11. Critical Realism

Critical Realism as a trend in American literature reached full development after the Civil War The deep-going changes in the country, the new type of human relations compelled the writers to see man as a product of his environment, to deal with actual facts and realities. The highly critical realistic literature that came into being differed greatly from that of the prvious generation represented by Irving, Cooper and Longfellow.

The realists saw man against the background of social conflicts of the day and analysed human nature and human emotions in relation to this background.

Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser were among the many writers whose works were brilliant examples of realism.

American Critical Realism developed in contact with european realism. It was greatly influenced by Balzac, Gogol, Turgenev and Tolstoy.

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to the world as Mark Twain, was the son of a small-town lawyer in the State of Missouri. When the boy was five years old, he was sent to school. Little Samuel did not like school but he had many friends and was their leader. In summer, when school was over, the boys spent many happy hours on the Missouri River.

As Mark Twain said later, many events in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" really took place and the characters were from real life, Tom Sawyer was very often the portrait of the writer, Aunt Polly was his mother. When Samuel was 11 years old, his father died leaving nothing to his wife and 4 children. Samuel had to leave school and look for work. His elder brother was working as a printer and he helped the boy to learn printing. For some years Samuel worked as a printer for the town newspaper and later for his brother, who at the time had started a small newspaper. The two young men published it themselves. Samuel wrote short humorous stories and printed them for their newspaper. In 1853, Samuel decided to leave home. He went first to St. Louis, then to New York, and to Philadelphia where he worked as a printer. When Samuel was a boy, he dreamed of becoming a sailor. At twenty, he found a job on a boat travelling up and down the Mississippi. On that boat he learned the work of a pilot. From this he got his pen-name "Mark Twain" (a call used for depth sounding by Mississippi pilots). Later the young man worked with the gold-miners in California for a year. There he began to write short stories and he was invited to work as a journalist for a newspaper. The many professions that he tried gave Mark Twain a knowledge of life and people, and helped him to find his true profession—the profession of a writer. In 1870, he married, and a new and happy life began for him. He had one son and three daughters, whom he loved very much and was the happiest man when they were with him. As a journalist Mark Twain travelled very much over the country. In 1876, the writer published "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and in 1884, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". The writer showed boys and girls in the novels with such sympathy and understanding that readers always see themselves in these characters. Mark Twain protested there against slavery and one of the main characters in the novel "Huckleberry Finn" is a Negro, Jim, who is honest, brave and kind.

The profession of a writer did not bring much money to Mark Twain and he had to give lectures on literature and read his stories to the public. He visited many countries, and for a long time lived in England. In 1907, Oxford University gave Mark Twain an honorary doctorate of letters.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote: "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn'."