Character Study in I in Mark Twain’s Short Novel Running For Governor.doc

马克吐温短片小说竞选州长中人物“我”的分析Character Study in I in Mark Twains Short Novel Running For GovernorContentsAbstract.1 Key words.1I. Introduction.2II. Literature review.2III. Mark Twain and his works.3IV. American Realistic Literature.5V. Views on Running for Governor.7VI. Conclusion.8References.8Abstract：Because of the political reason and the teachers guide, the Running for Governor lost its original meaning. Everything is changing time to time. Nowadays, our country has moved into a new position. At the same time our literature also has made great progress. As time goes by, we found something we learn from the middle schools Chinese textbook should be changed. The Running for Governor not only tells us the capitalisms badness, corruption and decadence, but also shows us the other side of America. So little by little, people begin to realize the value of the book and more and more people start to read it. As we read it every time, we are always shocked by something. We can get more form the book if we read and study it more.Key words：Realism; realistic literature; Mark Twain; I摘 要：在我国的一段时间里，由于政治原因和教师在教学当中的指导作用使得竞选州长失去了部分应有的意义。现在，政策的改变为我国带来了一系列的变化，使我国进入了一个新的阶段。同时我国的文学也取得了巨大的成就。随着时间的推移我们发现我们从中学语文课本竞选州长中学到和了解的东西应该更加全面。它不仅告诉我们资本主义的贪污腐败，也为我们展示了他们生活的另外的一面。慢慢的人们认识到了它的价值并重新开始审视这部作品。今天，当我们再次阅读时，我们被一些东西所震撼。也只有这样我们才能从这些书中学到更多和掌握的更加全面。关键词：现实主义; 现实主义文学; 马克·吐温; “我”I. IntroductionIn our middle schools Chinese textbook, there is one foreign short novel as a representative work of the foreign work. It is Mark Twains short novel Running for Governor. What I remembered is that the lessen we should learn from those foreign fictions is the decadence of the capitalism, at the same time the teachers perfuse one conception to us, that is the capitalism system must be replaced by socialism system. Yes, maybe this is one of the aspects that those works mean to show, but some people dont think that it is the main information imparted to such young students. This political education, however, firstly the expert supported that we should give students one literary way from it to inspire them to think what the foreign countries life is; secondly some writing skills and literary knowledge the teacher should analyze to young students.Whether we realize it or not, almost everything is political. My introduction to the writings of the famous American author, Mark Twain, is a case in point. Many Chinese readers might remember reading Mark Twain's humorous sketch entitled Running for Governor (1870) made available in translation, first, in 1960's and then, in1980's. The reason why Twains story was distributed during two very different periods in China's political fortunes (prior to the Cultural Revolution and the reopening of diplomatic links to the West) was the assumption that Chinese readers would miss Twains humor but focus on his criticism of the American two-party campaign system. Given the fact that few Chinese had visited a western country or participated in an election or experienced the rough give-and-take involved in two-party campaigns, this was a reasonable calculation. Many Chinese readers did appreciate Mark Twains humor because they saw in it something with which they were only too familiar: the sharp outline of games played for political power.II. Literature Review Twain is known as a local colorist, who preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions, including people living in that area, the landscape, and other peculiarities like the customs, dialects, costumes and so on. Consequently, the rich material of his boyhood experience on the Mississippi became the endless resources for his fiction, and the Mississippi valley and the West became his major theme. Unlike James and Howe1ls, Mark Twain wrote about the lower-class people, because they were the people he knew so we1l and their 1ife was the one he himself had lived. Moreover he successfully used local color and historical settings to i1lustrate and shed light on the contemporary society.Another fact that made Twain unique is his magic power with language, his use of vernacular. His words are col1oquial, concrete and direct in effect, and his sentence structures are simp1e, even ungrammatical, which is typical of the spoken 1anguage. And Twain skillfully used the colloquialism to cast his protagonists in their everyday life. What's more, his characters, confined to a particular region and to a particular historical moment, speak with a strong accent, which is true of his 1ocal colorism. Besides, different characters from different literary or cultural backgrounds talk differently, as is the case with Huck, Tom, and Jim. Indeed, with his great mastery and effective use of vernacular, Twain has made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable 1iterary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of language was later taken up by his descendants, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, and influenced generations of letters.III. Mark Twain and his worksMark Twain (pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910),was an American writer, journalist and humorist, who was a worldwide audience for his stories of the Youthful Adventures of Tom Sager and Hucklebery Finn. Clemens was bore on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, of a Virginan family. He was brought up in Hannibel, Missouuri, after his fathers death in 1847; he was apprenticed to a printer and wrote for his brothers newspaper. He later worked as a licensed Mississippi riverboat pilot. The civil war put an end to the steam boat traffic and Clemens moved to Virginia city, where he edited the Territorial Enter Pries, on February 3.1863,Mark Twainwas born when Clemens signed a humorous account with that pseudonym.In 1864 Twain left for California, and worked in San Francisco as a reporter. He visited Hawaii as a correspondent for the Sacramento union, publishing letters on his trip and giving lectures. He set out on a world tour, traveling in France and Italy. His experiences were recorded in 1869 in the Innocents Abroad, which gained him wide popularity, and fun at both American and European prejudices and manners.He is considered as the true father of our national literature.His works: Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Golden Age, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court, The Tragedy of Puddshead Wilson and the most familiar one Running for Governor. