Plentifu Mark Twain's The War-Prayer

Realism is the period in American literature from 1860 to 1890. This movement in writing focused on writing about how things really appeared and how they really were instead of writing in a dark manner. The stories, Life On The Mississippi and The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County written by Mark Twain best represent the realism movement in American literature at this time.

Naturalism and Realism both became important writing styles in the mid- nineteenth century. Naturalist writing portrays individuality within a character allowing a person to obtain humanistic themes. Realist writing is all about portraying real life and real situations. (Thesis)- Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” and Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” both display elements of naturalism and realism.

    One of the most notable techniques of realism was the simplicity of its writing and dialogue. Realism usually followed the adventures and life of the common person, therefore in order to accurately portray the average man authors had to drop the fancy words and grammar of romanticism and pick up the simple dialect of daily life. Twain is best known for his ability to replicate dialogue in this way. He would usually break the rules of grammar and spelling to capture the accents of an area, as seen in his story “ The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Cavalier County”. “H'm so 'tis. Well, what's he good for… Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any

He gives many examples of the unspoken words of all the victory prayers. Twain writes, “O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst.” The realism here comes from how terrible the aftermath of war really is. People die, wives lose husbands, children lose homes and it effects

Twain recounted his war experiences for an audience in October of 1877 at a dinner for the Boston Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. He spoke before the dinner recounting his actual Civil War experience.  Twain said, “I was made Second Lieutenant and Chief Mogul of a company of eleven men, who knew nothing about-war - nor anything, for we had no Captain. My friend, who was 19 years old…and just out of the infant school, was made Orderly Sergeant. His name was Ben Tupper. He had a hard time.” Important from his statement is the confirmation that Twain actually held the exact position of the narrator of his story and also the consistent youth and inexperience of the troops. The theme of inexperience is continued in his story many times over. An example of which can be seen when the narrator describes the daily activities of the men, “afternoons, we rode off here and there in squads a few miles and visited the farmer’s girls and had a youthful good time…” These are not the action of hardened killers. Rather, they are those of innocent and ignorant boys that have the misinterpretation that they are fighting a war. This very innocence could be that which Twain shared with his “narrator” at an actual time in history when he too was playing war with the Marion Rangers.

Many critics agree that Twain's skilled use of the satirical literary style, defines himself as a writer. "If the prevailing spirit of Mark Twain's humor is not a sort of good-natured self-satire, in which the reader may see his own absurdities reflected, I scarcely should be able to define it" (Howells). This similarity was present in all three short stories.

During the early 1900’s, Americans were caught up in the idea of imperialism, or extending their influence to other countries using military force. Mark Twain’s essay, The War Prayer, was written during this time, but argued against the popular philosophy of imperialism. Twain’s essay was too controversial and Harper’s Bazaar believed it was not suited for the public to read, so it went unpublished until after his death and after the idea of imperialism had lost its fervor.

In 1905 in his 70th year of age, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) knew his time was coming close to the end. He had lived an amazing life as a writer, husband, father, and friend to everyone. His writings started to shape the mind of youth in America that would lead to even great or equal authors in years to come. But, with time coming close to the end Clemens knew what truly burned in him and what he need to share before he left this earth behind. It was documented that between the ages of 70 to 75, Clemens writings became more aggressive and his opinion of truth was leaked into the pages of his work. It was during this time that Twain wrote the short story “War Prayer” about

Please read Mark Twain’s short story, “The War Prayer”. As your pastor I pray you understand the Philippians 2:3, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.” When a ravenous dog is given all the animal fat in the world he will gorge himself until his stomach so full it has to expel the contents. We are not a starved dog but brave and strong men, women, and country. We do not need to feed ourselves upon the blood of our neighbors which we are to love. Not kill them in the false pretense of freedom. Did we not learn anything from our civil war just a few short years ago? Are we helping these countries or helping only ourselves. As Mark Twain wrote in doing so we ask the, “Lord,

Realism, in contrast to Romanticism, represents the reality of life in America. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, America experienced enormous industrial, economic, social, and cultural change. Realism focuses on showing everyday activities and events among the middle and lower class society without romantic ideas. In the early 20th century people started to pull away from fantasy and started focusing on the reality around them. Realism emphasises on truth, class, and social commentary.

A while ago we did a lesson on how college is all about how much alcohol, parties, and drugs can play a role in which is the best one. Really the best thing to look for in a college is how it fits your schedule and what classes are best for you. When it comes to war, people want to win it, not lose. So, if that means they have to pray to their God or have a draft so they have enough volunteers, they will do so. In, “The War Prayer”, a satire by Mark Twain, he shows how winning a war could affect the other side, but the people that want to win don’t know that.

Realism in literature is basically the successor to romanticism. It first took off and gained footing in 19th century France. The literary style is a more straightforward and realistic style of writing in comparison to romanticism which was all about exaggeration and symbolism. Realism is often interchangeable with naturalism and branches out into regionalism which is interchangeable with local color. This type of writing is responsible for one of the greatest era of literary works.

"Authors began to focus their writing on ordinary people and their everyday lives" which caused the shift from Romanticism to Realism to begin.Many American authors were influenced by this movement ("Realism"). Realism inspired these authors to take into a deeper meaning the realties of life by further examining the obstacles and circumstances they have undergone (Marshall). The main ideas of literature shifted from giving people supernatural traits to authors portraying humans as the ordinary person ("Realism"). The major theme of this time period was to preserve the foundations that America’s forefathers laid down for the country. The Civil War was ultimately a second chance for the nation to rebuild and gain back the beneficial aspects that were overlooked in times of change. Realism began around the time of the Civil War and ended in early 1900. The changes in the writing styles shifted America’s views on the works of literature in the time period and caused a drastic change in the country (Leonard). Realists wanted to use the diction of the typical person to be able to connect to them and portray the concreteness of life

Realism came about in literary works in the 19th century, and portrayed real life unlike the previous Enlightenment and Romanticism movements prior. Writers and people were sick of the neat, happy stories and endings that were written by the two previous movements, and those people wanted something they could relate to. Because of this, Realistic writers wrote about the boring, ordinary lives that regular folks led and did not sugar-coat anything that occurred but was brutally honest. In the words of Randall Craig, “Realistic writers educate readers, not through humiliation, but by familiarizing them with a re-presented world and enabling them to discover the rules by which it works and to apply them both to the fictional and extra-fictional

Realism is the portrayal of the reality of everyday life and period of literature between 1850-1900. Realist fictions speculate myths, assumptions, social norms, sentimentality, collective wisdom, and prejudices. Realism stories are usually about the middle-class people, and it aims to show a truthful portrayal of truth. Regionalism is a class of realist literature distinguished by closeness to the habits, language, dialects, manners, history, traditions, beliefs of a particular geographical region. Regionalism manifests the characters of both realism and romanticism. Romanticism is cultural the period from 1830-1860 in America. Humankind is naturally good. The characteristics of romanticism are passion and emotion, nature over the man, spiritual, intuition, and insight. "A White Heron," by Sarah Orne Jewett, is an example of local color because of its realism. Jewett uses characteristics of regionalism like dialogue to show the contrast between the locals and outsiders, habits, their daily activities, the dress, features of a place. "Editha" by William is the story of realism which has many characteristics of realism like details about war; he uses dialect to hold out the trend of the story, using middle-class peoples character. Dean Howell uses a part of romantic style but all together its categorized as one of the