Stereotypes In Luck, By Mark Twain

“Luck,” by Mark Twain, you are either born with it or born without it; this short story gives insight on how your most idolized idols are just normal, everyday people, how your preconceived opinions of people can make you seem like an awful person, and how your own incompetence can be beneficial to those around you.

Again, your favorite celebrity, whomever it may be, is not some demigod or king but rather a person who has come to achieve things that people in your inner circle have not achieved. The beginning narrator states, about Arthur Scoresby while at a banquet honoring him, “It was food and drink to me to look, and look, and look at that demigod; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all over him; the sweet
If its subject had been Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been greater. Two things I was well aware of: that the Reverend was a man of strict veracity, and that his judgement of men was good. Therefore I knew, beyond doubt or question, that the world was mistaken about this hero: he was a fool.” (cite) Because the reverend should only state facts and should have only good judgement, the narrator is willing to believe just about any word that utters out of the clergyman’s mouth. However, does the clergyman actually have good judgement and only speaks facts or is he just jealous that he hasn’t climbed up in rank as fast as Scoresby had done. These are words from the clergyman, “He was actually gazetted to a captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it if they had made him a cornet; but a captain—think of it! I thought my hair would turn white.”