Selected Short Stories of Mark Twain (Illustrated and Linked Reading Edition)

Author: Mark Twain [USA]
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: The stories selected in this book show that Mark Twain's novels have three distinctive features: , he developed an extremely exaggerated artistic imagination based on the tradition of Western humor in the United States. The second feature is: the works often use the first-person "I" as the protagonist. This "I" is mostly naive, honest, and has a simple mind, always having one-sided ideas, and the results are often contrary to expectations. For example, in "The Friend of Golsmit Again Appears," the protagonist is Aisongxi, and in "The Facts About My Recent Resignation," the young secretary. The protagonist always has some simple ideas but keeps bumping into obstacles in the process, indicating that the protagonist's ideas are impractical, and the more he doesn't understand this, the more the contrast between his ideals and reality becomes evident. The third feature is the presence of satire in the humor. In his autobiography, he summarizes his experience: "Humor for humor's sake cannot last, humor is just a scent and a bit of decoration. I always advise others, which is why I have been able to persist for thirty years." The so-called "advising others" means that his novels contain a serious creative goal of suppressing evil and promoting good.