Hi, need to submit a 3000 words essay on the topic Mark Twain's fascination with bad boys and the impact of this fascination on modern society.As Coleman Parsons points out in The Devil and Samuel Cle

Hi, need to submit a 3000 words essay on the topic Mark Twain's fascination with bad boys and the impact of this fascination on modern society.

As Coleman Parsons points out in The Devil and Samuel Clemens, "In her old age, Jane Lampton Clemens told her son, 'You gave me more uneasiness than any child I had'"(Leary 184). Sam was the rebellious and impulsive child, in contrast to his more obedient brother Henry. Their relationship may serve as the model of contrast we see in such characters as Tom and Sid Sawyer, for example. But a boy does not remain a boy for long. unless of course that boy is Peter Pan or Huck Finn, both embodiments of the eternal child. For boys who do grow up, like Sam Clemens, growing up does not necessarily mean settling into conventional modes of living or cultural norms with grace and ease. For as much as he is lauded as the quintessentially American writer, Twain was far too conscious of the inconsistencies of the American character to stand as a model or emblem for our self-congratulations. He is more than humorist, more than even satirist, but also Trickster, in the old mythological sense, his humor knows no end, it cannot be contained between the bookends of moral purpose. Twain is larger than that.

Seeing the imprint of Twain's personality upon the protagonist of his best-loved novel, Harold Bloom put it this way, "I suspect that ultimately Huck stands for what is least sociable in Mark Twain, whose discomfort with American culture was profound" (Bloom 5). This diagnosis seems born out in Twain's many satiric early writings, that appeared in western newspapers, and also in his mature and darker works, that remain largely unknown to the broader American reading public to this very day. For example, in The Mysterious Stranger, Twain takes on the conventional and Christian notions of God with a vengeful fury. As Coleman Parsons recounts in his masterful essay The Devil and Samuel Clemens, Twain settles into a sort of solipsism, a "dream philosphy" that denies untenable and superstitious notions of God, along with any ultimate reference point beyond oneself. Parsons cites the following passage from this little known and controversial work:

Life itself is only a vision, a dream . . . Strange indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction ! Strange because they are so frankly and hysterically insane-like all dreams : a God . . . who created man without invitation, then tries to snuffle responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself . and finally, with altogether divine obstuseness, invites this poor abused slave to worship him ! There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. . . .