An analysis of literary techniques in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Before going into depth on the tactics employed by Mr. Twain to bring his story to life, I feel obliged to say that I have never read this book before now, and was very reluctant to begin at first. However, after reading the novel in its entirety, I found that it was an excellent story. Short, concise, filled with imaginative language, events, descriptions, and a wonderfully dry sense of satirical humor, I greatly enjoyed this book, despite my adamant bias against classical literature (old books).

I believe that the primary theme of this novel could be best described as: A metaphorical analysis of the irony of society. I reached this conclusion based on the volume of satirical dissections of basic habits, and how the strict, sometimes arrogant adult society was shown to mirror the less sophisticated child society in many ways. For example, the children held in high esteem many superstitions, so many, in fact, that they were essentially free to choose their interpretations of them. A very long excerpt that shows this freedom (pg. 76) is:

"If you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated. But, now this thing had actually and unquestionably failed. Toms whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations. He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding, but never of it failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several times before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places afterwords. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided that some witch had interfered and broken the charm."

This practice seems to mimic many of the adult's fixation on religion, a belief that was very widespread in that time.  

The literary technique that jumped out at me most immediately was the way the author analyzed traits that are so deeply ingrained in society as to be almost invisible (actually I am not sure if this is a literary technique in the strictest sense of the word, but it was something that was done exceedingly well and greatly enhanced my appreciation of the story, so I consider it one). He also managed to do this without interrupting the flow of the story (I thought it even helped move it along and develop the theme). Early in the book, the author described his views on the relationship of work to play, a comparison that brought to my mind a psychological analysis I read at some point in some obscure piece of writing. If I remember correctly, it was about how people only covet what they do not have, and the moment it becomes easily attainable, it loses its intrinsic value. Mr. Twain wrote essentially the exact same thing (pg. 19):

"If he [Sawyer] had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he woud now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a treadmill is work, while rolling tenpins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement."

As one can see, this observation is only slightly different from the statement above, and certainly worded in such a manner as to make it amusing and interesting. In fact, he then went on to connect it to a humorous yet insightful example which, though drawing from now extinct practices, nevertheless conveys the precise message it was intended.

"There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign."

I noticed this idea referred back to several times during the course of the book, which ties into the next device: that of allusion. 

Mark Twain made numerous allusions back to previous concepts at various points in the book, something I noticed and appreciated more than I would if he made allusions to external sources (I believe this practice also adds to the immortality of the piece, because although most books employ allusion, a great deal of them do so with concepts that fade with time, equally dimming the novel's theme). Since Mr. Twain alluded to points he had made in earlier parts of the same book, which were themselves satirical observations on  human nature (which does not fade nearly as fast as other topics, if at all), his works (of which I have only read one) remain relevant while others do not. One allusion (pg. 278) that linked to the very same observation quoted above is:

"'Why, its not as light as it might be. Got bricks in it?-or old metal?' 'Old metal, said Tom.' 'I judged so; the boys in this town will take more time hunting up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to the foundry than they would to make twice the money at regular work. But that's human nature-hurry along, hurry along!'"

As you can see, this quote shows that even on page 278 the author was alluding to points made in the very beginning stages of the novel.

The author also used a certain amount of hyperbole when describing certain events or objects, a practice that I believe was intended to bring the reader closer to the characters by describing things from their own point of view (that of a child). Perhaps the most obvious use of this device was when describing the children's transactions, which never involved actual money, but things that most "mature" people would consider junk, or even trash (the distinction being objects that are considered worthless as opposed to objects people would actively try to rid themselves of). A quick quote that shows this (pg. 55) is:

"'What's that you got?' ' Dead cat.' 'Lemme see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him?' 'Bought him off'n a boy.' 'What did you give?' 'I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter-house.'"

Hyperbole was also used when describing Tom Sawyers imagination, like becoming a pirate or robber. These aspirations were accompanied by spirited descriptions that exaggerated their merits and technical achievability by no small degree (pg.75):

"But no, there was something even gaudier than this. He would be a pirate! That was it! Now his future lay before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore!"

Hyperbole relates to the theme because it is a technique that allowed the author to develop the plot, deepen the character, and bring the reader closer to the way Tom Sawyer thought, therefore understanding him better. This practice also relates to the first literary device I described, that of "trait analysis through psychological observations", by depicting how Sawyer felt about unlawful activities such as piracy, which ties into the pseudo psyche-analysis proposed by Twain: that play is whatever a person is not obliged to do. 

Thanksgiving

Part one: I am thankful that my family has not been plunged into bankruptcy by the economic devastation currently underway, and I am equally grateful that Barack Obama has been nominated president. I am thankful that my family has nearly completed yet another year without enduring any earth shattering upheavals, and that our dog is still blessed with good health. In short I am thankful for everything that is positive in my life and those around me while acknowledging that without misfortune (see below), happiness fades into indistinction.

