How Does Twain
Hannibal, Missouri made Marking Twain, and, in turn, Twain made Hannibal famous. Few American authors are as closely intertwined — and influenced — by their hometowns every bit Twain. The childhood years spent in this Missouri town gave nativity to some of the most famous characters in American literature, an emotional and memory-filled well that Twain would return to again and again.
Twain came from apprehensive origins
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in the tiny town of Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, 2 weeks afterward Halley's Comet fabricated its closest approach to the Earth. He was the sixth of seven children born to John and Jane Clemens. He was a sickly youth, whose parents feared he might not survive, and the family was beset by the tragic early deaths of iii of Twain's siblings.
When Twain was iv years one-time, his family moved to the Mississippi River port town of Hannibal, where John worked as a lawyer, storekeeper and gauge. John likewise dabbled in land speculation, leaving the family's finances often precarious. His son, who would become 1 of the wealthiest authors in America, would follow in his father'south financially-shaky footsteps equally an adult and was decumbent to speculation and ill-advised investments that would repeatedly threaten his financial security.
Jane was a loving mother, and Twain would later annotation that he inherited his dearest of storytelling from her. His father couldn't have been more than dissimilar, and Twain later claimed that he had never seen the dour and serious John smile.
Portrait of Mark Twain at 15, holding a printer's composing stick with letters SAM
Photograph: VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images
His years in Hannibal would be the most formative of his life
Hannibal would be immortalized equally the town of "Saint petersburg" in Twain's works. He would write of lazy days spent in the company of a group of loyal friends. They played games and spent hours and days exploring the surrounding expanse, including a cave just exterior of town that was a favorite of Clemens' real gang of friends, which would play a key role in Tom Sawyer every bit the cave where Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher nearly died.
Thatcher was based on Twain's existent-life childhood crush, Laura Hawkins. Like Twain, Hawkins had moved to Hannibal as a child, and her family unit lived on the aforementioned street as the Clemens family unit. She and Twain were schoolmates and sweethearts, and idealized versions of Laura fabricated their way into several other Twain books, including The Gilded Historic period. Subsequently in life, Twain and Hawkins rekindled their friendship, with Twain visiting with her in Hannibal and Hawkins traveling eastward to Twain'southward Connecticut abode just two years before his decease.
Sawyer's half-brother Sid was based on Twain's younger brother Henry. The two were quite close, and when Twain began training as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, he encouraged Henry to bring together him. Tragically, Henry was killed in a steamboat explosion at the age of simply 20. Twain never forgave himself, and Henry'south expiry haunted him for the residuum of his life.
Twain said he based the character of Sawyer on himself and ii babyhood friends, John B. Briggs and William Bowen. But many believe that he nicked the grapheme's proper name from a hard-drinking, Brooklyn-born firewoman named Tom Sawyer who Twain had befriended in the 1860s. Similar Twain, Sawyer had worked on riverboats in his youth, and the pair bonded over a series of drinking benders and gambling adventures in San Francisco, Nevada and elsewhere.
READ MORE: The Unlikely Friendship of Marker Twain and Ulysses S. Grant
Another babyhood friend was the inspiration for Huck Finn
Although Twain initially claimed to take invented the graphic symbol entirely, he after admitted that Finn was based on Tom Blankenship. The son of the town boozer, Blankenship was nonetheless idolized by the boys of Hannibal, who relished his sense of liberty and piece of cake ways.
As Twain later wrote in his autobiography, "He was ignorant, unwashed, comparatively fed; simply he had as skilful a centre as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the but really independent person — boy or man — in the community, and by effect, he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the remainder of us."
The character of Finn, outset introduced in "Tom Sawyer" before getting his own book in 1884, was Twain'due south virtually indelible creation — and his most controversial. While enormously influential and still popular more than a century later on it was published, the book is likewise one of the most frequently banned in America, criticized for its use of coarse linguistic communication, ethnic slurs and its depiction of the runaway enslaved person, Jim, which many consider racist.
Marking Twain'south habitation in Hannibal, Missouri
Photograph: Bettmann/Getty Images
The novel shows Twain dealing with the impact of American slavery
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was 1 of the first American novels to be written entirely using an English language colloquial language and dialect, as Twain recalled both the sights and sounds of his youth. It was also Twain's effort to reconcile both the darkness and light of his Hannibal years, which were filled with happy childhood memories besides as darker ones, reflecting the realities of the often capriciously vehement world of a riverboat town and the lasting effects of racism and slavery.
Twain afterward admitted he had grown up unquestioningly accepting slavery, before becoming an avowed advocate for Blackness rights afterwards in life. Missouri was a slave land, and both Twain'southward begetter and several Clemens family members endemic enslaved people. As a young male child, Twain spent summers on his uncle'due south farm, listening to stories told by its enslaved workers, including an onetime homo named "Uncle Daniel." Twain also drew on like stories he heard from formerly enslaved people who worked for his sister-in-law in upstate New York after the Civil War to create his portrait of Jim, and a long-ago story of the Tom Blankenship's brother'due south secret help to a runaway enslaved person would inspire Finn's relationship with Jim.
READ More: Helen Keller and Mark Twain Had an Unlikely Friendship That Spanned More Than a Decade
Twain'due south childhood concluded early
When young Twain was just 11, his begetter died, pushing the family unit to the brink of economic collapse. Twain was forced to exit schoolhouse and worked a series of jobs before condign a printer's apprentice, where he put his burgeoning love of words into tactical practice by setting type. After stints working for his brother's paper and other publishers in the Midwest and Eastward, Twain fulfilled another childhood beloved fueled by his Hannibal days by condign a Mississippi River gunkhole pilot. This cursory, though happy, phase of his early 20s was also where he acquired the pen name that millions would soon know him past: "Marking Twain," a term used by captains to mark a h2o depth of two fathoms, indicating rubber passage for their ships.
Although Twain would only piece of work on the Mississippi for a few years earlier the kickoff of the Civil War, that period, like those in Hannibal before them, left a lasting impression. Twenty years after his riverboat career concluded, Twain took a nostalgic journey along the river to New Orleans, inspiring much of his 1883 book, Life on the Mississippi. And as he made his way back up along the river, he made a return visit home to Hannibal, back to where it all began.
Source: https://www.biography.com/news/mark-twain-early-life-facts
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