Résumé
Résumé de Qu’est-ce que l’homme ? et autres essais
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You will enjoy this if you like sharp argument, dry humor and honest feeling. It suits readers curious about human nature and Shakespeare, and anyone who likes to laugh and think together.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Can you take credit for a single thought you have ever had? Mark Twain says you cannot, and he builds the case as a conversation between an Old Man and a Young Man, who fights him at every step. That dialogue, What Is Man?, opens this collection of his later writing.
The dialogue claims that a person is a machine, built by birth and shaped by outside influence. Around it stand a grieving record of the death of his daughter Jean, a memoir of how measles made him a writer, and sharp pieces on an assassin, a Missouri mob, Wagner opera, bees and schoolchildren. You get a mind that laughs and mourns in the same pages.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A person is a machine and earns no creditFree
- 2Every act aims first at your own approval
- 3Conscience is trained, so training matters most
- 4The mind works alone and animals think too
- 5Temperament, not belief, decides your mood
- 6Grief makes small things sacred in Jean's death
- 7No single moment makes a life
- 8Vanity feeds assassins and mobs alike
- 9Twain turns every subject into comedy
- 10Twain asks whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare
Point clé 1 sur 10
A person is a machine and earns no credit
The Old Man opens with a steam engine. Iron lies in rock, and an engine made of the rock itself would be brittle and almost useless. A fine steel engine could drive a whole factory. Yet nobody gives the steel engine personal credit, because it cannot help doing what its design allows.
Twain applies this to people. There are gold men, tin men and lead men, and each does what his metal permits. The Young Man insists that his opinions are his own. The Old Man answers that they are built from scraps of books, talk and ancestors, put together by machinery he did not make. He dares the Young Man to change an opinion by effort alone, and after fifteen minutes the Young Man cannot.
Shakespeare is no exception. He did not create, he observed, like a great loom fed with threads from his age. What you are comes from your make and from outside influences, not from personal merit.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
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About 6 h 20 min to read.Commencez 90 jours gratuitsPaperback, hardcover and large print, printed for you at cost, are on their way.Email me when it is printed
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 88,300 words
- Reading timeAbout 6 h 10 min
Questions about Qu’est-ce que l’homme ? et autres essais
What is What Is Man? by Mark Twain about?
It is a dialogue between an Old Man and a Young Man. The Old Man argues that people are machines shaped by temperament and outside influence, and that every act aims first at the actor's own satisfaction and peace of mind.
What else is in What Is Man? and Other Essays?
The collection adds Twain's account of his daughter Jean's death, a memoir called The Turning Point of My Life, essays on an assassination, Wagner, bees and bicycles, and a long essay asking who wrote Shakespeare's plays.
Did Mark Twain really believe people are machines?
The Old Man voices ideas Twain held privately and held back for years. In the book he says the belief does not make him unhappy, because mood comes from temperament, which he saw as inborn.
What does Twain say about Shakespeare in Is Shakespeare Dead?
He doubts that the Stratford man wrote the plays. He lists the few known facts, stresses the plays' legal knowledge, and leans toward Francis Bacon, while admitting he cannot prove it. Most scholars today credit Shakespeare.
Is the book easy to follow?
The dialogue moves in quick questions and answers, with vivid examples like the old woman's quarter and the ants. The other pieces vary in length and mood, and you can read them one at a time.
Cite this edition
Twain, Mark. What Is Man? and Other Essays. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/what-is-man-and-other-essays.
Twain, M. (2026). What is man? and other essays. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/what-is-man-and-other-essays
Twain, Mark. What Is Man? and Other Essays. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/what-is-man-and-other-essays.
@book{twain2026what,
author = {Twain, Mark},
title = {What Is Man? and Other Essays},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/what-is-man-and-other-essays}
}
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