Life on the Mississippi

Steamboat pilots are symbolic of freedom and the American Dream for Twain. As a child, Twain wanted nothing more than to leave his small town and become a pilot, being free to travel the world. Though he initially wanted to go to the Amazon, he trained on the Mississippi and came to love the industry. Pilots were hard workers and fast learners, and, for the most part, epitomized hands-on knowledge and discipline. Twain feels remorse whenever he reads in the paper that a pilot has died, and he laments the steamboat industry in general as it declines after the Civil War. For Twain, piloting steamboats is the greatest profession in the world.

Twain digs into his past often to further drive home a point he is making or shed light on something from his past that makes sense now in the present. Twain uses memories of his childhood in Hannibal with his brother Harry to highlight his long-standing love of travel and steamboat piloting. Twain also uses other characters and their recollections to flesh out the points he is trying to make in given chapters. Memory is effective in the narrative in that it ties the past and the present together for Twain. In other words, the past comments on present circumstances in Twain’s narrative.