Mark Twain's Roughing It

A myth may be more fully examined by the words that T.S. Eliot, author of The Wasteland, used to describe The Burial of The Dead, "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?" (Eliot 19). This is yet but one perspective that will play into the context of the creation of the American Myth. One author in particular, Mark Twain, will be furthur examined from here on out. Twain does not neccessarily possess the level of sophistication (used lightly) in his writing as T.S. Eliot so forcefully showed in The Wasteland. 

However, T.S. Eliot hailed from a later and perhaps more "refined" period in American history than did the subject of this paper. It was a time when opportunity seemed to be in the reach of all and not just the sophisticated. The masses were moving westward to a new dream and a new identity that would consume the culture of Americans for decades to come. This is where Mark Twain steps in and creates an indelible mark that is not only a prime example of regionalism, but as well as a classic in American frontier history. An impression so heavily felt that the line between fact and fiction becomes unclear. Fiction seldomly captivates the imagination of an entire society, and to Twain's advantage many of his novels have become classics in less than a century. 

Mark Twain's Roughing It is rather the historical literary work of his penname, Samuel Langhorne Clemens. William Dean Howells called Clemens, "the Lincoln of our literature," Both Twain and the Lincoln automobile being portrayed as icons in the eyes of American history. The condensed and textually supported analysis of Roughing It that follows, provides the critical tools neccessary in order to prepare a means in which to deconstruct the Frontier Myth. Roughing It is but one novel that has a varied and masterfully created allusion of what the wild west was all about. The Wild West was the last frontier to conquer (or so most thought), after which it was tamed the invaluable resources and minerals were quickly consumed and manufactored in order to create a society which would dominate in the world market.