Mark Twain Writing Assignment

List all the institutions and figures satirized in Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad excerpt on travels in Rome. How is each depicted by Twain? (ie. Italian clergymen: hypocritical, having penchant for violence, miserly, exploitative of public goods and Italian people).

Italian government: worthless, no good, powerless, no control, poor

The Churches: no responsibility to the government, powerful, economically smart, ridiculously out of control, overdone

Duomo in Florence: Too fancy for its own good, useless to the people who need it most

Filthy beggars:

Medicis: cursed Florence with their presence, tombs are wasted space

Mausoleum: not used for what it was intended, wasted precious material

Dominican friars: suffering inside, partier

Civitavecchia: Smelly, cramped, worthless, slackers, talentless, dirty people, too hot to handle

Discovery in Rome: Non-existent, nothing to be found, boring, already discovered

Nobles in Rome: born into power, often undeserving, ignorant, uneducated compared to Americans

Rich men in America: spend it while they live, hold powers because of power, smart with tools, wanting to strive to be more intelligent than ancestors, strange clothing

St. Peters Basilic: astonishing, incredible, wildly humungous

St. Peters impressions: unreal, unattainable to prove, not impressive

The solution to American convicts: beneficial to society, contributing to the state, useful in many ways

Coliseum: used to kill Christians cruely, intended to be the largest theater of the world, show of status (seats)

40-mile long desert: exhausting, unbearable, dead animals all around, extremely
dangerous

Michelangelo: sickening how much he designed, pretty much created the art in Italy

Guides: confusing, couldn’t understand them if you wanted to, always tell the same stories, looking for astonishing remarks by new comers.

The Catacombs: dark, mysterious, never ending, hidden passages, tombs

Cite six moments in the text where Twain’s word choice creates humor; identify which word(s) in each of these citations provokes amusement or “surprise” in the reader. What are the devices Twain is employing to achieve this effect? (ie. “. . . then by nipping their flesh with pincers – red-hot ones, because they are the most comfortable in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little . . .”).

1. “O sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don’t you rob your church?”
-Twain uses these words “why don’t you rob you church” because the church is rich is art and incredibly expensive collections and people are begging and starving on the street. By saying this it is more posed for the government to take action and start caring for the people instead of using the money to make the churches appear worthier in value.

2. “if a grandly gifted man may drag his pride and his manhood in the dirt for bread rather than starve with the nobility that is in him untainted, the excuse is a valid one. It would excuse theft in Washingtons and Wellingtons, and unchasity in women as well.”
-To say it would “excuse the unchasity in women as well” is a dramatic statement because the chasity in women is valued so highly that this must be an important issue for Twain to compare to the sacredness of a woman’s chasity. He compares the two by stating what is going on between the men in the town and the governments actions being taken. He exclaims that people are dying and starving because the government does not care about the people at all.

3. “And now—However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and destroy him and then come back and write another chapter of vituperation.”
-Twain is stressing the fact that there are so many beggars on the street that he can’t even write a chapter without having them be a part of his life. Now he is not really going out just to see the beggar while he breaks on writing, but this is dramatically interpreted that the given situation will arise.

4. “Having eaten the friendless orphan—having driven away his comrades—having grown calm and reflective at length—I now feel in a kindlier mood.”
-This sarcastic tone Twain uses “having eaten the friendless orphan” is an example of him creating a scene for the reader of how many orphans are left on the street abandoned and everywhere you look, another appears and you feel for them but yet there is nothing that compels him to help them because their own government won’t even help them.
5. “It is well the alleys are not wider, because they hold as much smell now as a person can stand, and of course if they were wider they would hold more, and then the people would die.”
-“Then the people would die” is a dramatic sarcasm that Twain enforces because he is stressing how pungent the smell is and how horrific it would be is it got any worse.

6. Uh, is he dead?
-This is the joke that Twain and his doctor friend use on guides while they are seemingly unimpressed because they want to find out the guides reaction. They say this after seeing something others think ordinarily amazing. It’s a sarcastic remark that allows the reader to understand why the guard is so confused and dislikes them.