Samuel Clemens Research Paper

Samuel Clemens, better known by the alias of Mark Twain, is a distinguished American author, essayist, humorist, and lecturer. Clemens produced a plethora of books, essays, short stories, speeches, and plays throughout his life, including classics like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Clemens lived during the Civil War and the social and political climate that bound it. These events left Clemens with the knowledge to authentically portray the time period in his work. Authors have to get their stories from somewhere. In an 1895 interview with The Sunday Oregonian, Clemens shared this idea: "It is like a star so far away that the eye cannot discover it through the most powerful telescope, yet if a camera is placed …show more content…
At the age of four, Clemens's family moved to a town on the edge of the Mississippi River named Hannibal. Hannibal was full of people, trade, and steamboats stopping by (Biography). It was an ideal place to grow up. Though Clemens was fortunate to live in such a place, several encounters with death tainted his childhood. In 1847, Clemens's father died unexpectedly. This left the Clemens family in a state of financial crisis, a place they would be for a long time. Additionally, Clemens witnessed two murders at the ages of nine and ten (Biography). Clemens’s hometown also inspired the town of St. Petersburg in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (“Mark Twain”). Hannibal is to Twain as St. Petersburg is to Huck. Hannibal was a wonderful place to live and grow up, but the town had its flaws and marks it left on Clemens. St. Petersburg is a place that Huck calls home, but is connected to his abusive father and the restrictions and rules of the Widow Douglas. Clemens drew clear inspiration from familiarities in his life, such as his hometown, but perhaps one of the most notable things Clemens wrote about, was the Mississippi

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