American Literature (Old - up to 20th century)

o His most appreciated novels are those based on his own experiences along the Mississippi, The Adventures of Tom

Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

In the novel Twain describes the adventures of his boyhood. All the characters in the book are based on real individuals. Huck
Finn, the protagonist and narrator of the novel, is around 13 or 14 years of age. His father is an alcoholic. Huck is being raised
by Miss Watson and the Widow Douglas. They both blindly accept the hypocritical religious and moral rules of their society and
they want Huck to follow the rules. However, they represent an artificial life that Huck wishes to escape. It is difficult for him
to understand what is right and wrong. Huck tries to help Jim, a runaway slave, reunite with his family. The book follows Huck's
and Jim's adventures rafting down the Mississippi River, where Huck gradually rejects the values of the dominant society,
especially its views on slavery. Huck is a free boy right to the very end of the book, when he runs away because he fears that
Aunt Sally will adopt him and civilize him which he would not be able to 'survive'. In this book Twain openly expresses his anti-
slavery attitudes represented by Huck's close relationship to the escaped slave Jim.


JACK LONDON (1876 – 1916)
a representative of Realism and Naturalism, wrote about American wilderness. His most popular stories are those connected
with Alaska and the time of the Klondike gold rush (1896-99). There he met the men who were prototypes of his characters.
He tried various occupations and spent his short life travelling as a sailor, working as a manual worker, miner and at the end a
writer.

The Call of the Wild (1903) is the best known of his novels, is the story about Buck, a sled dog, who loves his master. After his
master is killed by Indians, he escapes from civilization to become the leader of a wolf pack. The natural world forms a beautiful
and impressive background to the life of men and animals. Both respond to the laws of nature.

Martin Eden depicts the struggle of an author to achieve success. Martin Eden, the character with many autobiographical features, is a
worker and sailor who longs to acquire education. He falls in love with Ruth Morse who is, for him, a symbol of high society and educated
circles. She, however, leaves him because of his socialist ideas, but when he becomes rich, she returns to him, but his love is lost.

The White Fang (1906)- a novelabout the friendship between a hunter and a dog-wolf crossbreed
!!! (See Bridge 01-02/2018)

Twain stayed in Mariánské Lázně (Marienbad) in August 1891

https://www.magazinuni.cz/ruzne/mark-twain-v-mariankach/

Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain were masters of aphorisms – short clever sayings which are intended to express a general
truth, often in a witty or humorous way.

Benjamin Franklin:

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Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.