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Mark Twain's Roughing It: a Humorist's Darker Side Joseph Yokelson Bridgewater State College

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Mark Twain's Roughing It: a Humorist's Darker Side Joseph Yokelson Bridgewater State College Bridgewater Review Volume 4 | Issue 3 Article 6 Jan-1987 Mark Twain's Roughing It: A Humorist's Darker Side Joseph Yokelson Bridgewater State College Recommended Citation Yokelson, Joseph (1987). Mark Twain's Roughing It: A Humorist's Darker Side. Bridgewater Review, 4(3), 7-10. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol4/iss3/6 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Mark Twain's Roughing It: A Humorist's Darker Side Joseph YokeIson oughing It was based rather ruary 1872 -- was for Twain one of gust, 1870, shortly after Twain signed roughly on a period of Twain's protracted crisis. the contract for Roughing It, Jarvis Rlife that began in 1861, when There was, first of all, a national Langdon died, and Olivia, worn down Twain went west with his brother crisis. The country was fully embarked by the nursing, collapsed and herself Orion: Orion had been appointed Sec­ on that profit-crazed and corruption­ needed constantcare. On top ofthis, in retary ofthe Nevada territory with the marked era that Twain was soon to September, Olivia's friend Emma Nye help of friend who had a friend in stigmatize in his first novel as "The came for a visit, contracted typhoid, Lincoln's new cabinet. Twain had just Gilded Age." Twain thought, like even and died in the couple's bed. More faded quietly out of the Confederate the optimistic Whitman, that democra­ than thirty years later, Twain was to army after suffering from boils and a cy was a failure. Second, there was a describe the days before Emma's death sprained ankle and never firing a shot. personal crisis. Just about the time as "among the blackest, the gloomiest, For a while out west, Twain prospected Twain began to think ofmaking a book the most wretched of my long life." for silver around Virginia City; then of his adventures in Nevada and Cali­ Nor was this the end. Shortly after for about two years he was a reporter fornia, he married Olivia Langdon, the Emma's death, Olivia had a near mis­ for the Virginia City Territorial Enter­ daughter of a wealthy coal-dealer in carriage and on November 7 she gave prise. In 1864 he drifted on to San Buffalo. This is not to say that marriage birth to a premature, sickly child who Francisco, where he was a reporter and is a crisis in a negative sense, but that it was not expected to survive but who a free-lance writer. In 1866 he was sent must have been for Twain is clear when held on, to die several months after the to the Hawaiian Islands by the Sacra­ we learn that Jarvis Langdon, his fa­ publication of Twain's book. Twain mento Union. The period covered by ther-in-law, offered the former steam­ wrote Orion: "I am sitting still with idle the book ends with his return to San boat-pilot, prospector, and journalist hands -- Livy is very sick and I do not Francisco, his first success as a lecturer, ten thousand dollars if he would stop believe the baby will live five days." and his boarding ship for the voyage drinking ale and smoking. Then fol­ Even when Twain started making good that was to take him to New York and lowed a series of disasters. Just when progress on his book the following his career as one of America's most Twain planned to get down to the spring, there were times when he famous writers. writing ofhis book, Jarvis Langdon was thought he was hearing "a popular The stretch between the inception found to have stomach cancer, and author's death rattle" [his own] -- a and the publishing of Roughing It -­ Twain and his frail wife personally feeling certainly added to by the sud­ from the beginning of 1870 to Feb- nursed him around-the-clock. In Au- den immense popularity of Bret Harte, 7 Mark Twain continued a competitor in wrltmg about the It is time for examples. I would like been out-group victims of the estab~ West, who threatened to eclipse Twain to suggest that in spite ofthe narrator's lished religious society ofthe East. But by his sentimental depiction ofprospec~ exhilaration at the start of the book, the Mormons, now installed in Utah, tors and prostitutes. These personal pessimistic implications appear as early have in their turn, Twain finds, shown misfortunes provide an essential back~ as Twain's account of the career of a the same proneness to intolerance and ground for Roughing It, for although desperado named Slade, who has killed crude exertion of force in the name of the novel is generally read as the