Clothes Make the Man
Charles Jin
Mrs. Goeser
Eng 11H-4
10 February 2013
Clothes Make the Man
What is man? It’s a question with myriad of different answers; however, Mark Twain comes up with a unique answer that is different from others. He tells people man is nothing but a machine that can’t create, can’t control, can’t generate; he believes that man “originates nothing, not even a thought” (Twain); he declares man has no command over himself. His anthropology is reflected in his novel Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain proves unoriginality of humankind by using his characters to show how people rebut their own idea to adept other’s point of view. Mark Twain uses Tom Sawyer to illustrate how man is more tend to be influenced by others than originate something his own. In order to make the rescue mission more adventurous, Tom Sawyer adds more unnecessary fancy to increase difficulty of a simple task. When Huck doubts his unnecessary attempts like digging holes, Tom explains: “… hain’t you ever read any books at all? – Baron Trenck, nor Casanova… the way all the best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in two” (Twain). Even though the solution is challenging, and pointless, Tom Sawyer still exists doing extra fancy work that he read in the book instead of going with the obvious and simple solution while he can originally come up with more intelligent and efficient solution. Tom Sawyer is helplessly controlled by exterior influences; in his case, the outside influence is the heroes in the books. He views them as his authorities and imitates everything they have done to have the sublime experience just as they had. Because of he is so obsessed with those heroes who influence him, he loses the ability to create his own solution. Instead, he is accustomed to copy the plot from the fictional book or from other’s life. He ignores his own voice to listen to someone else’s voice, therefore, he loses his originality to his fancy.
Twain also shows unoriginality of humankind by showing how human
Mrs. Goeser
Eng 11H-4
10 February 2013
Clothes Make the Man
What is man? It’s a question with myriad of different answers; however, Mark Twain comes up with a unique answer that is different from others. He tells people man is nothing but a machine that can’t create, can’t control, can’t generate; he believes that man “originates nothing, not even a thought” (Twain); he declares man has no command over himself. His anthropology is reflected in his novel Huckleberry Finn: Mark Twain proves unoriginality of humankind by using his characters to show how people rebut their own idea to adept other’s point of view. Mark Twain uses Tom Sawyer to illustrate how man is more tend to be influenced by others than originate something his own. In order to make the rescue mission more adventurous, Tom Sawyer adds more unnecessary fancy to increase difficulty of a simple task. When Huck doubts his unnecessary attempts like digging holes, Tom explains: “… hain’t you ever read any books at all? – Baron Trenck, nor Casanova… the way all the best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in two” (Twain). Even though the solution is challenging, and pointless, Tom Sawyer still exists doing extra fancy work that he read in the book instead of going with the obvious and simple solution while he can originally come up with more intelligent and efficient solution. Tom Sawyer is helplessly controlled by exterior influences; in his case, the outside influence is the heroes in the books. He views them as his authorities and imitates everything they have done to have the sublime experience just as they had. Because of he is so obsessed with those heroes who influence him, he loses the ability to create his own solution. Instead, he is accustomed to copy the plot from the fictional book or from other’s life. He ignores his own voice to listen to someone else’s voice, therefore, he loses his originality to his fancy.
Twain also shows unoriginality of humankind by showing how human