Several of the stories that we have read in class have completely changed my perspective on Mark Twain. Extracts from Adams Diary and Invalid's story have made me realize their was a very different side to this classic American author. I read The Carnival of Crime in Connecticut which contributed to my changing image of Twain. First off, let me say that this story reminded me of a Tom Waits song with its unusual characters, bluesy tone and supernatural feel. It was a bizarre story of repentance as the main character faces off against a moldy dwarf that is the embodiment of his conscience. It seems in Twain's stories, I'm noticing a pattern of strangers that come into wicked peoples lives and tamper with their life. What grasped my attention the most in this story is the 180 the story pulls right at the beginning. The story begins with a man talking about his aunt (who attempted to make him quit smoking) is coming to visit him. Then suddenly,
"Straightway the door opened, and a shriveled, shabby dwarf entered. He
was not more than two feet high. He seemed to be about forty years old.
Every feature and every inch of him was a trifle out of shape....... One thing about him
struck me forcibly and most unpleasantly: he was covered all over with a
fuzzy, greenish mold, such as one sometimes sees upon mildewed bread.
The sight of it was nauseating."
As you are reading you almost do a double take as the tender family story turns into..... something..... else.
The Situational irony was clever at the end because I was completely expecting him to either get sent to a mental institution or change his ways, but instead he grabs hold of his conscience and kills him. The story ends humoursly as he talks about his recent crime spree of murder and house burnings, and upcoming "honest" sales hes going to have in the spring, now that his tortuous conscience is gone.
1 comment:
Changed your perspective? How so? I used to think Twain was all Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I think a lot of people assume that Twain's a writer of children's literature. But really, he's not. I guess it's Twain being subversive, in telling a child's adventure story--and littering it with very adult, very serious issues of class and race.
The Carnival of Crime in Connecticut (another mouthful of a title from Twain) is a weird one. It's funny that you were thinking Tom Waits, because I was thinking Flintstones--remember, the Great Gazoo?
I, too, thought he was going to change his evil ways. Why did I think that? Why was I expecting a Twain character to make nice with his conscience? Twain characters are human--and humans have to kill their conscience so that they can go around doing awful things. Good ol' Twain holding up that mirror to his reader. Ok, perhaps he is holding the reader down and pushing the mirror into his or her face and screaming "look at how awful you are!"
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