Headline January 18, 2017/ ''' *TWAIN'-D* WHEN TEMPLE-'D '''

''' *TWAIN'-D* WHEN TEMPLE-'D '''

FROM A TO Z OF ENGLISH  -one delightful truth  to write about is  *Mark Twain's*   Damned Human Race.

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, first published in America in January 1885, had always been in trouble.

According to Ernest Hemingway, it was the  ''one book from which  *all modern American literature* came,  and contemporary critics and scholars have treated it as-

*One of the greatest American works of art*. 

Of all   Mark Twain's novels,   it was also one that sold at its initial appearance.

On the other hand, it was condemned by many reviewers in Twain's time as grainy and by many commentators in our time as  racist. 

In 1885, it was banished from the shelves of the  Concord Public Library, an act that attracted a lot of publicity and discussion in newspapers.  

Over this very New Year weekend, or better still,  *weakend*   -just about everyone must have had an  'overload of information'  from these ever growing online sources.

These days the good,  the bad and the ugly are all just so camouflaged and the  truths and untruths and  utter straight and manipulative lies   come as *mined ambushes* hard to differentiate.

As Yee all reminisce the year that had been, in the political scene, the world over, we had had ourselves inundated with  incoherent statements  from people in power making it difficult for all of us to distinguish falsities from facts.

The social media had not made it any easier, for which the repeated onslaughts, even lies are just not distinguishable. 

In this context, something about   Mark Twain  comes to mind, ''If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything,'' and that is so true. Only with fabrication one needs the  over-use  of the memory power.

If we remember,  an adventurer and  wily intellectual, Mark Twain wrote the classic American novels:

*The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and  Adventures of  Huckleberry Finn*.  

*It is he who said that  he would not allow schooling to interfere with his education and in this context we have multiple degree holders holding high positions who have grown too big for humanity and hence all we have is sheer wastefulness*.

*If you read Twain's Huckleberry, you will understand that the novel is an ambitious  and  blunt examination of the society   condemned   with institutionalized acts of slavery, violence, bigotry and ignorance*.

The Adventure's of Huckleberry Finn, is the story of young boy, Huck, and runaway slave, Jim. 

'The story picks up after the end of Twain's previous novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, at the end of which Huck found a large sum of money.

The novel is an intense examination of the society that nurtured the writer and the two types of Southerners who largely populated the novel: 

The ones who were grossly and  adversely influenced by the environment and the better ones who only partly digressed from the path.

The protagonist and  narrator of the novel, Huck is a 13 year old son of the local drunk of St Petersburg, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River.  

The boy is often seen as an outcast because of wayward ways that he did not have a polished education added to his denial of a decent rating from his country folk.

Notwithstanding that Huck is thoughtful and intelligent as we know, while he journeys through the novel 

This reminds me of the incident in Bangalore, India on New Year's Eve, where young women gathering to usher in the New Year were physically and verbally abused by men.

The sad part of this is not the accident itself  but the  post-incident statement from a minister who unabashedly  blamed the women for the turn of events.

He said donning of western clothing and adopting western culture were the cause and reason behind the attack. This lifted off a series of criticisms from women groups as well as from wise men, not necessarily educated, writes Bhavani Krishna Iyer. 

Hence, in a cult system created by power hungry men, education is a shameful incongruity, rather, power alone speaks.

And in this masterly work of Mark Twain, one of the finest lessons Huck learns is that:

*Adults are not always right in their thinking and decisions and education does not necessarily buy men the power to act wisely*.

Instead, reasoning between  right and wrong   is one  that comes with experience and exposure  in life, and this is a theme we see repeatedly in Twain's Huckleberry Finn.

Best Wishes for the World, from !WOW!   -the World Students Society, and Sam Daily Times ''the voice of the voiceless''. 

And if you, Students,  and, or  the world,  are short or lost on resolution, Try Humanity! That would be a great change for the better.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya on !WOW!   -the World Students Society and.........Twitter-!E-WOW!   -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' The Shadows '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless