“it does seem to me that Deerslayer is not a work of art in any sense it does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art in truth, it seems to me that Deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens.” Referencing a Quote Which Might Never Have Been Said
It doesn’t get much more cruelly dismissive than his assessment of one of the all-time biggest bestsellers in the history of American literature: Twain was a notoriously vicious (somewhat unfairly, it must be admitted) critic of an author long considered America’s greatest (and certainly most commercially successful) novelist. “shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?”įor Twain, in this particular case, “the darkness” is a metaphor as rich in sincerity as it is in irony: it symbolizes the poor state of everyone else in the world unfortunate enough to not be a western democracy just biding their time until the "benevolent" arm of western imperialism finally reaches them. (Mere coincidence? Probably, but who can say for sure?) The “darkness” in this case is a extended metaphor covering the full breadth of the essay and it most gloriously conceived as a rhetorical question: Twain’s “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” was published in the second month of an early year of the 20th century: 1901. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.ĭarkness is one of the most pervasive metaphors of 20th century writing.
These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.
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