Mark Twain, the traveler
The first-person traveler, whose confident comic judgments coexist with curiosity, impatience and changing memories.
He wants to enjoy the excursion, judge famous places for himself and turn what he sees into a story worth telling.
The book
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeTwain constructs a narrator who distrusts received opinions while bringing strong expectations of his own. His preface's claim to impartial vision is a proposition that readers can test against the chapters that follow.
How the book draws them
- Listening to patriotic performanceIn Chapter X, the Fourth of July speeches at sea become predictable repetitions of national greatness. The narrator includes his own countrymen among the travelers whose habits deserve scrutiny.
- Imagining a prisoner's timeIn Chapter XI, the scratched walls of the Château d'If lead him to imagine years of isolation. His comparison with an ordinary life passing outside the prison interrupts the rhythm of sightseeing comedy.
- A luxurious fantasy meets a shaveIn Chapter XII, a shabby Paris back room replaces his imagined palatial barbershop. His extravagant account of the shave exposes the expectations he has brought to the city.
- Learning how to see scaleIn Chapter XXVI, measurements and comparisons fail to make St. Peter's look as large as he knows it is. The tiny appearance of a suspended workman finally gives him a bodily measure of the space.
- Watching a souvenir hunterIn Chapter LVII, he describes a fellow traveler's attempts to break Egyptian monuments with a hammer. The absurd labor makes the tourist's desire to possess a fragment look destructive.
- Admitting what memory changesIn the Conclusion, he says the disagreeable incidents have faded and he would gladly sail again. That admission makes the traveler at home a different judge from the impatient man abroad.
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