Two Views of the River Blog

The memoir by Mark Twain shows the point of view from an average person looking at the river, and then from the view of himself looking at the river. All the things in the river used to mean something to him. The sun, the moon, the water, and the surrounding areas all had characteristics that meant something deeper than just their appearance. In the story, Twain starts to look at all of the things surrounding the river as symbols instead of just scenery. This was also a story about romance though too. He viewed the river with a sense of passion and now that he has come to realization of what these objects mean, he says all the romance is gone(Twain, Mark ). I think that the character in this story had lost a loved one or someone very important to him. I think that he used to come to the river and he was so happy that all he saw was the scenery and how beautiful everything looked. I think that once he lost someone he loved, he would go to the river and criticize the scenery and look for the hidden meaning instead of what he saw on the surface.

I think the views in this story are not really similar to those of Thoreau, but they are like those of Walden, who used a lot of nature. This story uses nature to incorporate different meanings. For instance, the sun means that there will be sun tomorrow, the floating log tells that the river is slowly rising, a slanting mark on the river is a reef that will swallow someones boat sometime in the near nights, and the old dead tree with a single branch is reaching its point of death (Twain, Mark). I think in these instances, he has anger behind his words. When he talks about the dead tree and how no one would be able to survive by this river without that landmark, it seems like he is slowly losing hope.

Overall, I got a sad feeling from this story. It started off so well, and then all the beauty was lost and the mood changed. I feel the character in the story was once a very happy person, but slowly became sad. Even though it is not completely evident why, there was some sort of romance lost in his life that made him lose the beauty in the other aspects of his life. It is a really powerful story and it shows that the romance with his special person was very powerful and real.

Twain, Mark. "Two Views of the River." Glencoe Literature. the Reader's Choice. New York, NY: Glencoe McGraw-Hill, 2000. 504-05. Print.