The Damned Human Race - Book Report/Review Example

Mark Twain’s “The Damned Human Race” as a Great American Essay Creative legacy of Mark Twain appears to be a contrastive material with the transition from enthusiastic approach at the opening phase of his oeuvre to the decadent mood in the end of his writer’s career. It is not surprising that such a character of Twain’s works is nothing less than a reflection of his views and opinions on one or another stage of the life. Just so in his essays written in late years of the 19th century, the writer occupies a critical position on all key issues of the peculiarities of his country, criticizing dominating policy, religion, and morality. It is a kind of printed appearances on topical contemporary questions. In fact, it is the time in Twain’s life and work, which is marked by satirical rage, bitterness, and despair, sharply contrasting with the prevailing view of the writer as a laughing humorist, which has been living in the readers’ minds for a long time, and making late Twain one of the truly tragic figures of American culture. In particular, in his essay “The Damned Human Race” he questions the status of man as a supreme being in the hierarchy of living creatures of planet Earth. In typical to him unmasking manner of that period of creativity, Mark Twain brings into being a great American essay extremely conforming to the standards of writing an essay according to Lapham’s notion. The first obvious Lapham’s norm, which is brightly represented in Twain’s “The Damned Human Race”, is writing an assay as a depiction of thoughts through their audition on the paper or any other way. It is some sort of improvisation, or rather a flurry of speculations on a concrete acute topic. As we can see from the analyzed essay, Twain represents his own vision, his own understanding of the origin of a mankind through making contrasts of parallel lines of behavior patterns of human beings and animals. His striking and challenging idea becomes that particular fact that comes from his own supervisions and serves as an unpredictable concept, which makes people’s minds to protest or question their precede knowledge of the issue. And this is a specific feature of an improvisational manner of reflections. The central point for Twain’s argument against the highest nature of men is their cruelty, meanness, and consumer nature in comparison with higher principles of animals’ existence, dictated by the laws of nature only. In a point of Twain’s fact, humans enslave each other on the basis of dependence and money ranking; kill dissidents and representatives of other religious views in massive rates, waste animal’s variety and multitude just for pleasure of hunting, show a false face for gaining their treacherous intrigues and sordid aims, take revenge and excruciate others being based on personal, often egoistic interests, and so forth, while animals, lower creatures, as they spread out in people’s eyes, have small percentage of described above negative attributes of coexistence, accounting for their unconscious identity. Like this, Twain manages to draw readers’ attention in poetic and musical aspect, for his message appears to be illustrative to the extent that his words evolve into heard ones as well as imagined due to the vivid examples from everyday life. Twain’s essay connotes the repercussions of his contemporary reality within America as well as over its borders, or serves as a depiction of time spirit through the transparency of history, that is the second standard of an essay by Lapham. In the concrete, it mirrors Twain’s collected slashing judgments about the bourgeois way of life, bourgeois religion, bourgeois morality, and American bourgeois society in general. The views and sentiments of the late writer cannot be considered as baseless. They are formed in light of his personal experience and influenced by social and political facts of the public life, which has been surrounded Twain. It is possible to trace, for example, the direct projection of his critics of mankind for their hypocrisy and villainy on the experience of America of his time (a historical perspective), namely: the U.S. government’s activation of its colonial policy under the pressure of monopolies. The case is that during the 1890s, the United States makes an annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, and further after the war of 1898 with Spain lays its hand on Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, and Philippines, in such a way advancing in the direction of the Far East and creating strongholds in the Pacific Ocean. The expansionist actions of the American imperialist leaders have been covered by the masking propaganda, dressing up their seizure of foreign lands in the garb of humane, civilizing and Christian mission. In this regard, it is Mark Twain who has tried to disclose or at least give a hint on the real state of affairs for ordinary Americans. This apprehension is one of those ones, which alongside with common discontent of American imperialist life, makes the writer to believe in the cruel and low nature of human race. It is realized “… in Twain’s invectives and burlesques with which he set the torch of his ferocious wit to the hospitality tents of the world’s “colossal humbug” (Lapham). From the very first paragraph “The Damned Human Race” astonishes by its freshness and originality, as its key point is not conformed to the accepted view of man’s origin, that is, the disengagement from assumptions, and the third norm of Lapham’s concept of an essay. According to Twain, his freedom from postulates is dictated by his analysis of human’s behavior, which hasn’t benefit for the evidence of common notion for people’s belonging to higher living form of the Earth: “For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one… the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals” (Twain). Actually, by his arguments the writer crosses out the longstanding and doubtless higher nature of human race. It is coded even in opposite character of two concepts, which are ascent and descent, as they determine the progressive and regressive way of development of mankind respectively. Twain’s doing away with common holy belief of humans’ position above the animals makes the first to realize their appearance at the bottom of the world order due to the beast or even evil nature of their actions towards each other and living creatures. Furthermore, essayist’s reasoning in rebuttal of his theory of the dropping origin of men from the higher animals finds its fertile ground due to its speaking and incoming originality. Lapham’s fourth standard of an essay – the aim is not the propagation but the learning itself – also finds its direct reflection in the analyzed Twain’s work. The vivid description of the writer’s theory is no way aimed at changing the generally accepted version of humankind’s origin, but points at the necessity of apprehension of cruel inhumane issues of people’s existence, which have become norms. During the presentation of his thoughts on the subject, Twain dwells upon the power of imagination and expression for their descriptive form. As a result, these means with their artistic quality have touched the minds of the writer’s contemporaries. Naturally, his essay has created a furor by appearance. It has been perceived as something of evil nature for its somewhat humbling character. “The form of Twain’s essay is the “critique from hell” (Falk, Inbinder & Webb). Still, this revision of common belief hasn’t had the purpose of revamping the well-known explanation of men’s origin. Its true plan has been consisted in reaching the ground view point of regulatory frames of people’s life in nature’s lap and gaining of understanding of essential respectful treatment of its living creatures. So through his theory and directly by its means, Twain strives for learning of the peculiarities of human race by itself, as well as representing of its negative impact on perception of mankind as a damned one. All things considered, “The Damned Human Race” by Mark Twain appears to be a great American essay of its time with time-proof acuteness even nowadays, for the lasting character of some issues being described in it. Moreover, according to its conformity of Lapham’s notion of an essay, Twain’s work confirms its status of relevant one, as it is the transparent depiction of original thoughts without any basis of generally accepted postulates, as well as with no aim of propagation. Works Cited Falk, Bertil, Inbinder, Gary, & Webb, Don. What Was Mark Twain’s Real Target? Bewildering Stories, 2009. Retrieved Apr. 21 from: http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue345/cc_Twain_discn.html Lapham, Lewis H. Figures of Speech. Harper’s Magazine Notebook, 20 Dec. 2010. Retrieved Apr. 21 from: http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2010/12/figures-of-speech.html Twain, Mark. The Damned Human Race. Logical Threads. Retrieved Apr. 21 from: http://www.skeptically.org/logicalthreads/id14.html Read More