Life on the Mississippi is set in a small town in the nineteenth century. How is the setting established? And how is the setting important to the characters and the theme of the work?

Life on the Mississippi was the book that launched the now well known Samuel Clemens’ career as a “serious” author.  Clemens, more well known by the title Mark Twain, paints Mississippi steamboat living and the workings of the river itself as a tribute to that great river.  Twain uses this novel as a combination of an autobiography of his early days as a steamboats man, and a collection of anecdotes about the people who made their living both along the great river and on it.  It was from this work that the novel Huckleberry Finn would emerge, using the raw material to set the backdrop for this work which is considered Twain’s greatest novel.  Mark Twain spent most of his early life in Hannibal, Missouri, the Mississippi river town that first gave him a taste of what it was like to live the life of a steamboat man.  It was there that he was bitten by the bug of becoming a steamboat pilot, though that lay dormant for a time before he finally acted on it.  Before Twain could pursue his passion on the steam boat, his father died, and he became apprenticed to a printer and began to write for his brother’s newspaper.  It was in 1857, ten years after his father’s death, and after having begun work in many eastern cities as a printer, that Twain decided to go seek his fortune in South America.  Before he could make it there, however, he had to go through the major port city of New Orleans.  It was here in New Orleans that Twain decided to give up his possible fortune in South America and pursue his first and foremost passion, becoming a steamboat captain.  This part of Mark Twain’s life had a huge impact on his greatest writing, and it was in this time that he obtained the material he needed to write Life on the Mississippi.  Reading through the book, it is obvious how much respect Twain has for the river itself.  This is evident through the ways in which he describes its incredible size, and at the same time its minute complexities.  His detailed descriptions and picturesque use of language within Life on the Mississippi serve to prove to Twain’s audience that he is indeed a serious and well spoken author.  It is obvious that Twain affinity for the river itself is the source and backbone of this book, while Twain also manages to bring out the eccentricities of not only the river, but also of the people who populate it.  These stories of workers, farmers, and steamboat captains serve to bring the novel alive for the audience.  As I have stated earlier, this also allows for a great deal of background for his novel Huckleberry Finn.  It is in this novel, considered his greatest of all time, that Twain gains the admiration and awe of people around the globe, and without the raw material of Life on the Mississippi, he would not have what he needed to make this novel what it was.  Thus, he began his career as a novelist with this novel, and he reached his peak as well through this novel, gaining him more recognition as an author than the vast majority of all American authors, and than authors throughout the world.

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