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is usually regarded as a classic book written for boys about their particular horrors and joys while Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, being a boys book specially written for the adults, is Twains most representative work, describing a journey down the Mississippi undertaken by two fugitives, Huck and Jim. Their episodic set of encounters presents a sample of the small-town world of America and a survey of the social world from the bank of the river that runs through the heart of the country.Huckleberry Finn marks the climax of Twains literary creativity. It is all modern American literature and the book is significant in many ways.The profound portrait of Huckleberry Finn is another great contribution of the book to the legacy of American literature. The novel begins with a description of how Widow Douglas attempts to civilize Huck and ends with him deciding not to let it happen again at the hands of Aunt Sally. The climax comes with Hucks inner struggle on the Mississippi, when Huck is polarized by the two opposing forces between his heart and his head, between his affection for Jim and the laws of the society against those who help slaves escape. Hucks final decision is to follow this own good-hearted moral impulse rather than conventional village morality. With the eventual victory of his moral conscience over his social awareness, Huck grows.Another fact that makes Twain unique is his magic power with language, his use of vernacular. His words are colloquial, concrete and direct in effect, and his sentence structures are simple, even ungrammatical, which is typical of the spoken language. Mark Twains humor is remarkable.Twain is also known as a local colorist, who preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions, including people living in that area, the landscape, and other peculiarities like the customs, dialects, costumes and so on. Consequently, the rich material of his boyhood experience on the Mississippi became the endless resources for his fiction, and the Mississippi valley and the West became his major theme. Unlike James and Howe1ls, Mark Twain wrote about the lower-class people, because they were the people he knew so we1l and their 1ife was the one he himself had lived. Moreover he successfully used local color and historical settings to i1lustrate and shed light on the contemporary society.Another fact that made Twain unique is his magic power with language, his use of vernacular. His words are col1oquial, concrete and direct in effect, and his sentence structures are simp1e, even ungrammatical, which is typical of the spoken 1anguage. And Twain skillfully used the colloquialism to cast his protagonists in their everyday life. What's more, his characters, confined to a particular region and to a particular historical moment, speak with a strong accent, which is true of his 1ocal colorism. Besides, different characters from different literary or cultural backgrounds talk differently, as is the case with Huck, Tom, and Jim. Indeed, with his great mastery and effective use of vernacular, Twain has made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable 1iterary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of language was later taken up by his descendants, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, and influenced generations of letters.Twain died in 1910 at Stormfield, the family's home located near Redding, Conneticut. His autobiography was published posthumously, and he left behind several unpublished works as well. While Twain's material was characteristic of the period in which he wrote, it becomes necessary to examine the individual themes in order to gain a sense of his motives and convictions. As a Realist, he was strongly attracted to the mundane elements of American life. His portrayal of the commonplace was both vivid and detailed, and it is often the characters, as opposed to the plot, which capture the reader. Much of his material was based on personal experiences, both as a child growing up in the South, and later as a seasoned traveler. Critics of Twain often refer to an underlying purpose lurking beneath the cloak of satire, but many readers are content to accept the improbable plots and complex interrelationships at mere face value. Nevertheless, Twain did address certain components of American culture in a manner which undermined these sacred institutions. In so doing, he assumed the role of social critic. Twain may have realized that in order to make his brand of brazen independence and pessimistic outlook palatable, he must assume a position of familiarity and humor. Twain's dedication to his personal beliefs was given precedence over established social norms, as evidenced by his position on slavery following the Civil War. According to William Dean Howell, who was a contemporary of Twain, "No man more perfectly sensed and more entirely abhorred slavery". Mark Twain's commitment to his convictions is exemplary, and modern readers will discover that his works remain relevant and insightful. For that we are indebted to him. IV. American Realistic LiteratureRealism was a movement that encompassed the entire country, or at least the Midwest and South, although many of the writers and critics associated with realism (notably W. D. Howells) were based in New England.Following the Civil War, American Literature entered into the Realistic Period. The major form of literature produced in this era was realistic fiction. Unlike romantic fiction, realistic fiction aims to represent life as it really is and make the reader believe that the characters actually might exist and the situations might actually happen. In order to have this effect on the reader, realistic fiction focuses on the ordinary and commonplace. The major writers of the Realistic Period include Mark Twain, Henry James, Bret Harte, and Kate Chopin.As the United States grew rapidly after the Civil War, the increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class affluence provided a fertile literary environment for readers interested in understanding these rapid shifts in culture. In drawing attention to this connection, Amy Kaplan has called realism a "strategy for imagining and managing the threats of social change" (Social Construction of American Realism ix).Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude," realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all affected the rise of realism. According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman, "Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence.Realism sets itself at work to consider characters and events which are apparently the most ordinary and uninteresting, in order to extract from these their full value and true meaning. It would apprehend in all particulars the connection between the familiar and the extraordinary, and the seen and unseen of human nature. Beneath the deceptive cloak of outwardly uneventful days, it detects and endeavors to trace the outlines of the spirits that are hidden there; to measure the changes in their growth, to watch the symptoms of moral decay or regeneration, to fathom their histories of passionate or intellectual problems. In short, realism reveals. Where we thought nothing worth notice, it shows everything to be rife with significanceV. Views on Running for Governor The whole story can be divided into three parts; from