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The Demonology of Mark Twain: Reading the Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts

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The Demonology of Mark Twain: Reading the Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts The Demonology of Mark Twain: Reading The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts Senior Paper Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For a Degree Bachelor of Arts with A Major in Literature at The University of North Carolina at Asheville Fall 2008 By Crystal Danielle Travis Thesis Director Dr. Deborah James Thesis Advisor/ Dr. Blake Hobby Travis 1 The Demonology of Mark Twain: Reading The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts I let the madam into the secret day before yesterday and locked the doors and read to her the opening chapters. She said: "It is perfectly horrible - and perfectly beautiful!" (The Selected Letters of Mark Twain, Neider 256) When Forty-four, a shadowy satanic presence in Mark Twain's No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, tells August, the novella's protagonist, it is time for him to depart, the boy is greatly saddened, since his friend will never return. Then, Forty-four fills August with disillusioning thoughts about the nature of reality: Nothing exists; all is a dream. God-man-the world,—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars: a dream, all a dream, they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you! (Twain 414) So ends one of the most debated of Twain's works, now referred to as The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts. Comprised of three short stories—The Chronicle of Young Satan, Schoolhouse Hill, and N0f 44f The Mysterious Stranger—these manuscripts present a very different Twain than the Twain works with which most are familiar, including his American river epic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. While most of Twain's major works have garnered much critical attention, The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts are just now being examined, especially in light of the spurious edition of The Mysterious Stranger Albert Bigelow Paine and Frederick A. Duneka published in 1916. Most scholars now assume this edition, in which all three manuscripts were heavily edited, revised, and combined, is an editorial fraud, a weak scholarly effort that now needs to be interrogated. In looking at each of these manuscripts independently and then in collaboration with one another, the societal concerns Twain comments upon in this dark, absurd tale becomes clear. The most notable target of Twain's satire is Christianity and what Twain saw as its imprisoning dogma. By reading the three manuscripts with the "mysterious stranger"—sometimes Satan, other times the nephew of Satan, and still other times simply as "No. 44" or "Forty-four"—in mind, the reader can clearly see how Twain satirizes organized Travis 2 religion and represents human nature. It has been ninety-two years since Mark Twain's last work, The Mysterious Stranger, A Romance was published posthumously; and ever since then, there has been much talk and speculation by critics as to the novella's meaning, the author's intent, and what the book could possibly yield to the literary world. Even more remarkable than the text itself, was the discovery that the book was actually a butchery of three unfinished and unpublished stories, put together by Twain's editors, Paine and Duneka. Since the novella's first published date of 1916, many critics have examined Twain's work and much importance lies in considering the very early sources to the more recent because readers are then able to see how the initial reception and critical conversations have changed. Views and interpretations of The Mysterious Stranger have been revised according to whether critics knew of Twain's editors' fraudulent piecing together of his work. The unusual circumstances behind the publication of The Mysterious Stranger are partly what made this work so intriguing for critics because, at first, this novella was seen as Twain's pessimistic view of life. It is important to note how The Mysterious Stranger was received in the form as given by Paine and Duneka since this version is still believed to be Twain's final work. One of the first looks given to the novella was in an unsigned New York Times Review from October of the published year where the reviewer focused mainly on the perception of Twain's book as a message of doom and gloom against the human race. The writer states: For here we have a last word from him we have always called the greatest American humorist, a word that comes to us after the grave has closed over the speaker, a final and conclusive word. It is difficult to imagine a message carrying a grimmer credo of despair, disillusion, and contempt for human existence. It blows upon the spirit like a cold wind over a dark and desolate land, a land where there is never a light, near or far, promising shelter, home, and love. In such a land, shivering in such a wind, what better Travis 3 is there than to lie down and die? (New York Times 453) This reviewer's focal point is based mainly on his idea that Twain's book is a refusal to look at the world's possible testimony of good and that only the evil exhibited by the few is being examined. The dark depths of The Mysterious Stranger were very unlike Twain's previous writings in that he did not censor his harsh beliefs about humanity. In 1976, Paul Delaney explored this thought and gave possible reasons for Twain's pessimistic outlook in his article: "The Dissolving Self: The Narrators of Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Fragments." Delaney, instead of only looking at the whole of Twain's story, distinguishes the differences in Twain's narrative voices in the three manuscript versions of The Mysterious Stranger: The Chronicle of Young Satan, Schoolhouse Hill, and No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger. He notes that Twain once confided to a friend that what he wanted was: a chance to write a book without reserves..which should take account of no one's feelings,...prejudices, opinions, beliefs, hopes, illusions, delusions; a book which should say [his] say, right out of [his] heart. (Delaney 51) These manuscripts were his chance to do so, but each was a little disjointed. Delaney admits that out of the three manuscripts, Chronicle and No. 44 are the most substantive since Schoolhouse Hill proposed the difficulty of'Twain's attempt to use an omniscient point of view [which] perhaps contributed to his premature abandonment of a manuscript he had barely started" (Delaney 52) since the characters of Huck and Tom were never really a part of the story and 44 merely is presented as an incredibly brilliant schoolboy. In The Chronicle, the reader is introduced to the narrator of Theodor and the most revealing revelation about him is his "lack of independence from the opinion of his townspeople" (Delaney 53) in that he joins them in the stoning of a poor, helpless woman. Twain's Theodor recognizes the dreadful violence that the mob creates but he lacks the courage to condemn them. Through this character, it is easy to see how his fears for self-reputation outweigh his participation in societal evil. Also according to Delaney, in No. 44, August mirrors Theodor; both hesitate to lose their Travis 4 reputation if they befriend 44 or Satan. If either attaches himself to this persecuted boy, he risks his own head because the other printers will see to it that they create a miserable environment for the both of them. August also reveals a lack of independence through his trying to proselytize to 44. He readily identifies with the official religion of the area and is horrified as those around him worship a magician but yet, like Theodor, he kneels out of fear of societal repercussion. Delaney examines the narrators further and sums up these two boys nicely by saying: Theodor and August are both "natural boys," and possess the advantages and defects of that age, but they are inextricably caught up in the religious beliefs, values, and social pressures of their eighteenth-century and fifteenth-century communities. (Delaney 54) While the anonymous New York Times Review's piece of criticism does not delve deeper into the meaning of the work to see why Twain sees God as a being who creates both good and bad children and never ceases to make them miserable, it is important to note that this person's criticism may be based on the hurt that the world was reeling from in the wars that were taking place during its publication. Thus through a personal bias it is understandable that the review goes on to say that "we would find it difficult to deny that the human race is capable of vast mistakes and terrible tragedies. But to admit that this is all...is to judge falsely, and that is what Mr. Clemens does in this book" (New York Times 453). However, it is also not fair that Twain's work be judged so harshly, yet it probably would not surprise the author since he was so harsh in examining the human race as a whole. Yet, it could also be suggested that Twain was not pessimistic at all but was merely using his characters to make observations about the nature of people such as George Soule declares in his review the following November. In his review, Mark Twain Protests, Soule begged to differ from the initial critique of a pessimistic world that ends in nothingness. Soule saw The Mysterious Stranger as a "fairy tale dipped in irony" (Soule 8) since the narrative begins like a fairy story in that the first line of the story Travis 5 associates the town of Eseldorf with a paradise. It is when the character of Satan appears and is cruel to the living creatures he created out of the mud of the earth by smearing them into the ground, that irony appears.
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