Mark Twain once dearly loved a river that had "all the grace, the beauty,
the poetry". But then, he "began to cease from noting the glories
and the charm." In a passage from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi,
Twain conveys the change of his view of the river with the use of contrasting
parallelism, contrasting figurative language, and contrasting detail. He contrasts
both his view- after his training and before. This writing strategy effectively
pushes the change that occurred across the table. One is easily able to see
what happened to Twain's thoughts of the river after the completion of his
pilot's training.
Twain's use of parallelism, highly contrasts his views, thus conveying the
change that occurred before his pilot training. Parallelism was used to describe
the beautiful river. Twain saw the sunset with "red hue brightened into
gold." This was then contrasted with Twain's new understanding of the
sun, "that we are going to have wind tomorrow." Before his training,
twain could not stop rambling on about how wonderful the river was. He used
a very long sentence that was all parallelism regarding the wonders of the
river. The he used the exact same parallelism ideas, but with new meanings.
The sun now meant he dreaded the next day because of wind conditions when
at one time the sun meant happiness and beauty. Twain also contrasts a slanting
mark in his parallelism. The 'slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water."
Here he admires this sight and enjoys it. It sounds like something he would
want to see everyday. After his training, twain sees the slant mark "which
is going to kill somebody's steamboat." This once amazing sight is now
a death trap. Twain is no longer able to see the thing he once saw before
his training. His views changed from amazed and astounded to scared and dreadful.
Like Twain's parallelism, his figurative language also contrasts to convey
the change that occurred. His language is poetic and graceful before his training,
then contrasted to concrete and not as beautiful. Twain used to love the river,
he "drank it in." He had "never seen anything like [it] at
home." Here his language is smooth, calm, and poetic. A true love for
the river is felt. Then his language contrasts to show the change of his views.
Twain writes, "that floating log means that the river is rising."
This new language is careless and meaningless. Now there is a feeling of hatred
toward the river. Twain used to love "the moon and the sun and the twilight
wrought upon the river's face." Again, this language is poetically happy
and feelings of desire for the river are felt. The language is graceful and
one wants to read it. Then, again, there is contrast, that "streak in
the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag." This description
is boring and passionless. The use of the "to be" verb "is"
makes the sentence plain, without any action. With the use of his language,
twain effectively conveys the change that occurred.
The detail presented in the passage is very close to being opposite. In the
beginning to the end detail, evidence is found of ideas about certain things
that are described with opposite words. The sunset was once colorful, "red
hue brightened into gold." Then it turned colorless with the sun only
meaning "wind." Here the detail is changed from colorful to no color.
This means his views have changed to the opposite of how he viewed things
before his training. The 'single leafy bough that glowed" turned into
"that tall dead tree." Here life is contrasted with death. Twain
used to see things for how alive they were and now con only see the downside
- death.
