And the moral of the story is...

Christina Bonvicin
2.27.2009
Mark Twain and His Story Morals

Mark Twain is a very humorous writer. But his humor isn't the "laugh out loud" type of humor some people really like to read. It's a dry sense of humor that not many people will catch onto until pointed out by someone else. It's the kind of humor that makes you stop and think "Oh, wait, that was funny in a not-so-funny way. It was demented." Twain's humor is pretty demented too. I mean, take "The Story of the Good Little Boy." You think it'd be a straight out story about a good little boy, right? The good little boy does good things for others and gets repaid good things. Not quite. Twain takes this overused concept and spins it so that his main character, Jacob Blivens, ends up not having the good life he believes he would have by being good.

In the story he addresses the issue of being overly good and not being rewarded for it in the way you expect. In his other short story, "The Story of the Bad Little Boy," the opposite is true. His main character, Jim, is being reward for being an absolute terror all throughout his life. He gets everything he's ever wanted with no consequences at all. At least, her has no consequences when he's actually living. Once he dies, however, is a different matter all together that I couldn't really take about even if I tried because Twain doesn't go into Jim's afterlife with him.

In any case, Twain's humor is dry and not much like the American Romantics. He's very much for the realism that is the world and how things do work in the world. His "Good Boy/Bad Boy" stories, you can clearly see his take on the world. That some things just are not always worth the time it takes to be good all the time, and that some times being bad is gets you farther in life than you think. Then again, this could just be my own thoughts of what Twain was trying to say in his stories. I truthfully wouldn’t know it that was what Twain was thinking when he wrote his stories unless I asked him.

In “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” Twain’s message is not to brag to a stranger, especially there after leaving something valuable with that stranger. Which, in today’s world it really isn’t a problem to leave something of value with a stranger since most of us (the ones with common sense) don’t go around trusting complete strangers with our valuables. Then again, he could have just been saying that you shouldn’t brag in general. Again you would have to ask Twain himself, as I’m a mere student coming up with morals based on what happens in the story.

Twain is writing to the American people of the late nineteenth century. I guess he doesn’t want them to be so overly emotional that they brag to everyone they meet, or try to do good by everything they do in order to be recognized for it. He’s a very humorous writer, and his stories read like oral stories. I could practically hear the slow, leisurely voice of Wheeler telling his story of Jim Smiley and his jumping frog in “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” His stories nowadays may not be read for moral purposes anymore, but morals can still be picked out. I recommend goody-two-shoes read “The Story of the Good Little Boy” so that maybe they stop being so good and living their life in the “I must always be good attitude.” Being bad once in a while isn’t that bad.

A part of Twain’s writing that stood out to me was from “The Story of the Good Little Boy.” It goes: “But somehow nothing ever went right with this good boy; nothing ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the broken legs; but in his case there was a screw loose somewhere; and it all happened just the other way.” Then Twain went on to talk about how poor little Jacob Blivens broke his legs because he caught Jim Blake stealing apples from a tree. It stood out to me because bad things happen to the good. As the quote goes “Only the good die young.” Well, that was basically what Twain was backing up in the story.

By the time I finished that short story, I felt really bad for little Jacob. All he wanted was to be the good little boy in a Sunday-school book, and one that didn't die in the end. But, he died in the end and he wasn't put in a Sunday-school book either. He was made into a Mark Twain story, which is just as good though. In the end, I believe that Twain wrote these stories for people to realize things about situations that you shouldn't put yourself into. Or, if you put yourself into those situations, make sure you get yourself out of them the right way.