. Th

e book is written in the colloquial style in the general standard speech o

f uneducated Americans.. Mark Twain’s introductory note on accents is a n indication of his conscious attempt to achieve accurate detail. “In this book,”he says, “a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri Ne

g ro dialect; the extreme forms of the backwoods southwestern dialect; the ordinary ‘pike country’dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. T he shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswo rk; but painstakingly, and wit

h the trustworthy guidance and support of p ersonal familiarity, with these several forms of speech.”“Painstaking ”an d “not haphazard,”though they possess a humorous ring, denote the co nscientious effort on the part of the author, and trustworthiness and famil iarity and the author’s awareness of dialects in using which reveal his at tempt to reproduce actual daily speech with a degree of accuracy. A rec ent and very influential recasting of Huck’s vernacular voice has identifie d.

We may quote a passage from this masterpiece as an illustration:

“I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done th e same with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. I took all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I too k the bucket and gourd; took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old son a nd two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot/ I took fish lines and matches and other things- everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned o ut the place I wanted an ax, but there wasn’t any, only the one out at woodpile, and I know why I was going to leave that. I fetched out the g un, and now I was done.”

The words used here are, perhaps “ammunition”which is etymologicall y French, mostly Anglo-Saxon in origin, and are short, concrete and dire ct in effect. Sentence structures are most of them simple or compound, with a series of “then”and “ands”and semi-colons serving as connective s. The repetition of the word “took”and the stringing together of things l eave the impression that Mark Twain depend solely on the concrete obje ct and action for the body and movement of his prose. What is more, th ere is an ungrammatical element, which gives the final finish to his style. The whole book approximates the actual speech habit of an uneducate d boy from south American of the mid-nineteenth century.

The vernacular language in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn initiate d the new style of language in American novels, and has had significant influence upon American writers of later generations.

2.1.2 Local Color

Local color as a trend first made its presence in the late 1860s and e arly seventies. The vogue of local color fiction was, the logical combinati on of a long, progressive development. It was the outgrowth of historical and aesthetic forces that been gathering energy since early nineteenth

century. Twain refers to the elements, which characterize a local culture, elements such as speech, customs, and also a particular place. Local c olorists concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local c haracter of their regions. They tended to identify and glorify, but they ne ver forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life.

Twain depicted social life through descriptions of local places and peo ple he knew best and believed that “the most valuable capital, or culture, or education usable in the building of novels is personal experience.”Y et, sometimes Twain wrote a sentimental story, not because he was sen timental, but because he wanted to show the reader how stupid such a story really was. The reader has to be very careful when he or she rea ds Mark Twain. Twain often played trick on the reader. He often said thi ngs when he meant just the opposite. This is the irony that he got the humor from the Far West. He would do things that he did just to make fun , but the reader might think that he really meant it. Then the reade r was the tender-foot who taken in .

Mark twain preferred to respect social life through portraits of local pla ces which he knew best and drew heavily from his own rich fund of kno wledge of people and places. The Adventures of huckleberry Finn is one such example. Finn is living breathing personality. It is through his use of language and his activities that Twain creates character and sets dow n objective truth: Finn is uneducated; he dislikes civilized ways because they are restrictive and hypocritical he likes.

Meanwhile, local color mixed romantic plots with realistic descriptions o f things which were readily observed, with the customs , dialects, sights, smell and sounds of regional America. After the Civil war, local color h ad further developed, In this book, this kind of literature mainly describes the local life, the keynote was optimistic, and the language was narrativ e humorous. The characters he created were humorous and full of wittin ess. Mark Twin’s work was regarded the witness of America’s pure local

life. According to Calkins, “Few American writers have written the same after reading telling.”From my point of view, American literature is so c harming for this kind of works.

Local color became dominate in American Literature(1860-1870). One of the most important writing features of Mark Twain is the use of Local colorism. It is also impossible in the Mississippi River towns through wh ich Huck and Jim journey to imagine being a hero .This in turn makes Sherborn a cold-blooded killer and Huck a saint (and Tom a good). Let me repeat it as a saint，however, Huck is no more bent on social refor m, no more optimistic about it, than is sherburn. So local colorism is a variation of American realism, and also a description of a small refined r egion. Twain, breaking out of the narrow limits of local-color fiction, desc ribed the breadth of American experience as no one had ever done befo re, or since, and he created The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,a mas terpiece of American realism that proverbs to be one of the great books of world literature.

2.1.3 Pun

In English paronomasia called pun, means call by a different name. T he exact definition is: Humorous use of word to suggest different meanin gs, or of words of same or similar sound has different meanings. There are five forms of pun: homophonic pun, paranomasic, antalaclasis, sylleti c pun, asteismus. In a certain context, pun has several pragmatic functio ns. Throughout all of Twain’s writing, we see the conflict between the id eals of Americans and their desire for money. But Twain never tried to solve the conflict. He is like a newspaperman who reports what he sees. In this situation, his humor was often rather childish. This may bespeak why the critic P. Abel said:”Twain was a boy and an old man, but nev er was he a man.”

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,we can find many words and phrases that were used vividly to describe the things that happened, suc

h as ‘I went along slow then, and I wasn’t right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I wasn’t. This sentence is very interesting; pun is used to express the author’s mood at that moment. We can als o use another kind of language to replace the original, but the effect is so different. So we can conclude that pun played an important role in th is novel.