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Mark Twain Influences

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Many American Authors have affected the way we think and write today. Among those many is Mark Twain. Mark Twain is important to American Literature because of his works and how he portrays the American experience. His most famous books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its partner the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, are some of the most prominent in the world of American literature. The aftermath of the horrendous Civil War sets the rugged and natural terrain in which the books take place, setting a perfect picture of early America. While he sets an exact image of the land, he goes even more in depth in the characters dialect, speaking and using the slang you would hear early inhabitants use. His use of both of these to depict a picture of America is one of the things that makes him the father of American literature. Mark Twain had a very defining childhood that influenced his writing …show more content…

Because of his poor childhood and his need for a job at such a young age, being a newspaper apprentice introduced him to writing and gave him a small taste of the world of literature. He brought it a step further when he worked on newspapers and articles which by then he was old enough to take notice of how it made him feel and how it interested him. Mark Twain grew up on the Mississippi River which influenced many of his books like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Life on the Mississippi. Mark Twain’s mother, Jane Clemens, would tell Twain and his siblings stories, which may have sparked in interest at a very young age. Ernest Hemingway could have influenced Twain and vice versa. Hemingway once said “ All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn’”, in 1935, “It’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good sense” (“Celebrating the genius of ‘Huckleberry

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