Unit 9 Mirror of America 课后答案.docx

Mark Twain Mirror of America Noel Grove? ?　　 Most Americans remember Mark Twain as the father of Huck Finns idyllic cruise through eternal boyhood and Tom Sawyers endless summer of freedom and adventure. In-deed, this nations best-loved author was every bit as ad-venturous, patriotic, romantic, and humorous as anyone has ever imagined. I found another Twain as well – one who grew cynical, bitter, saddened by the profound personal tragedies life dealt him, a man who became obsessed with the frailties of the human race, who saw clearly ahead a black wall of night.　　 Tramp printer, river pilot , Confederate guerrilla, prospector, starry-eyed optimist, acid-tongued cynic: The man who became Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens and he ranged across the nation for more than a third of his life, digesting the new American experience before sharing it with the world as writer and lecturer. He adopted his pen name from the cry heard in his steamboat days, signaling two fathoms (12 feet) of water -- a navigable depth. His popularity is attested by the fact that more than a score of his books remain in print, and translations are still read around the world.　　The geographic core, in Twains early years, was the great valley of the Mississippi River, main artery of transportation in the young nations heart. Keelboats ， flatboats , and large rafts carried the first major commerce. Lumber, corn, tobacco, wheat, and furs moved downstream to the delta country; sugar, molasses , cotton, and whiskey traveled north. In the 1850s, before the climax of westward expansion, the vast basin drained three-quarters of the settled United States.　　Young Mark Twain entered that world in 1857 as a cub pilot on a steamboat. The cast of characters set before him in his new profession was rich and varied a cosmos . He participated abundantly in this life, listening to pilothouse talk of feuds , piracies, lynchings ,medicine shows, and savage waterside slums. All would resurface in his b