Twain's Resurrection Of The San Francisco Earthquake

Twain and London both describe their experiences of earthquakes in San Francisco with two distinct purposes. While Twain writes to criticize the people's lack of common sense when facing a life endangering situation, London describes the scene of the earthquake in order to convey the magnitude of the destruction that occurred in San Francisco. Each author uniquely practiced the use of imagery, thoughtful sentence structures, and varying word choices, further developing their intended tone, and, thus, illustrating their purpose.
Imagery can help convey the purpose of a text by setting a tone that emphasizes the purpose the author has in mind. In Twain’s rendition of the San Francisco earthquake, there are various examples of the use of imagery. As Twain describes the aftermath of this earthquake, he uses the imagery to portray the people of San Francisco in a …show more content…
Twain uses long sentences in a list like structure, such as when he is describing the “‘curiosities’ of the earthquake” in the third paragraph. These long sentences jumped from subject to subject, which embodied the same disarray that occurred on the streets of San Francisco that afternoon, as hundreds of people lost all organization. As well as Twain, London thoughtfully structured his sentences in ways that could help the purpose of his essay. Because London was trying to illustrate the aftermath as disastrous and distructful, he used compound sentences such as the very last sentence, which described the difficulty to fight the fire, to parallel the meaning of the sentence. The last sentence was very complex and required a thoughtful breakdown to understand it. This mirrored the confusion, frustration, and hard work the firefighters had to deal with when trying to fight the fire. The complexity of his sentence structured help portray the extent of destruction and the difficulty of overcoming the