Жизнь и творчество Марка Твена

ДЕПАРТАМЕНТ ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ КРАСНОДАРСКОГО КРАЯ

ГОУ СПО  «Усть-Лабинский социально-педагогический колледж»

Краснодарского  края 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

ЭКЗАМЕНАЦИОННЫЙ РЕФЕРАТ 

по английскому  языку 

  ТЕМА: Жизнь и творчество Марка Твена.

    
 
 
 
 

                                                             Выполнила: Карпенко Диана 

                                         Специальность 050709   

                                                                   «Преподавание в начальных классах» 

                                       Студентка 3 А курса  

                                                         Преподаватель:   Гаврилова Т.Н. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

г. Усть-Лабинск

2010

 

  CONTENTS 

1. The introduction……………………………………………….р.3
2. Early life……………………………………………………….р.4
3. His first job…………………………………………………….р.5
4. Pilot on Mississippi…………………………………………….р.6
5. Writer again……………………………………………………р.7
6. The rambler…………………………………………………….р.9
7. Dear, dear Livy………………………………………………….р.9
8. Happy years……………………………………………………р.10
9. The tragic end………………………………………………….р.11
10. The conclusion…………………………………………..р.13
11. The literature…………………………………………….р.15

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1. The introduction

Mark Twain - the great American writer who has brought the huge contribution in the literature of the country. But it not everything that it is possible to tell about Twain. Mark Twain - one of the major Figures of the American life and the American culture as a whole. Incalculable threads connect it with process of the country, its national Features and social contradictions, and this deep communication aloud Passes in all its creativity.

     Leaving people thick, it became the brilliant representative American Humanitarian intelligency. Thus it has not passed, like many the a colleagues, on a ruling class position, and has taken of a critical position on to all main points of life of the country, criticising a dominating policy, the dominating religion, dominating morals.

     Twain's value as is difficult for overestimating the art historian of the USA. Bernard Shaw has told once that to the researcher of the American society XIX centuries it is necessary to address to Twain not less often, than to the historian of French XVIII-th century societies to Voltaire's compositions. In development of this thought of Bernard Show should be added, as the one who wishes to learn the American life of the XX-th century, up to the most live present, too will find at Twain a lot of important and actual - such is an insight and generalising power of talent of it the great American.

     Value and Twain's role as mighty forming force in the American to the literature not only on weakens in the course of time, but affirms again and again with escalating force.

     “All modern American literature left Mark's one book Twain which is called "as Geklberri the Finn". It is the best our book... Anything similar to it was not. Anything equal it is not written till now “.

     These words belong to one of the largest and the most influential masters and innovators in the newest literature of the USA - to Ernest Hemingway. 

2. Early life

 

     Mark Twain (1835-1910).Pseudonym of Samual Langhorn Clemens.

Susy, Mark Twain’s daughter began the biography of her father when she was fourteen years old. She begins in this way:

“We are a very happy family. We consists of papa, Mama, Jean, Clara and me

It’s a Papa I am written  about.

Papa has beautiful gray hair, not any too thick or any too long, but just right, kind  blue eyes and a small moustache. In short he is an extraordinary fine-looking man. He is a very funny one. He does tell perfectly  delightful stories. Clara and I used to sit  on each arm of his  chair and listen while he told us stories.”

And that, in 1885, was the family of Mark Twain, whose real name was Samual Langhorn Clemens.

Sam was born in a very small town called Florida in Missouri. The village contained a hundred people and Sam “increased the population by 1 per cent.” 

Most of the houses were of logs. Beyond and beyond, shining in the sun, the Mississippi roled to the distant sea. 

The beside this river, Samual Clemens grew into his boyhood. He saw negrous chained like animals for transportation to richer slave markets to the South. Sam’s father owned slaves. For a girl of fifteen he paid twelve dollars; for a woman of  twenty-five – he paid twenty-five dollars; for a strong negro woman of forty – he paid forty dollars. All the negroes of his own age were good friends of Sam. The young boy has always remember these sad things. Better things he remembered also. He  remembered below the village woods “a heavenly place” where he played with the boys.

When he was four Sam’s family moved to Hannibal. Their in 1849 his father died. Before the funeral Sam promised to his mother to be a better boy, to go to work, and care for her.

3. His first job

 

Sam soon had to live school and take a part time job as delivery and errand boy for Hannibal’s newspaper; serving at times as grocer’s clerk, blacksmith’s helper and bookseller’s assistant.

