The purpose of this Powerpoint is to offer a solution to how Mark Twain

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The Purpose of this Powerpoint
The purpose of this Powerpoint is to offer a
solution to how Mark Twains works are presently
being used in our school systems. Since Alan
Gribbens edited version of Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn became a topic of interest and
debate many of us have been asked to
explain/defend why the N word exists in
Huckleberry Finn. Unfortunately, no matter how
well we articulate our answers, to some our
reasoning is wrong... They say But what if it
opens up the book to more young people?
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The Purpose of this Powerpoint
But the truth is, even if by changing a couple
words you opened up the book to millions of new
readers the whole point of the book involves the
N word (as a hate word), the racism fueling
this hatred and how it eventually dawns on Huck
that this type of behavior and hatred is wrong.
So by removing the N word you lose the impact
of the hatred Twain is not only pointing out but
calling out in 1885. So whats my solution?
Read on
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My solution is that we dont force children to
read Mark Twain. What we do is teach them who
Mark Twain was and show them the unique life
experiences he had that made him who he was and
fueled the novels that he wrote. Mark Twains
life is not a hard sell, and once youre hooked,
youre hooked. Imagine if children wanted to
read Mark Twain and as they read Mark Twain they
understood and appreciated what he was saying in
those texts. Thats my solution to this
problem. Enjoy this preview and please send me
your thoughts and ideas so I can improve on
it. Much of this text comes from Twain
scholars and those scholars and sources will be
credited in the final version of this Powerpoint.

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Understanding Mark Twain The Life of Samuel L.
Clemens
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Sure You could call me Rags to Riches
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Halleys Comet
Died 04/21/1910
Born 11/30/1835
Redding, Connecticut
Florida, Missouri
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• I came in with Halleys Comet in 1835. It is
  coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go
  out with it. It will be the greatest
  disappointment of my life if I dont go out with
  Halleys Comet.
• -Mark Twain, a Biography In 1910, Halleys
  Comet reached perihelion on April 20th, Twain
  died on the 21st.

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Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born in this cabin
in the small frontier settlement of Florida,
Missouri.
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Interior of Florida, Missouri home
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• Samuel L. Clemens was born two months premature,
  on November 30th 1835.
• He was the sixth child of John and Jane Clemens.
• Hearing develops more quickly in premature babies
  and he did exhibit an unusual ability to retain
  sounds, which may explain his unique gift of
  transforming spoken language into literature.

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• Other Talented Premature Babies
• Pablo Picasso
• Isaac Newton
• Albert Einstein
• Charles Darwin
• Renoir
• John Keats
• Franklin Roosevelt
• Stevie Wonder

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• Understanding Huckleberry Finn
• In many ways Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is
  autobiographical.
• Twain was holding a mirror up at post-Civil War
  America and screaming
• What we did was wrong!

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• Understanding Huckleberry Finn
• Although the Missouri he grew up in never joined
  the Confederacy, it was a world in which slavery
  was taken for granted by most whites, defended by
  all public institutions, including the churches
  Even Sam's own parents owned slaves.

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• Understanding Huckleberry Finn
• One of the slaves that influenced Sams life was
  a middle aged slave known to him as Uncle Danl
  Hed later recall the privileged nights he, his
  cousins slave children clustered at Danls
  feet to hear him tell his thunderous stories.
• He has served me well, these many, many
  yearsspiritually I have had his welcome company
  have staged him in books as his own name and as
  JimIt was on the farm that I got my strong
  liking for his race and my appreciation of its
  fine qualities.

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• Understanding Huckleberry Finn
• In his Notebook 35 he writes
• In those slave-holding days the whole community
  was agreed as to one thing- the awful sacredness
  of slave property.
• It shows that that strange thing, the
  conscience - the unerring monitor - can be
  trained to approve any wild thing you want it to
  approve if you begin its education early stick
  to it.

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• Understanding Huckleberry Finn
• In Following the Equator, he says
• When I was ten years old I saw a man fling a
  lump of iron-ore at a slave-man in anger, for
  merely doing something awkwardly- as if that were
  a crime. It bounded from the mans skull, and the
  man fell and never spoke again. He was dead in an
  hour Nobody in the village approved of that
  murder, but of course no one said much about it.
  (Chapter 38)

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• Understanding Huckleberry Finn
• This history left Sam a legacy of guilt, guilt
  that he tried to lessen through acts of charity.
  He donated money and made special appearances at
  fundraising events for numerous African American
  Churches, Institutes, and Associations. He also
  supported individuals, most notably Warner T.
  McGuinn, a struggling African American law
  student at Yale Law School who Sam anonymously
  paid tuition for.
• He noted We have ground the manhood out of
  them, the shame is ours, not theirs, we
  should pay for it.

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• Understanding Huckleberry Finn
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took Twain 8 years
  to write and between manuscript 1 and 2, he made
  more than 1,700 revisions. 88 percent of these
  revisions being word changes, spelling,
  punctuation and adding emphasis. He used the
  words he used for a reason.
• Twain scholar Dr. Cindy Lovell said it best
• Twain pokes us with a sharp stick, makes us
  squirm, makes us highly uncomfortable. And its
  effective.