Part two: Before Thanksgiving break is over, I will complete a reasonably fleshed out draft of my article, sift through the results of the survey me and my partner will be instigating tomorrow (boiling it down into usable information), and distill the beach closure and advisory records (from about five years ago until now) from certain choice websites (most likely Heal the Bay or SD Beach advisory board) into a concentrated state which I can use to write both the fleshy draft and final editorial.

Part three: I will

Another H2O project post

1. So far I am discovering the inherent difficulty of amassing enough accurate scientific resources to compose an informative, interesting, structured, and complex editorial about an issue that I have no knowledge of.

2. I am surprised by how difficult it is to "get the ball rolling", so to speak, and also find good internet sources that answer my questions. It would seem that the vast, ethereal, extra dimensional space that is the internet is filled with nothing but poorly written, highly uninformative pseudo-advertisements and tiny websites that have no purpose. I do not know why Google has attained such notoriety, because there is no way anyone could search through more than a few pages of the results. I hope to find a better, more concise search engine in future to facilitate more expedient data retrieval. It seems strange to me when I consider that Google is the only way I or anyone else seems to navigate the convoluted and myriad threads of binary code that the internet consists of (I think it consists of binary code but I could be wrong), and stranger still to consider the immaterial nature of this nigh ubiquitous resource. What is the internet exactly? Does it have a central section? A physical headquarters? A brain? Anything even remotely resembling anatomical structure? Or is it simply code floating around in some indefinite space that we cannot penetrate with any of our natural senses? That seems ridiculous to me, not the concept of an intangible location, but the fact that if it occupies an impalpable dimension, it had to have gotten there somehow, and since the internet is man-made, it follows that this jumble of code was introduced to the area by human hands, which I do not believe to be possible.

3. My next steps are to prepare for a survey and ask anyone and everyone who might have even a scrap of marine knowledge all I can to better my own understanding of my question (which is practically non-existent).

Editorial critique

- Harvard Prof on Barack Obama, Integration and Inclusion

- New York Times editorial on Native American voting rights by Adam Cohen - June 21, 2008

Native Americans have a history of oppression. First it was at the hands of european immigrants,  then Americans. As can be seen through the link above, prejudices are still manifesting themselves today, though in the form of voter suppression. In certain regions the often democratic leaning Native American populations are the have been the targets of voter suppression.

Example products

- New York Times article on sewage and storm runoff by Anthony DePalma - Aug. 11, 2007

I liked this article for three reasons:

1. It combined qualitative and quantitative data, providing numerical evidence and shocking statistics in concert with quotes and simple explanations. I will try to emulate this article's wonderful mix of the above elements in my own article.

2. It addressed an important issue and gave reasons for its importance. The article educated me on the archaic sewage system of New York and provided simple yet profound examples of how it is not up to the challenges of rising temperatures and population.

3. The article caused me to think about the situation for a few minutes when I was through reading. The author achieved this by describing an ironic situation that throws light on how people think (If you are curious read the article), which left me pondering, among other things, why there is so much cement and asphalt everywhere.

If I can use some of the techniques I noticed in this article, I would be much happier with my final product than otherwise. Another article I found useful was:

- New York Times article on genes by Carl Zimmer - Nov. 10, 2008

Three things:

1. It had nice pictures, which helped by making it more aesthetically appealing.

2. It contained information that was relevant to me, because of what I am studying in biology class. Obviously an article needs to be about a topic people can connect with and use, or they either won't find it interesting or just not read it.

3. It had a huge amount of evidence and quotes sewn into it, adding weight.

If I can keep these points in mind while writing my article I am sure I will stand a much better chance of getting a good grade and being personally satisfied with my writing.

Various Stuff

Part one: Questions
1. How do you feel about the result of the election?

I was pleased that Obama won, and I hope he can effect the kind of dramatic changes this nation is in such desperate need of. I believe my optimism is shared by many, and not just Americans. This NY Times article was inspiring and uplifting, though unfortunately I do not know how much of it to trust.

2. What are your hopes for America and your community in the next 4-8 years?

I hope that we can not only free ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, but spearhead the multi-national push for clean, renewable sources of energy. I believe that if America, the biggest polluter on the planet, can essentially overhaul its entire society to be more eco-friendly, it will send a strong message to practically every other nation that renewable energy is not only viable, not only possible, but essential. Of course, I understand that it is unrealistic to expect all of this in 4 years, but we've got to start somewhere, and the sooner we do start the sooner we can finish and move on to other crises. I see energy as the most pressing issue facing the impending presidency, closely followed by economical repair (so that we can actually accomplish energy independence and cleanliness).

3. What are your concerns for America and your community for the next 4-8 years?

One of my biggest concerns is that attempting to clean up after president Bush will occupy so much of Obama's time and budget that his own agenda will be correspondingly truncated. My second concern is for Obama's health, because there are so many people who cannot see past their ignorance, hatred, and misguided beliefs. I can only hope that the secret service is up to the challenge of protecting him and his family from assassination.

4. Evaluate your level of civic knowledge:

Without doubt, my comprehension of American politics and history has grow to unprecedented heights (personally) during the course of this class, and I would even say that I have learned more in this class than all of my previous history classes put together. Having said that, There is a vast amount I have yet to cultivate an understanding of.

