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→A "hymn to liberty"
Orwell says Twain did not ''mean'' to write "a hymn to liberty," but did so simply by reporting what he saw. He feels that Twain's colorful characters were able to develop their "strange and sometimes sinister individuality because of the lack of any outside pressure:
Orwell says Twain did not ''mean'' to write "a hymn to liberty," but did so simply by reporting what he saw. He feels that Twain's colorful characters were able to develop their "strange and sometimes sinister individuality because of the lack of any outside pressure:
:If you disliked your job you simply hit your boss in the eye and moved further west.... The "log cabin to White House" myth was true while the free land lasted. In a way, it was for this that the Paris mob had stormed the Bastille, and when one reads Mark Twain, [[Bret Harte]], and [[Walt Whitman|Whitman]] it is hard to feel that their effort was wasted.<ref>ibid., p. 326</ref>
:If you disliked your job you simply hit your boss in the eye and moved further west.... The "log cabin to White House" myth was true while the free land lasted. In a way, it was for this that the Paris mob had stormed the Bastille, and when one reads Mark Twain, [[Bret Harte]], and [[Walt Whitman|Whitman]] it is hard to feel that their effort was wasted.<ref>ibid., p. 326</ref>
==Religion==
Mark Twain was not a Christian in the conventional sense. Some of his quotes on the subject are listed below.
"Faith is believing something you know ain't true."
"'In God We Trust.' I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true."
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
"Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of."
"There is no other life; life itself is only a vision and a dream for nothing exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad." [Mark Twain in Eruption]
"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast" [Reflections on Religion, 1906]
==The pen name "Mark Twain"==
==The pen name "Mark Twain"==