Mark Twain and the MississippiRiverPart One: The Mississippi1.Show maps and scenery of the river2.Brief IntroductionThe Mississippi River, 3,779 km (2,348 mi) long, is the second longest river, after the Missouri, in the United States. Its triangular drainage area, covering about 40% of the country and including all or part of 31 states, is approximately 3,250,000 sq km (1,250,000 sq mi), the third largest in the world. The Mississippi rises in Minnesota and then flows south, following the boundaries between the states of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana on the west, and Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi on the east. The river, whose name means "father of waters" in the Algonquian language, has long been an important transportation artery of North America.3.The River and Life(1)the effect of the Mississippi :Throughout its history, the Mississippi has always been a major navigation route through the center of North America.It has served as the border for New France, New Spain, and the early United States，Even today, the river serves as partial boundaries for ten states, and most of its course can easily be seen on a political map.Just as its name “The Father of Waters”says, the Mississippi River washes the center plain and provides the richest soil for his people.As the body of a nation, the Old Blue influences the country a lot with its natural and spiritual power.(2)both sides of the Mississippiformed the nation but brought into disasterflowing right through the heart of America, bringing great wealth to the country but great suffering and hardship as well.The river dominates almost the whole American land, but its south part that dominates the whole nation’s culture and life.4.The Mississippi River, the Symbol of American SpiritsThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, plays a very brilliant and predominant role in American literature. It is a novel of freedom and integrity. The story is about Huck Finnand Jim‟s adventures journey down the Mississippi River on a raft. Huck is a white boy with a good heart, who escapes from being “civilized”and the maltreatment of his drunkard father. Jim is a runaway nigger, who is afraid of being sold. They are both forced to flee from the human society in order to be free. During the journey down the Mississippi River, they reveal their kindness by nature and establishes a profound relationship, but their isolating “society”is constantly disturbed and suffering the wicked acts from the banks of the “civilization society”. Relying on their wisdom and courage, they obtain freedom in the end. By contrasting the two kinds of societies, Twain thoroughly disclosed the hypocrisy of freedom and democracy in American society of his age. On the other hand, he showed his admiration to the people, both whites and blacks, with the spirit of bravely fighting for freedom and integrity. The theme in this novel, indeed, is that all of men, whites or blacks, should live in a truly democratic country.Beneath that theme, Mark Twain also succeeds in portraying the Great Mississippi River which carries Huck and Jim to beautiful, but sometimes it is so violent ferocious and terrible. It seems to be an embodiment of some spirits.“Some critics, notably T. S. Eliot and Lionel Trilling, have gone so far as to see in the River a kind of symbolic deity, a power sufficient to itself. The River …is not ethical or good,‟Trilling says, but it helps goodness grow in those people who make it an important element in their lives.”While T. S. Eliot has a more profound understanding of the Mississippi River in this novel.“Eliot maintains that the River dominates the structural form of the novel. The River is used metaphorically, structurally and thematically. Huck sees the big River gliding by and is suffused with a sense of awe and majestic calm. All adventures begin and end on the River. Jim‟s freedom------the central point of the novel------involves a journey down the River.”Question:What happened between Mark Twain and the Mississippi ??Part Two:Mark Twain1.Mark Twain and the MississippiMark Twain was born in Florida. The Mississippi River , flowing though the state,exerts a tremendouus influence on him.The beautiful sight and the colorful life as well as cast of characters are all quite familiar to Mark Twain.Therefore the Mississippi River produces great regional impact on Mark Twain’s literary creation .Mark Twain takes the Mississippi River as the carrier of his classic words,shapes his unique writing style and at the same time bestows specific meaning on the river.Mark Twain loved the great river so much that he always went in the direction of the nearby Mississippi. Many of his great works are set in the background of the Mississippi River, such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Life on the Mississippi.2.Mark Twain –Mirror of America(1)Who was Mark Twain ? Where did his pen name come from?Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910.He was an American author,a humorist, narrator, and social observer.Twain is unsurpassed in American literature.His novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a masterpiece of humor, characterization, and realism, has been called the first (and sometimes the best) modern American novel.After the death of his father in 1847, young Clemens was apprenticed to a printer in Hannibal, Mo., the Mississippi River town where he spent most of his boyhood.He first began writing for his brother’s newspaper there, and later he worked as a printer in several major Eastern cities.In 1857, Clemens went to New Orleans on his way to make his fortune in South America, but instead he became a Mississippi River pilot—hence his pseudonym, “Mark Twain,”which was the river call for a depth of water of two fathoms.two fathoms deep a boatman’s signal called up from the bow where the leadsman was sounding the river’s channel with his line. “Mark Twain”meant the second mark, or 12 feet deep, enough water to float any steamboatFor most people, the name "Mark Twain" is virtually synonymous with the life along the Mississippi River immortalized in the author's writing. Clemens first signed his writing with the name in February 1863, as a newspaper reporter in Nevada.(2)His Life PrinterPilotSoldierMinerReporterWriterMark Twain had led an active life,in the very center ofthe American experience.(3)His Major Works1.The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865)2.Innocents Abroad (1869)3.Roughing It (1872)4.The Gilded Age (with Charles Dudley waenner,1873)5.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)6. A Tramp Abroad (1880)7. The Prince and the Pauper (1882)8.Life on the Mississippi (1883)9.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)10.The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)11. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)12. The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900)13.What Is Man? (1906)14. The Mysterious Stranger (1916)15. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896)16. Following the Equator (1897)(4)Life on the Mississippi0riginally published in 1883, Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain's memoir of his youthful years as a cub pilot on a steamboat paddling up and down the Mississippi River.Twain used his childhood experiences growing up along the Mississippi in a number of works, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but nowhere is the river and the pilot's life more thoroughly described than in this work.Told with insight, humor, and candor, Life on the Mississippi is an American classic.(5)Book ReviewLife On the Mississippi is perhaps his middle-aged, nostalgic look-back to the long gone days of his youth.Twain looks back from a distance of twenty years, back to his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River.From 1857 to 1861 Twain learned and worked and lived on steamboats traveling the river from St. Louis to New Orleans.Yet a mere twenty years later, he must have surely recognized that the 'glory days' of the steamboat on the Mississippi were already gone, for him and for his countryLife on the Mississippi is full of stories.Stories of the geological history and the discovery and exploration of the river by man.Stories of Twain's early days as a boy on the river and the characters known and admired or censured from those early days.Stories from his days living and working on the river, as a 'cub pilot', as a respected working pilot, and—returning twenty years later—as a visitor seeing for himself the changes wrought on the river.Stories of the changes produced by the hand of man, straightening and deepening and channeling the river; changes forced by the development of tow-boats and railroads; changes perhaps best seen from the distance of time.That’s all.Thank you.。