work twenty-six people and is talked about true religion demonstrated originally of a comic writer, it has a darkly everywhere. At one stage~station the by the establishment they fled. Once pessimistic side. narrator finds himself seated at the again the problem of the springs of It seems to me that Twain's con~ same table with Slade, who "gentleman­ human behavior presents itself to scious, clear intention in Roughing It ly~appearing, quiet, and affable," po~ Twain and he backs off. His sympathy was to debunk the values, including the litely presses the remaining coffee on for the out~group warring with his religious ones, of respectable ~~ read him. Hearing three years later that aversion, he resorts to potshots against eastern ~~ society and to explore the Slade begged for mercy at his excution, the Book of Mormon and Brigham values that arise in the choas offrontier the narrator indulges in perhaps the Young, making merry with the idea conditions. To realize his intention most complex and serious speculation that Young is being bankrupted by Twain creates a narrator who is looking in the book. Although Slade, a true having to give equal favors to all of his back at his initiation into the life ofthe desperado, was "a man of peerless wives. West. Much of the wonderful humor bravery," he would take "infamous Twain's prose is cliched and porten~ ofthe book comes from the successive advantage ofhis enemy" and at the end tous when he describes the mountains discomfitures of the initiate until he cried "under the gallows." Thus one he has come through on the way to wises up and learns to deal with his new could not say that "moral" courage Utah: they are "a convention of Na~ world. was the source of his bravery. ture's kings" or "Sultans ... turbaned Or at least that is the direction the Then, if moral courage is not the with tumbled volumes of cloud." But book should have gone in -- towards a requisite quality, what could it an alkali desert 100 miles west of Salt happy positive resolution. But while have been that this stout~hearted Lake evokes some ofhis finest descrip~ the narrator has become a successful Slade lacked? -- this bloody, des~ tive writing, oddly capped offby verbal lecturer in the last two chapters, his perate, kindly~mannered,urbane foolery: contact with the West and with charac~ gentleman, who never hesitated Imagine a vast, waveless ocean ters who live apart from the conven~ to warn his most ruffianly ene~ stricken dead and turned to tional culture ofthe East has provided mies that he would kill them ashes; imagine this solemn waste him with no code as an effective alter­ whenever or wherever he came tufted with ash~dusted sage~ native to that of eastern culture. There across them next! I think it is a bushes ... imagine team, driver, is much ~~ and it came as a surprise to conundrum worth investigation. coach, and passengers so deeply me as I read the book -- connected with Twain never does investigate -- per- coated with ashes that they are all the narrator's failure to find a code ~~ to haps because he cannot face the one colorless color.... The sun find, as it were, solid ground: haunting thought that if Slade is not moved by beats down with dead, blistering, episodes and images, some on the moral courage, which implies free selec­ relentless malignity; ... there is surface comic, which suggest that dur~ tion of right from wrong, he is a not the faintest breath of air ing Twain's stay in the West deeply mechanism operating according to stirring; ... there is not a living troubling symbols ofthe dark nature of some mechanical law. creature visible in any direction life were sown in his mind -- symbols Now the narrator reaches the Mor­ whither one searches the blank that were to reappear as expressions, mon country in Utah, and Twain is as level that stretches its monoto~ perhaps, of the ordeal he was going puzzled by the Mormons as he was by nous miles on every hand; there through while writing the book. W.O. Slade and possibly for the same reason. is not a sound ~~ not a sigh -~ not a Howells, who was to become Twain's The Mormons irritate and intrigue whisper. best literary friend but had known him him. In five chapters and two appen­ Arrived at the next station, the narra­ only for a short time when Roughing It dices he discusses their history, their tor is hard put to describe his reliefand appeared, had this insight into the control of Utah, their supposedly po­ the tiredness of the mules: book's symbolism: "All existence lygamous leader Brigham Young, and To try to give the reader an there [in the West] must have looked the Book ofMormon.
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