Mark Twain's the Prince and the Pauper
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Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper: A Discussion Guide by David Bruce Copyright 2013 by Bruce D. Bruce SMASHWORDS EDITION Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support. Cover Illustration The cover illustration is from the 1881 first edition of The Prince and the Pauper. ••• Preface to This Book The purpose of this book is educational. I have read, studied, and taught Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, and I wish to pass on what I have learned to other people who are interested in studying Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. In particular, I think that the readers of this short introduction to Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper will be bright high school seniors and college first-year students, as well as intelligent adults who simply wish to study The Prince and the Pauper despite not being literature majors. This book uses a question-and-answer format. It poses, then answers, relevant questions about Twain, background information, and The Prince and the Pauper. This book goes through The Prince and the Pauper chapter by chapter. I recommend that you read the relevant section of The Prince and the Pauper, then read my comments, then go back and re-read the relevant section of The Prince and the Pauper. However, do what works for you. Teachers may find this book useful as a discussion guide for the novel. Teachers can have students read chapters from the novel, then teachers can ask students selected questions from this book. The quotations from the novel come from this source: Twain, Mark. The Prince and the Pauper: A Tale for Young People of All Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1983. Foreword and notes by Victor Fischer and Michael B. Frank; text established by Victor Fischer. This book will use short quotations from critical works about The Prince and the Pauper. This use is consistent with fair use: § 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use Release date: 2004-04-30 Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include — (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. Source of Fair Use information: <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107>. Biographical Notes on Mark Twain • Samuel Langhorne Clemens (later Mark Twain) was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, but grew up in nearby Hannibal (his family moved there in 1839), which became the village (called St. Petersburg) in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Hannibal was located on the Mississippi River and had 2,000 inhabitants. • Sam was the sixth child of John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton. • Sam’s father owned a grocery store. • Sam’s Uncle Quarles had a farm on which slaves worked. Sam sometimes stayed at the farm during summers, and he saw slaves being beaten. • Hannibal, Missouri, was a slave-holding community. The slaves were mostly household servants. • When Samuel L. Clemens was 12, his father died. Young Sam dropped out of school, then began work as an apprentice in a printer’s shop to help support his family. Then he worked under his brother, Orion, at the newspaper called the Hannibal Journal. • In June of 1853, Sam left Hannibal and started traveling, working for a while as a journalist and printer in places such as St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Iowa, then becoming a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. The man who taught him the Mississippi River was Horace Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones. • Sam served briefly in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, but deserted and headed West to search for gold (unsuccessfully). • He became a reporter and humorist for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, where he adopted the pen name Mark Twain. One story of the name’s meaning is that it is the cry given when a river man measures the depth of water in the Mississippi River and finds that it is 12 feet (two fathoms). “Mark Twain” means “Note that there are two fathoms of water.” (A fathom is six feet.) Two fathoms of water is enough water for a riverboat not to be in danger of hitting bottom. Sam used the pen name Mark Twain for the first time on February 2, 1863. Another account of the origin of the name is that Sam used to call out “mark twain” when entering a favorite Western saloon. In this case, “mark twain” meant “mark two more drinks on my tab.” • As a reporter, Twain was a social critic. In San Francisco, he wrote about the inhumane treatment of illegal Chinese immigrants and of the poor. • In 1869, Twain’s published the book (his 2nd) that was the most popular of all his books during his lifetime: Innocents Abroad. This humorous book tells of his travels to Europe and the Holy Land. • On February 2, 1870, Sam married Olivia Langdon. Her family was prominent in Elmira, New York. Sam and Olivia soon moved to Hartford, Connecticut. • Twain’s next book was Roughing It, published in 1872. This humorous book told of Sam’s experiences prospecting for gold. • In 1873, Twain published his first novel, The Gilded Age, which was co-written by Charles Dudley Warner, about corruption during the 1800s. • Twain published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876. • Twain published The Prince and the Pauper in 1881. • Twain published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885. • Twain published A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court in 1889. • Many of Twain’s investments failed and he became deep in debt, but he went on long speaking tours and earned the money needed to pay his debts and have some money of his own. • Although Twain was a humorist, late in life he grew deeply pessimistic and pondered the existence of the nature of God (if God in fact does exist). • Twain died of angina on April 21, 1910. • In The Mysterious Stranger, Twain wrote, “The Human race in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon — laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution — these can lift at a colossal humbug — push it a little, weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” Twain often used humor to mock colossal humbugs. Introduction to The Prince and the Pauper • Twain published The Prince and the Pauper on December 12, 1881. • Twain had so much fun writing the novel that he hated to finish it. • An important theme in The Prince and the Pauper that will come up again is that clothes make the man — in other words, we judge people by the clothing they wear. (A theme is a unifying idea in a work of literature.) • Another important theme in The Prince and the Pauper is education. The prince will become educated about the troubles of the common people by being mistaken for one of them. This education will make him a better ruler. • In The Prince and the Pauper, Twain criticizes many, many unjust laws of 16th-century England. • The Prince and the Pauper is a wonderful adventure story as well as a satire. It is suitable for children, and it is readable by adults. As the title says, this is “A Tale for Young People of All Ages.” • Mark Twain dedicated the book to Susie and Clara Clemons, two of his daughters, who were nine years old (Susie) and seven years old (Clara) in 1881. • Susie loved the novel; when she was 13 years old, she proclaimed it to be, “Unquestionably the best book he has ever written.” • The Prince and the Pauper describes many bad laws that would be unconstitutional in the United States because of the Bill of Rights. Familiarize yourself with the Bill of Rights in Appendix B, and as you read this novel identify those laws that would be unconstitutional in the United States. FOREWORD TO THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER According to Victor Fischer’s “Foreword” to the Mark Twain Library edition of The Prince and the Pauper, what was Mark Twain’s serious purpose in writing this novel? We learn that Mark Twain had been reading about the harshness of Tudor laws, and he wrote this novel to expose how harsh they were. One of Mark Twain’s ideas is that people of high standing ought to endure the harsh laws they create.