Prince and Pauper

Brief introduction

    This book is very attractive. It is a story about the Prince of England and a pauper who lived in the slum. They exchanged their status accidentally. From then on, Tom, the pauper lived a luxurious life in the palace. But he did not like that kind of life. He missed his mother and his two sisters. So he said to everyone in the palace that he wasn’t the prince. But nobody believed him, and everyone thought that his prince was mad. Soon the King died, and Tom had to join the coronation and become the King of the England.

    On the contrary, the true prince had to lead a vagrant life. Then Tom’s father mistook him for Tom, always beat him and ask him to beg in the street. The prince made a new friend-Hendon who used to be a noble but now his cousin took his place unlawfully by chance. Hendon help the prince a lot, they became close friends. And the prince promised that the Hendons have the right to sit in the presence of the King of England as well as his son and grandson. During the prince’s exiled life, he found that the law of the England is much too unfair and cruelty, and the life of the paupers are much too rough, So he made up his mind to change these law and made the life easier to the paupers. At last, with the help of Hendon and Tom, the prince became the King of the England. He actualized his promise to Hendon.

About the author

    Mark Twain was born Samuel Clemens, November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. When he was four, his father, an unsuccessful storekeeper, decided to move his family to Hnnibal, Missouri, which move had a strong effect on Samuel's life. Hannibal was a river-edge town through which many travelers passed: circus troupers, minstrel shows, religious leaders, and daring settlers on their way to California--all of whom Samuel would later use as characters in his books.

    But of all the people young Samuel met, he admired the steamboat captains most of all, and dearly wished he could pilot a Mississippi riverboat. Upon his father's death, when Samuel was twelve, he left school to train as a printer. This led to newspaper writing out West and finally the realizing of his dream--for four proud years, he navigated a steamboat up the winding Mississippi River. From this experience he chose his pen name, Mark Twain, which in navigation is the call to report the depth of water at two fathoms.

    Mark Twain is best known for his funny story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", and for his novels, both humorous and serious. The most famous of these are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and The Prince and the Pauper. In this last book, he poked fun at the old uper-class in England, and showed how wrong it was to judge people by outward appearances.

    Mark Twain died in April, 1910, but to his many readers around the world, he will live forever in Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Film, Tom Canty, Edward Tudor, and his other unforgettable characters.

    He is one of our Chinese readers' favourite and familiar American writers. He had to leave off his study, entered printing house and started apprentice career after his father's death when he was twelve. He once was a typo, and later became an outstanding news reporter, and decided write humourous literature. His works are famous for real reflection of American social reality and humour. He was regarded as "Lincoln of American literature". He was a humour master, novelist, writer, as well as eminent lecturer. Though he is not so wealthy, it doesn't matter with his humour, intelligence and language. At the same time, he has an insight and analysis into society, both spicy and humankind. Beside Prince and Pauper, there is also Gold-plating Age, The Adventure of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Key words: identity exchange, prince, pauper

Character analysis:

Tom: curious, virtuous, seek for love and better life

Tom Canty, youngest son of a family of beggars living with the dregs of society in Offal Court, has always had aspirations to a better life, encouraged by the local priest who has taught him to read and write. He hangs around the palace gates one day and sees the little prince, and is about to be thrashed and sent away by the guards until the prince commands them to stop and invites Tom inside. Fascinated by the differences of each other's lifestyles and by their similar appearances, the boys exchange roles. Edward leaves in rather a hurry, before the boys are caught at their game, first quickly putting away an article of national importance which we later learn is the Great Seal of England. Soon Prince Edward is attempting to escape from the brutality of Tom's father, while Tom posing as the prince is attempting to cope with court customs and manners. His fellow nobles and palace personnel think "the prince" is suffering an illness that has caused memory loss and fear he will go mad. They repeatedly question him about the missing "Great Seal", but he knows nothing about it. However, when Tom is asked to sit in on judgements, his common-sense observations reassure them that he is of sound mind.

