Mark Twain as a Fictional Persona in 'A Tramp Abroad'

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.  INTRODUCTION  3

2.  NARRATOR IN A TRAMP ABROAD  3

2.1.  DESCRIPTION OF THE NARRATOR  4

2.2.  ACQUAINTANCES OF THE NARRATOR  5

3.  PUBLICITY  6

3.1.  PUBLIC IMAGE  6

3.2.  MARKETING  8

4.  A TRAMP ABROAD  9

4.1.  FICTIONALIZATION  9

4.2.  THEMES  10

4.3.  INFLUENCE ON THE READER  11

5.  CONCLUSION  12

6.  BIBLIOGRAPHY  14

1. Introduction

Mark Twain has been and still is one of the most famous authors of 19 th century America. His fame and reputation went far over the borders of the United States. Nevertheless, there has always been one fact that has been striking about Mark Twain: the riddle of his identity.

“The fictional Mark Twain is no singular thing but rather a varied cast of characters” 1 . In the following work we are going to find out more about the fictional Mark Twain of A Tramp Abroad.

Samuel Clemens has always been money-orientated and was therefore looking for possibilities on how to influence his readers, how to influence the public in general and how to commercialize his book to make the most money out of it. The construction of his fictional persona will be analysed in the following work and we are also going to find out whether the creation of the fictional persona for his book who shows parallels and contrasts to Samuel Clemens helped him to influence his readership. We will examine how far the fictional character has an impact on the public and the commercilization of the book, for all of those three facts are linked together.

2. Narrator in A Tramp Abroad

A Tramp Abroad is told from the camera-eye perspective of a first person

narrator. The way the narrator describes himself and the things he sees and undertakes let the reader guess that the narrative deals with an alter-ego of the author Samuel Langhorne Clemens (xxix). 2 Throughout the book one can find many parallels and contrasts between the narrator – otherwise called the fictional persona - and the author of the book.

1 Forrest Robinson, “Mark Twain, 1835-1910: A Brief Biography.” A Historical Guide to Mark

Twain. Ed. Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Oxford: OUP, 2002) 15.

2 Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad (New York: Penguin, 1997). All parenthetical references follow this

edition.

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2.1. Description of the narrator

The narrator Mark Twain describes himself as an adventurous, appreciated and almost faultless “innocent” hero on his way to discover the Old World. Right at the beginning of the first chapter he is thinking “that it had been many years since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adventurous enough to undertake a journey through Europe on foot” (3) and it instantly comes to his mind that he is “a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle” (3). Mark Twain has obviously a very high opinion of himself, another example of this is the fact that he wants to go to Heidelberg by raft while everyone else is frightened, he takes the responsibility all upon himself and takes off on this adventure (79).

Twain is a man who is always on the search for appreciation, admiration and wants to be everybody’s hero. Whether he is “the only man who had been hurt in a French duel in forty years” (46) and therefore of great interest or whether it is just the simple fact that his garb is admired by other tourists (62). However, he does not miss one opportunity telling the reader how much he is admired and therefore the number of accounts of him receiving admiration and being the focus of interest is endless. With this not enough, he outdoes himself with the imaginative ascent of the Riffelberg which is of course “the most imposing expedition” (270) that “had ever been seen in the Alps” (271). How much Twain exaggerates to become the center of attention can be judged by the fact that he is actually wearing his evening dress on ascending the Riffelberg instead of his climbing gear.

Another one of his character traits is that he seems to be very observant. In his book Following the Equator he notices something about a bird whose description also fits the narrator in A Tramp Abroad : “Nothing escapes him; he notices everything that happens”. 3 He is the one saving the crew of a wrecked raft, the one seeing a boy rolling down a hill etc.. And again he is the centre of attention. He is the one who finds out that Baedeker has made a few incorrect specifications in his guide- book. He is the one who cheers people up when they find themselves in a desperate situation.

3 Everett Emerson, The Authentic Mark Twain (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1984) 208.

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Notwithstanding, he is not really only this fearless and energetic traveler but more or less a traveler who finds himself often in the place of an uninformed American tourist discovering the mysteries of Europe. 4 There is also a good unintentional self-characterization of the narrator in the preface of the Blue-Jay Yarn story. The fictional character and the jay seem to have many things in common. 5 Twain claims that jays, like himself “enjoy ‘showing off’” (13) and have “got more moods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures” (13). Twain always states that he has to be in the right mood to go on writing or to keep on walking. Jays are “the best talkers” (13) and you “never see a blue-jay stuck for a word” (13). He “has got a sense of humor” (14) “will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray” (13). Twaim himself has all of these character traits in his book. He lies about how many miles he has made and he “steals” stories and legends from other writers.

2.2. Acquaintances of the narrator

Mark Twain makes the acquaintance of a lot of different types of people: he reaches from fraternity students to other innocent American travelers. Almost all of them have one thing in common with our narrator: he always seems to be superior or at least never wants to appear less of a man in comparison to them.

When he starts describing and judging the Heidelberg students he encounters, he is at first really excited to know students that actually take part in a duel and respects them for being so brave. Then, in the same breath he is writing “that duels between boys, for fun, and duels between men in earnest, are very different affairs” (37). One may guess that he is the one that takes part in such a serious men’s duel and of course it is the truth. He always tells something great about his acquaintances and then denigrates them.

Another account of him never wanting to appear inferior occurs when Twain and his travel companion Harris meet some English hikers who tell them they had covered thirty miles that day and asked them how many miles they have made. Twain cannot get himself to tell them the truth but lets them know they have just traveled as much as the Englishmen (109).

4 Anon. “Major Works”. The Mark Twain House & Museum. 2004. 23 July 2005.

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5 Emerson 106.

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