Figurative Language In Mark Twain's Life On The Mississippi

Decent Essays
Not everybody has experienced going down a river. However, those who have went down a river can attest to its beauty. One person in particular, Mark Twain, can attest to the beauty of a river. He is an author, and in a scene of one of his books, Life on the Mississippi, he describes what it is like to sail through a river. The author combines figurative language, descriptive language, and imagery to describe his experiences to the reader. As the text progresses, his viewpoint of the river evolves as a result or his experiences.
Mark Twain is very effective in describing his view of the river. Throughout the text, the author uses descriptive language, figurative language, and imagery to describe the river effectively. One way that the author

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Quickwrite: I would like if this law passed because it is feeding the poor. Some kids don't have food to eat each day. They fired a teacher for giving a kid food.…

    • 234 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Big Muddy It is the longest river in all of North America and the fourth longest in the World. It runs through a total of 31 different states and 2 Canadian provinces. The river has served as a main route of transportation and trade throughout the history of the U.S. as well as a border and a communication route. I’ve been to the Mississippi in Minnesota and Missouri and it is a big, muddy, slow moving river with about as much history as a river can have. Now in the book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is one of the greatest pieces of text in all of American literature, ever!…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Essays “Salvation” by Langston Hughes and “The Lottery” by Chris Abani maintain correlations regarding main ideas. In “Salvation,” Hughes retains the belief that a community enacts pressure onto its youths to comply with its customs in order to maintain orthodoxy in its society. Hughes shares his personal experience at a revival where twelve year old Hughes was pressured by his congregation to be “brought to Jesus.” Similar to Hughes, in “The Lottery,” Abani asserts that society is forcibly trying to control the mindset of its young; when Abani was a child, he was forced to learn and watch the crude consequences of breaking the law in his community. Abani states that as the accused criminal was being prosecuted, someone called out, therefore,…

    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Both stories are regionalist fiction because they both use dialect in the character’s dialogue. What makes the stories different is how they express their writing style. In Mark Twain's story he uses humor in different ways. One example of it is yarn and the other is hyperbole. Hamlin Garland's story uses local colors.…

    • 152 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He describes it with much more care than that which he gives to passages about civilization. He shows the beauty of nature by using select details with connotations of peacefulness and serenity. " Twain was obviously influenced by real life nature to write the novel and it was wise of him to include so much nature or else the story would've turned out to be something else and less extreme. People may argue that the river was almost like a character of its own because it was so helpful to Huck and Jim throughout the whole story as preached in this, “In the novel, Huck's main goal is to get away from a terrible, abusive drunk of a father. Without the access of the Mississippi, Huck might not have ever escaped his father, and his father could have easily killed Huck.…

    • 684 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Therefore, in Huckleberry Finn and “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” contain the use of figurative language, realistic syntax, and ridged diction significantly help Mark Twain be the successful writer that he was. First, is the use of figurative language in his writing. Mark Twain uses similes to bring in other ideas by connecting previous ideas with the new one. Like in chapter 12 of Huckleberry Finn, “A tow-head is a sand-bar that has cottonwood on it as thick as harrow-teeth.” This simile is ending the idea of a tow-head and starting the idea of cottonwoods by using a simile changes the subject…

    • 665 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain utilizes characterization, details, and sentence syntax to convey a reflective tone toward the topic of manhood, growing up mentally. Mark Twain uses characterization is show the reflective mentality of growing up. For example in the start of the book Huck, Tom, and the boys were establishing their band and each had to offer their families to kill, but Huck didn’t have one. It says: “I was almost ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson- they could kill her.”…

    • 763 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When writing about the Mississippi river, Twain uses a lot of imagery to paint a better picture of the past. He writes, “The great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun.” This statement is packed with a lot of emotion, clearly letting the reader know that the Mississippi River was much more than a river—it symbolized hope for the people who sought to work on the steam boat. Having this amount of subjective detail also helps place a better picture of history because it lets the reader know how people in the past felt about certain things, and not just the details. Subjective writing helps the reader understand the motions, rather than just the…

    • 666 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Zitkala-Sa Thesis

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Mark Twain and Zitkala-Sa offer memoirs about their own lives which also double as social critiques of the United States. Both of their memoirs emphasize their reflections and criticism of the nation. From their two, different perspectives of the United States motivated them to write their life story. Twain’s autobiography, Old Times on the Mississippi, describes his life as a boy and his comrades residing in the village on the west bank of the Mississippi River in the 1850s.…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In this passage from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Twain uses dramatic irony to show that what the King and Duke are doing is very wrong because they are just trying to get money and property from Peter Wilks, a man who just died, and they don’t belong with this family that just experienced a death. By the use of dramatic irony in this passage it is shown that the audience knows more than the characters in the book. So, this man named Peter Wilks just passed away, and his two brothers have been sent for to see him one last time. The brothers William, who is deaf and mute, and Harvey, who is a preacher in England can not be found, but Peter’s nieces are there who have never seen his brothers, so the King and Duke think it is a good idea to act like Peters brother so they can get his money and property.…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mrs. Dubose is a woman solely composed of hatred and utter disgust for the world and those around her. Jem and Scout are in the crossfire of a society's unified prejudice and the deteriorating Mrs. Dubose’s opinions on such. Using Scout’s point of view, a child’s perspective sees the horribleness of Mrs. Dubose in a way that illustrates what her personality is largely based on. Through the use of figurative language, and sentence characterization author Harper Lee develops the idea of human deterioration and it’s effect on one’s personality and existence. Mrs. Dubose’s physical depletion has left her in a world of her own.…

    • 953 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Whilst in the small town in Arkansas two minor but significant characters are placed in the novel. Their presence has no significance to the plot of the novel yet they are still included. Through these events, Twain uses imagery and invective to reflect his feelings toward the injustice in the South. The small quiet town is described in vivid detail with “streets and lanes [of] just mud” (143) and the people were drinking a “considerable amount of whiskey… [and had] three fights” (144).…

    • 498 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An additional example would be the sexual culture of this time period and region. Unlike Twain, who used racial titles to describe different areas and the culture of that region’s inhabitants. Harte, not to say was more qualified, due to the fact that he lived in this region his entire life, he could describe the sexual culture that was occurring during this time. Harte displayed this more risky culture throughout his book, Miggles (Reidhead, 352).The author of Norton Anthology American Literature book described this as a challenge of it time, for American sexual and gender behaviors (Reidhead, 352). During this time, California was growing in industry and its towns were flourishing in popular culture.…

    • 734 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Contemporary writer, John M. Barry conveys through his writing that he has an immense fascination with the complex mechanics of the Mississippi River. Through his clever use of figurative language and eloquent diction, as well as his use of syntax, he communicates this. Throughout the passage Barry’s fascination is conveyed through his use of figurative language to describe and bring life to the river. His sophisticated diction creates a basis of reliability, quoting scientists and uses scientific jargon. This helps to describe the mechanics of this dynamic body of water.…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    he views the river with confusion and begins to see that what he perceived originally was not really true. His first impression of the river turned out to be an illusion of blinded beauty. As the truth of the river unfolds, Mark Twain’s love for the Mississippi River diminishes. Towards the end of the excerpt, he begins to ask rhetorical questions and uses the analogy of the doctor to convey his central idea. His central idea of ignorance is a bliss is greatly supported in towards the end and also reiterated.…

    • 821 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays