Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Leben auf dem Mississippi
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love Twain's humor, American history and true tales of a vanished trade, and anyone who wants to understand the river behind Huckleberry Finn.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain's book about the river he grew up beside and the trade he learned on it. It was published in 1883. Twain was born Samuel Clemens in 1835 and spent his boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri, a small town on the west bank. He took his pen name from the river, and the book explains where it came from.
The book has two halves that were written at different times. The first part grew out of magazine pieces from 1875, where Twain looked back on his years as an apprentice steamboat pilot before the Civil War. The second part comes from a trip in 1882, when he went back to the river after more than twenty years away. He travelled from St. Louis down to New Orleans and then north toward St. Paul, and he wrote down what had changed and what had not.
You get a lot in one volume. There is a working lesson in how a pilot learns to read moving water, and there is a portrait of a proud trade that vanished. There are towns, feuds, floods and tall tales, all told in Twain's dry and teasing voice. The book is funny, but it is also about loss. To see how the river first caught him, begin with the river itself.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1The river is a restless giantFree
- 2A boy's one ambition: steamboats
- 3A pilot must know every mile
- 4Learning to read the water's face
- 5Pilots ruled like kings, then fell
- 6Returning to a changed river
- 7Towns, tall tales and the South's legends
- 8New Orleans, the upper river and home
- 9A patchwork book that still holds
Punkt 1 von 9
The river is a restless giant
Twain opens with the river itself, and he treats it almost like a character. He tells us the Mississippi is well worth reading about, and then he sets out to prove it. He piles up facts about its length, its muddy water and the huge stretch of land it drains. He delivers these facts with a showman's pleasure, as if each one were a small marvel.
He goes on to its history, and he enjoys pointing out how slowly the world noticed it. The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reached the river in the 1540s, and then for a long time almost nobody did much about it. French explorers such as Marquette and Joliet and later La Salle came down the water in the next century. Twain jokes about how neatly school lessons hurry over such events. He wants you to feel how strange it is that a river so large sat there so long without a map.
Then come the odd facts about how the river behaves. It is crooked, and it keeps changing its bed. Sometimes the water eats through a narrow neck of land and makes a short cut, and the long bend is left behind as a quiet lake. Whole towns that once stood on the main channel end up miles from the water. Twain does a piece of mock arithmetic on how much shorter the lower river has grown, and he follows the sums to an absurd conclusion for the sake of the laugh.
He also shows how the river shapes the people who live beside it. Floods push over farms, and levees break and are built again. Land is taken in one place and handed back in another, and no deed can be trusted for long. The lesson he draws is plain. Nobody commands this water, and everyone who works on it works at its mercy.
This opening sets two habits that run through the whole book. Twain mixes real facts with comic play, and he looks at the river with both love and respect. The reader is told that the river is immense, and also that it cannot be trusted. That mix of awe and wariness prepares us for the boy who will want to master it.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- Mark Twain
- The author and narrator recalls his apprenticeship as a pilot and revisits the places where he learned his trade.
- Bixby
- An experienced steamboat pilot, Bixby teaches young Twain to recognize the river’s shifting channels and hidden dangers.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 149,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 9 h 55 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about Leben auf dem Mississippi
What is Life on the Mississippi about?
It is Mark Twain's memoir of learning to be a steamboat pilot before the Civil War, followed by an account of his return trip in 1882. It mixes personal story, river lore, history and tall tales.
Is Life on the Mississippi a true story?
Mostly yes. It is based on Twain's real years as a river pilot and a real trip in 1882, published in 1883. Like much of his work, it also includes exaggeration, borrowed material and tall tales.
Where does the name Mark Twain come from?
It is a call used on riverboats when measuring the water's depth. Mark twain means two fathoms, which was safe water for a steamboat. Samuel Clemens took it as his pen name, and the book touches on his river years.
Is Life on the Mississippi hard to read?
No. The language is plain and funny. The first half reads like a story, and the second half is looser and more episodic.
Who is Horace Bixby in the book?
Horace Bixby was a real steamboat pilot who taught the young Samuel Clemens to read the river. He appears as a demanding teacher in the first half, and Twain meets him again on his return trip.