Analysis
„The Story Of The Bad
Little Boy“ under analysis written by Mark
Twain. The author is a famous American writer
and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(1876) and its sequel,
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel." Twain was fascinated with science and
scientific inquiry. He developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola
Tesla, and the two spent much time together in Tesla's laboratory.
Twain began
his career writing light, humorous verse, but evolved into a chronicler of the
vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry
Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. Twain
was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a
distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Many of
Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools, not least for its
frequent use of the word "nigger," which was in common usage in the pre-Civil War
period in which the novel was set.
A complete bibliography of his works is nearly impossible to compile
because of the vast number of pieces written by Twain (often in obscure
newspapers) and his use of several different pen names. Additionally, a large
portion of his speeches and lectures have been lost or were not written down;
thus, the collection of Twain's works is an ongoing process. Researchers
rediscovered published material by Twain as recently as 1995.
"The Story of the Bad Little Boy" is written about how a
typical bad little boy named Jim acts throughout life. A bad boy’s mother would nurture and give the world to try and
help her boy become a good boy. In this story, his mother spanked him before
bed and went to bed without a kiss goodnight. Jim also climbed a tree to steal
apples for himself. Typically, the boy would fall out of the tree and break an
arm or get caught by the farmer, but not with Jim. Jim’s life was much
different.
He freely stole the apples with no one noticing and carried on with his
life. When he stole a pocket knife from his teacher, he put it in a pious boy’s
hat. Typically, someone would have seen Jim’s actions and ratted him out to the
teacher, but Jim was not even questioned about the knife. Jim dangerously went boating during a
storm and did not get struck by lightning or drown. He abused his sister and
left his house for years, becoming an alcoholic. Worst of all, Jim came back to
town several years later and raised a big family. They were all murdered by Jim, and Jim came out with a reward.
He became very rich and was looked up to by many people. This was a boy who
became a man without any consequences in life. Jim took everything he had for granted. He took cumulative risks
of bad actions to act upon, but never got hurt or felt out of control. And,
since Jim never received punishments, he also never felt the need to correct
his actions. Jim was a scary
example and exception of how some bad boys can never be changed or justified.
Mark Twain points out just how absurd the idea that bad things will
automatically happen to someone who is doing the wrong thing in the story of
the Bad little boy. Most of
the things the protagonist does are the same things that we would teach kids
now, not to lie, or cheat or steal, but on top of that you have one that is a
bit odd. There is a lot
of humor here but it also makes a good point not only about life but about
writing which is that bad things don’t always happen to bad people and it is
not why we should expect people to act in a moral manner.
From the point of view
of presentation the text is the third person narrative.
Jim is splendidly characterized
through his speech which reflects many peculiarities of the oral type of
communication. He uses colloquial words: bully, snort, whaled.
Using such lexical units, the author
tries to convey the authentic American speech.
By the way, Mark Twain uses
rhetorical questions to encourage a reader to consider a message or viewpoint. "Is
it right to disobey my mother? Isn't it sinful to do this? Where do bad little
boys go who gobble up their good kind mother's jam ?"
“Once he stole the teacher's
penknife, and, when he was afraid it would be found out and he would get
whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson's cap poor Widow Wilson's son, the
moral boy, the good little boy of the village, who always obeyed his mother,
and never told an untruth, and was fond of his lessons, and infatuated with
Sunday-school. “ This
sentence proves, that the tone in writing is satirical, ironic. The writer
employs stylistic properties of syntactic constructions based on the redundancy
of the sentence structure. For example, polysyndeton to make the utterance more
rhythmical. The repetition of the conjunction and.
And when the
knife dropped from the cap, and poor George hung his head and blushed, as if in
conscious guilt, and the grieved teacher charged the theft upon him, and was
just in the very act of bringing the switch down upon his trembling shoulders,
a white-haired, improbable justice of the peace did not suddenly appear in
their midst, and strike an attitude and say, "Spare this noble boy--there
stands the cowering culprit! I was passing the school door at recess, and,
unseen myself, I saw the theft committed!" We also observe epithets: strong love, happy heart. They
help us to comprehend characters more
prominent. A parody is implied in this story to make a comic effect. The
Story of the Bad Little Boy is a parody of the Sunday School books because it
compares to how Jim is just like a bad James but with luck and never got in
trouble. Twain uses the complete
opposite events to make the story funny. When you hear that Jim went fishing on
the Sabbath and was totally fine, and then in the next sentence the bad boys of
the Sunday school books are being struck by lightning for doing the same thing
as Jim, it ads humor. The
author uses comparisons: as
drunk as a piper giving the readers an opportunity to make some conclusions
related to the main character. The details that make it funny are that
everything that happens to bad boys doesnt happen to Jim, he gets away with
everything.
So, the main aim of
Mark Twain is to turn up some logical rules of the society and show
imperfections and weak points of the humanity describing personal attitude of
the protagonist to the outer world.