Always hungry, poor Sam filched onions and potatoes from the cellar, cooking them over the printing-office stove.

Sam decided he had had enough of such an unhappy life and went to work, as a “skilled printer of fifteen”, for his brother Orion who managed a newspaper in Hannibal.

Here Sam began his career writing humorous scetches, published in a comic weekly.

One night Sam was reading the diary of an Amazon explorer. He read about painted Indians shoting their poisoned arrows at tigers, of coloured parrots and agile monkeys dancing in the high trees. Sam was enchanted. He made up his mind to go to the head-waters of the Amazon and collect coco from coco bushes and make a fortune.

Here is what Sam learned about the coco leaves: “The leaf of this plant is to the Indian of Peru what tobacco is to our laboring classes is to the South.”

From the night on the Amazon fever burnt in Sam. But poor Sam was penniless…

One winter day Sam was walking down the street. A strong wind was blowing. Suddenly a small paper whirling on the pavement caught his eye. He picked it up. It was a fifty dollar bancnote! “What a wonderful piece of luck,” he thoght.

Sam gave an advertisment about his find and waited. As nobody was looking for it, the boy left after some days for Amazon, with fifty dollars in his pocket.

He bought a ticket to new Orleans. The streamer Paul Jones took him to the country of coco leaves.

At New Orleans Sam asked about ships leaving to Para, the mouth of the Amazon, only to learn that no ships was expected to sail for that part.

He had but ten dollars left. The dream of macking s fortune was over! 

4. Pilot on Mississippi

 

One  of the pilot of the Paul Jones made a pilot out of Sam. It  was in April 1857 that he started his four years of life on the Mississippi – his pilot days.

For seven month Sam trained a cub pilot. The training went on and on. All signs of the sky were very important to him; at night and in fog new dangers came: cool bargers, floating logs...

“Piloting on the Mississippi River was not work to me, it was play – delightful play, adventures play – and I loved it.”

Sam listened to the Mississippi  leadman’s call:

“M-a-r-k three! M-a-r-k twain!”

On the twenty-third birthday he got a pilot’s license, and took the name of Mark Twain.

Sam was happy, and life was beautiful. He played the piano, sang songs of the river; he was gay and everybody liked him.

It was as  pilot that Mark Twain learned to know human nature of the world round him.

When in 1861 the Сivil War broke out steamboating ceased and Mark Twain was left without work. 

5. Writer again

 

So he went back at his old  trade as a writer for newspaper, writing a humorist scetches.

Now he was in Nevada with his brother Orion who was the new secretary of Nevada Territory. Sam, as eager as any for a fast fortune decided to go to the newly discovered Esmeralda mines to find his own mine.

He had expected to see silver lying loose upon the ground. The dissapointed was bitter. Weeks of winter went by, and Sam’s provisions were gone.

Sam was twenty-six. A year of looking for silver had brought him no fortune – he found none. He lived like twenty thousand other men. He observed them and wrote about them.

In 1863 Sam invited to Virginia City to work as a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise, a daily paper.

At the time when Sam arrived in Virginia City,  there was no town like it in America. It was fantastically rich. Money burnt in every pocket. Most of the people in the town were miners. Every man carried a gun or a revolver. There were often street fights.

Sam, with miner’s beard, uncut hair, a blue woolen shirt on and a revolver at his belt which he couldn’t manage, learned his new job. He had to fill two collumns a day with local news.

He wrote about the big mines, about the desperados fighting among themselves, about murders which were commited at all hours of the day and night. Some of the desperadors were arrested, but never punished. They had a law of their own. Sam’s news became very popular.

One day the editor-in-chief of the Enterprise went for a week’s holiday and Sam had to take his place. He had no intention of  provoking the owner of a rival paper but as dueling became very fashionable in the Territory of Nevada the editor, Mr. Laird , took advantage of the oppotunity an insisted on a duel.

Sam was known as a hopeless ahot.

At four o’clock in the morning of the appointed dueling day, Steve, Sam’s friend, took him a mile from town and taught him to fire a revolver.

“Take all the risk getting murder but don’t run any risk of murdering him. Aim at his legs. Aim below the knee; kripple him, but leave the rest of him to his mother.”

Poor Sam was shooting at a barn door but he couldn’t hit it.