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Twain with John T. Lewis Of this photo Twain
said The colored man is John T. Lewis, a
friend of mine. These many years- 34 in fact. I
have not known an honester man nor a more
respect-worthy-one. 27 years ago, by the
prompt and intelligent exercise of his courage,
presence of mind and extraordinary strength, he
saved the lives of 3 relatives of
mine Naturally I hold him in high and grateful
regard.
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In summary I am not a Racist.
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Now back to my life story.
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Sams family moved to nearby Hannibal, Missouri
in 1839, where hed enjoy his boyhood in the
presence of the broad Mississippi River.
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Many of Twains characters were a product of his
childhood experiences in Hannibal.
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When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or
biography I generally take a warm personal
interest in him, for the reason that I have known
him before met him on the river. -Mark Twain,
Life on the Mississippi
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• Location, Location, Location
• Hannibal was the center of America at a time when
  America was making the transition from East to
  West. Sam had a very unique, front row seat to
  civilization Immigrants, Merchants, Speculators,
  Gamblers, Thieves, Politicians, Preachers,
  Runaways Indians he saw it all on the river
  front and he soaked it all in.
• Because of this, Sam would experience a very
  diverse group of individuals or as Ron Powers
  noted in Mark Twain, a Life a continuing
  vaudeville of floating humanity.

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The Great Frontier
United States in 1835
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• Location, Location, Location
• The education that Sam would receive in Hannibal
  from the age of four to the age of seventeen
  would come through loud and clear in his novels
  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures
  of Tom Sawyer.
• Of that time, hed note When I was a boy
  everybody was poor but didnt know it and
  everybody was comfortable and did know it.

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Visiting his Boyhood Home
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Twains Boyhood Home in the present day. Note the
window sizes.
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• Sam did not care much for traditional
  schooling, but he was educated, and enjoyed the
  teachings of William McGuffeys Eclectic
  Reader. The Reader was a progressive learning
  tool that conformed to childrens cognitive
  strengths and drew children into an active
  learning process based on conversational
  teaching and wholesome values patriotism,
  charity, honesty, hard work, and a reverence for
  the Christian God.
• Thus as Sam learned language and writing, he also
  learned scripture. No reading of Mark Twains
  literature can miss the inexhaustible evidence of
  the Bible as a source. Ron Powers

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• In the summer months, Sam was sent to his Uncles
  farm in Florida, Missouri. There he continued to
  interact with the Slaves and their children
• All the Negroes were friends of ours, and with
  those of our own age we were in effect comrades.
  I say, in effect, using the phrase as a
  modification. We were comrades, and yet not
  comrades color and condition interposed a subtle
  line which both parties were conscious of, and
  which rendered complete fusion impossible.
• -Mark Twains Autobiography

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In addition to his unique life experiences, Sam
would also be exposed to the power of public
speaking at a young age. In that timeframe,
Hannibal hosted many great orators Sam would
absorb later commander their techniques.
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• The Role Death Played in Twains Life
• Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.-
  Following the Equator
• Enduring the untimely deaths of loved ones was a
  theme throughout Twains life. It began with the
  death of his brother when he was 4, followed by
  his father when he was 11 and it would continue
  straight-on-up to the final year of his life when
  he lost his youngest daughter Jean. Jean was only
  28 years old. On that day he wrote Possibly I
  know now what the soldier feels when a bullet
  crashes through his heart.

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After the death of his Father, Sam went to work
as a Printers Devil. A printers devil was an
apprentice or young assistant to a printer.
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• The Typesetter Twain
• The tedious work that typesetting required
  revealed the importance of the right word(s).
  Each letter had to be selected and slid into
  place to form the sentences of each article. It
  is also very likely that the lessons learned in
  this vocation played a role in both his
  handwriting style and his manner of speech.
• His speaking style, famous for its long talk
  and its effective pauses, was virtually an aural
  analog of typographys orderly flow.
• - Ron Power, Mark Twain, a life.

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Sam at 15
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When he was 16 (1851), Sam began contributing
humorous pieces, and occasionally stood in as
Editor when his brother Orion was away. In
1852, Sam gained interest East of the Mississippi
via articles in a Boston magazine and The
Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post.
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• The Dandy Frightening the Squatter
• Written in 1852, Sams humorous piece The Dandy
  Frightening the Squatter was submitted and
  published in a Boston magazine.
• The squatter calmly surveyed him a moment, and
  then, drawing back a step, he planted his huge
  fist directly between the eyes of his astonished
  antagonist, who, in a moment, was floundering in
  the turbid waters of the Mississippi.

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Invigorated by the possibilities that existed for
him outside of Missouri. Sam left Hannibal in
June of 1853, three weeks after his seventeenth
birthday, working initially in St. Louis as a
typesetter before heading to the World's Fair in
New York City.
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Young Sam Travels to New York City
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The next three and half years found him moving
between New York, Philadephia, Washington D.C.,
Muscatine (Iowa), St. Louis, Keokuk (Iowa), and
Cincinnati.
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Sam at 18
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Sams teenage travels 2,000 miles
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Keep in mind these travels are taking place in a
time period where Airplanes and Credit Cards do
not exist. To travel to these places he needed to
employ multiple transportation options
steamships, stagecoaches, trains, and omnibuses
and he needed to find a job (without references
or help) when he got there.
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In February of 1857, he took passage from
Cincinnati to New Orleans, with the intention of
embarking on the Amazon River to seek his fortune
in the then thriving coca trade. He was just
twenty-one years old.  His plans changed quickly
when he met Riverboat pilot Horace Bixby. Sam's
boyhood dream to become a steamboat pilot was
revived.
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In April of 1861, when the Civil War caused the
suspension of civilian river traffic on the
Mississippi, Sam's career as a steamboat pilot
came to an abrupt end. In the summer of 1861 he
found himself on a stagecoach heading west with
his older brother Orion, who had been appointed
Secretary of the Nevada Territory.
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Sams travels by his mid-twenties
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Sam at 23
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More to Come Soon. The next revision will explore
his talents as a writer and public speaker. Your
thoughts and ideas are appreciated. -Brent M.
Colley bcolley_at_colleyweb.com http//twainproject.b
logspot.com 860-294-6071 (cell number)