5. What have we done well in this class to help you understand current events?

I lose track of the amount of times I have been asked this question, and the answer is always the blog. Writing regularly about current events and often applying them to historical precedents has turned out to be an excellent way to keep me informed of international goings-on and deepen my understanding of American history. Another way would be how we apply history to useful, relevant current affairs in class discussions and reading. In the past, all we seemed to do was read a textbook on the revolutionary war, America's separation from England, and George Washington. I think I learned about the same period in history in five different classes without ever being presented with interesting, relevant information I could apply to my life in any way (I do not see a point in memorizing information you do not know how to use, because it would not really be "learned" would it? The knowledge would simply exist in the mind long enough to scrape by on some meaningless test designed to evaluate one's "understanding" of a concept before fading forever).

Part two: Project plan

A) Resources: I plan to interview key personnel at the Point Loma Water Treatment Plant (I have yet to determine the precise identities of the interviewees), along with some civic engineers acquainted with my teacher. Hopefully, quoting these experts will add an air of factual and intellectual savvy to an otherwise dry and patchwork article. Most unfortunately, I do not believe that writing about the effects of a single water treatment facility (PLWTP) will paint a very broad portrait of the near-global phenomenon of large scale waste disposal, so I am still looking for another site to act as a comparison. Failing that, I must rely on the civic engineers to supply my article with the breadth of expertise necessary to captivate and educate every poor soul that mentally digests my article.

B) People: Sadly, I am not yet at such an advanced stage of the planning process, and therefore am unaware of exactly whose brain I will be combing.

C) Schedule:
Nov. 8-11/gather internet resources and develop canny interview questions
Nov. 12-14/set up interviews
Nov. 17-21/Interview subjects
Nov. 22-29/Thanksgiving break
Dec. 1-12/Write article, revise article, get article critiqued, revise article again

2 research questions

   For the upcoming "state of the beach" project, I am considering articles based on the following questions. Ultimately, I will be choosing one of these to write an informative, grammatical, and well structured article about. The first question is:

How much filtration does waste water go through at key treatment plants before it is returned to the ocean?

I feel that I can address this with a nice mixture of qualitative and quantitative data that will provide the average reader with some shocking statistics and provoke reasonably deep ethical ruminations. The second question is:

How does our own pollution affect us?

Obviously, this is an extremely open-ended question, but I would attempt to localize it somewhat by focusing on California's proximity and relationship to/with the pacific. I actually plan to integrate the two questions regardless of which one I end up writing about, because they compliment each other very well. 

   I came up with the first prompt both because of interest and a field trip the class took last year to a water treatment plant for an entirely unrelated project. I plan to apply some of the knowledge gleaned from that trip, and visit that same plant and others to interview them on their work and provide excellent primary sources for my article. I am leaning heavily towards the first question, mainly because the second is so indefinite, but also because I believe the second would be more effective if integrated with the first than on its own. I have not yet given any serious thought to the structure of the article, but for the first question I hope to include information on water treatment standards, the amount of sewage dumped in the ocean (along with percentages; how much of it was treated and to what extent), bacteria content during various stages of treatment, the treatment process itself, the effect on nearby wildlife, and some information on currents and how the sewage travels (treated and untreated). I would also like to cover the following concepts in article #1, though they are more related to question #2: in relation to how the sewage effects wildlife, address how we rely on said wildlife (be it fish, plankton, crabs, lobster, or any other marine creature), touch briefly on natural water treatment processes and how sewage affects them in a wider context, and how our own pollution eventually cycles back to affect us and what it can do when it does. As stated above, I think the best resource would be the treatment plants themselves, but there are undoubtedly certain books that offer a wealth of information on the subject, and a brief, very unspecific google search provided these sources: a diagram and the workings of a treatment machine, some info on currents, sewage's effects on wildlife in the antarctic, and general information on sewage. 

   For the second article, I would need to narrow my focus tremendously, because I know from experience that if I have such a general topic, I could write on for pages and pages but never actually address the question. A few areas that I think would be good to cover in answering this question are: the way water cycles through the environment naturally (e.g. rain, rivers, and mountains) and how sewage is cycled with it, how we and all other life rely on this cycle, how this cycle affects the environment when it is polluted (such as acid rain), and perhaps spend some time hypothesizing on the conundrum of a growing population along with how this might affect the delicate balance that is nature, a balance that has already been so manipulated. I could certainly draw some evidence from the ecology of China, but the article would be primarily focused on America. I could also touch on the affects of global warming, greenhouse gasses, and garbage sequestration, especially plastic, along with providing some coverage of the "north pacific gyre". 

   In the end, I would touch on both questions to varying degrees in whichever topic I choose, (or am assigned, I am not sure if I will have the liberty of designating the article myself) because of their close relationship with one another. In hindsight, and after giving thought to addressing the second question, I feel that I could write a fairly good article about either of them. The first would require a vast amount of reading and resource-management, while the second would call for some extremely competent tie-ins between all of the disparate concepts I would be covering. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and at this point I have no idea which to choose.