Now  just at this moment a little bird, no bigger than a sparrow, flew along about thirty yards away. Steve whipped out his revolver and shot its head off. They ran down to pick up the bird and just then, Mr. Laird and his second came and saw the bird with its head shot off. Laird lost colour, and asked about who had done it. Steve spoke up, and said quit calmly that Clemens did it.

So Laird and his second said good morning and went home. Laird sent a note decklning to fight a duel with Sam. Thanks to the little bird Sams life was saved. 
 

6. The rambler

 

Sam was twenty-nine, and had earned his own living since he was twelve. He had been a printer, a pilot, a miner, and a newspaper man.

At just this time, the Pacific Steamboat Company began a regular passenger service between sun Francisco and Honolulu. Sam took the trip, paying for it with letters as a special correspondent of the Sacramento Union.

Now he would travel arround the world, and he would write of the places he saw  and the people he meet.

He rode horseback two hundred miles over the island of Hawaii, throught the coffee, sugar and orange region of Kona.

Sam had found the work which suited him best: he could ramble as much as he liked, and write funny letters to many newspapers to make the readers laugh till their sides ached.

7. Dear, dear Livy

 

The Langdons had been a happy family until the day of the accident. Livy, their daughter, fell on the ice and a partial paralysis followed. For two years after the accident, Livy lay in her  bed. She was unable even to sit up.

Then came a new, famous doctor and said to Livy,

“Now we will sit up my child.” Then he added “Take a step. Take just a step”.

Livy stood on her feet, with doctors help.

It was like a dream for the poor girl!

And from this day on Livy’s health was steadily improwing. Livy’s brother, Carsley Langdon, had gone off on a sea voyage. One of his companions was the well-known newspaper correspondent who called himself Mark Twain, the author of many scetches that were making him famous.

The Langdons were spending the Cristmas holiday in 1867 in New York City. Twain was a on this way to his first meeting with Livy.

Now Livy was twenty-two. She was a small delicate girl with serious dark eyes and black hair. She was  lovely.

Sam was introduced to the mother and the father and to the “sweet and timid and lovely girl.” He was head over heels in love with Livy. After the first visit he got a standing invitation to the Langdon’s home in Elmira.

During the nights he was writing and soon as he was free, immedietly he ran to the Langdon’s

Livy and Sam were married on the 2nd of February, 1870. The next day  they went to Buffalo where Sam bought a share in newspaper. Jervis Langdon had bought and furnished a new and beautiful house for the young couple in a fashionable street in Buffalo. The rambler finally had to settle-down.

Sam worked a lot, editing Buffalo Express, writing for the New York magazines, and collecting material for a new book Roughing It – the story of his Nevada mining and newspaper days. It was published when he was thirty-six. It was a great success.

8. Happy years

 

The twenty years between 1875 and 1894 were the happiest and the wealthiest for Samuel Clemens. He wrote his best book in Hartford, in a wonderful house built  for him and his family. The rooms were large and always gay with company and friends.

Here was born Clara, and here in June, 1874, Sam began one of his dreatest books  the Adventures of Tom Sawer – the book about  his own childhood. In 1880, Mark Twain finished the Prience  and the Pauper. In the preface she writes:

“It may be history, it may be only legend. It may have happened, it may not have happened: but it could have happened.”

The book is dedicated to: “Those good-mannered and agreeable children Susy and Clara Clemens.”

Susy writes in his fathers biography: “One of the papa’s latest books is the Prience  and the Pauper and it is the best book he has ever written. The book is full of lovely, charming ideas. Oh, it is so funny and nice! Papa seldom writes a passage without some humor in it.”

The books mark Twain wrotes for children, he wrote with great happiness.

Mark Twain was writing and lecturing. At home he was a loving father, playing jokes on his children, telling them stories. To his family and old friends he was always “Sam”.  His friends never used his pen name of  “Mark Twain”.

 

9. The tragic end

 

When Sam was in England Susy died in Hartford. The last thirteen days Susy was very ill. She refused to see a doctor. Then came a sudden change for the worse. When the doctor came it was too late. The poor girl was unconscious during three days. The brain fever was raging.

The last word Susan spoke was “Mamma” – that was Susy’s good bye. She was twenty four years old. For the parentsit was terrible shock. The loved her dearly. A few days after Susy was buried in Elmira, Livy sailed with Clara and Jean, the youngest daughter, for England and Italy. The never lived in the Hartford house again.