Reading Journal – The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
Institutions and figures satirized:
Bankrupt government/Italy: killing people with taxation to salvage itself, starving people to create wonderful churches, full of beggars (compared to America), evil eye and treasury,
Churches of Italy: rich, uselessly decadent,
Medici: tyrannical, indulgent, self-centered
Beggars: friendless orphan
Dominican friars: barefooted rascals, ignorant or illiterate,
Civitavecchia and its people: hot, dirty, disgusting, deathly smelly, populated with stupid, unclean, and talentless people, full of bugs, as advanced as Turkey
America: populated with people that can actually read, lacking in soldiers and priests, much wiser and knowledgeable compared to Romans, provides convicts with duel roles
Modern Romans: boundlessly ignorant, illiterate, simple,
American politicians: must be rich, “ignorant asses,”
Jews: dogs in Italy, humans in America
St. Peter’s: bulky, uncomprehendably large, turns full-grown men into insignificant school boys,
Roman Christians: “good” by torturing, brutal when it comes to converting (the Barbarians)
Pantheon: beautiful, pagan, tricked into a Christian establishment, has pagan elements disguised as Christian (i.e. Venus statue as Mary)
Colosseum: isolated, was the theater of Rome and the entire world
Michelangelo: designed a scary amount of Rome
Tour guides: “know enough English to tangle everything up so that a man can make neither head nor tail of it”
Six moments of word choice with humor (identify the humorous word/s):
“The people here live in alleys two yards wide, which have a smell about them which is peculiar but not entertaining. 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” (193).
---The words “peculiar, entertaining, and die” add the humorous element because it’s funny to think of a smell ever being entertaining. It’s even more so when Twain abruptly says that more of the smell would kill the people, when in actually this would never happen.
“These alleys are paved with stone and carpeted with deceased cats and decayed rags and decomposed vegetable tops and remnants of old boots, all soaked with dishwater, and the people sit around on stools and enjoy it” (193).
---“carpeted with deceased cats” and “people…enjoy it” are so ironically funny together in this sentence.
---People would never “enjoy” alleys that are composed of all these disgusting elements. It’s surprising when Twain adds this fact at the end of a most repulsive description of the city’s streets.
“They have other kinds of insects, but it does not make them arrogant. They are very quiet, unpretending people. They have more of these kind of things than other communities, but they do not boast” (194).
---“arrogant” and “do not boast” provoke the most humor and surprise because you would never consider bragging about have an ample supply of bugs in the city that you live in.
“…if a man be rich he is very greatly honored, and can become a legislator, a governor, a general, a senator, no matter how ignorant an ass he is—just as in our beloved Italy the nobles hold all the great places, even though sometimes they are born noble idiots” (198).
---“ignorant” and “ass” make this idea funny because it’s ridiculous, but true that a stupid man can get into practically any position of power, so long as he has the money; and people will honor and praise him for the things he does out of his own ignorance because he is in this position of power/control
“In that country you might fall from a third-story window three several times, and not mash either a soldier or a priest” (198-199).
---“several times” and “mash” are the funniest part of this sentence. Twain is emphasizing the shocking small amount of soldiers and priests in American compared to Rome, while at the same time making fun of both places for their extreme quantities, or lack there of. He does this using a funny image for the reader so they can his point and have a bizarre image running through their minds at the same time.
“…it is said they even have the privilege of buying land and houses, and owning them themselves, though I doubt that, myself…” (199).
---“privilege” and “I doubt that, myself” are what make Twain’s point so humorous; this idea that Jews are actually treated as people, and have normal (inherently deserved) civil rights, as opposed to how they are treated in Rome. And since Twain is evoking the Roman traveler’s voice it makes it very funny that he would doubt the actual possibility that Jews would be treated so well in America. How could that ever be true (from the view point of the Roman)?
Devices Twain employs to achieve this effect:
In order to achieve the effects of this thoroughly humorous and entertaining satire, Twain uses a lot of irony or an element of surprise and illustrates stereotypes, mundane truths, as well as exaggerations. I found that as the reader I was laughing the most when wrote of ideas that would never actually be true and facts of life that were greatly exaggerated.
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