Edward: virtuous, curious, smart, brave

As Edward experiences the brutish life of a pauper first hand, he becomes aware of the stark class inequalities in England at that time. In particular, he realizes the harsh and punitive nature of the English judicial system, witnessing women burned at the stake, pilloring, and flogging. He becomes aware that the accused are convicted on the flimsiest of evidence and branded, dismembered, boiled in oil or hung for petty offenses. He vows to reign with mercy when he regains his rightful place. When he unwisely declares before a gang of thieves that he really is the king and will put an end to unjust laws, they assume he is insane, and hold a mock coronation.

Comment:

When we read this book, many people will can't help thinking of The Adventure of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The same as we are attracted by quirky adventure of little protagonist, we also admire at their intelligence, courage, virtue, which would owe to Mark Twain's particular creative style. However, in the work of Prince and Pauper, Mark Twain carried out another try. In this novel, two children having no experience of life are the protagonist. But he used satire mode when narrating. In the meantime of attracting readers, it as well as achieve the artistic effect of mixing story and object ridicule, significance and circumstances. This is based on the novel of the 19^th century of the British in the background, described a poor child Tom, because of a occasional chance, interchange identity dramatically with the prince Edward. When Tom became the king of that country, he abolished some cruel laws, absolve a few innocent prisoners, promulgate some reasonable orders, while prince experienced all sorts of sufferings and realized common people's poverty-stricken life. It seemed to be a simple story but reflected deeply the true situation of 19^th century American.

Make a general survey of the story, I think the most attractive part of this book is that it narrate the story as a fairy tale and take the use of contrast and humourous as well as satire language. The first thing I want to talk about is its use of fantastic narrating modal. From the point of comparative significance, content of each art work is peculiar foot, which all need to wear peculiar shoes that is to find out unique form of expression corresponding to them. From the point of intuition, characters of romantic fairy tale flooded into minds when we see the title Prince and Pauper. The writer captured an expectant visual field of people's thinking set, dummied two much-alike figures born of same year and time. But in reality it is impossible that two persons without relationship won't be so alike. In order to present such a thing that doesn't exist in reality, Mark Twain had to imagine to adopt the technique of expression of fairy tale to adapt that they can interchange identities and experience entirely different life as before. They were both attracted to the characteristics of each other when meeting by the first time and began to exchange clothes so that the identities to be dramatically exchanged, which is beginning unfold of the plot.

In the second place, the most attracting point is the perfect use of contrast. The work uses prince and pauper as title, implying life-style and social view of the rich and the poor. Ever since slave society till modern society, there is gap between the rich and the poor. However, the 19^th century the writer live in is right the time of the rise of American capitalism and the gap between the rich and the poor is inevitable. The reason why writer drew materials of 16^th century England to manifest tribulation life of common people and inhuman exploit and oppression deserves our curiosity. The writer began to contrast from their birth. On one Autumn day a boy was unwelcomely given to a poor family named Canty. On the same day an aspirated boy was born to rich family which family name is Tudor. All English welcome this boy. Different birth not only accounts for their different living environment, but also indicates two extreme kinds of life after identity exchange. Pauper Tom used to live a muddy megafamily, where hitting the bottle, running wild and squabble is very usual. He lived on begging and would be mistreated by his father and grandmother if he got nothing when returning home. But the life didn't brought him unhappiness. As he could hardly fell asleep because of pain and torture received, he can only imagine where he lived was a palace depending on the knowledge learning from priest Andrew, which burned in his heart and made him forget all the pains. Tom's life, and raffle compound typically reflect the hardships of lower-class labouring people of that time; on the other side is luxurious noble life. When Tom saw six-month expenses of imperial family he was threatened out of breath and said they were going to go bankrupt when realizing the exchequer is void. All these findings, hearing and sayings come out from the mouth of a naive child and it emphasizes the authenticity of narration, deeply criticize the luxury, extravagance and waste of English nobles of 16^th century, meanwhile, it insinuates living conditions of American bourgeoisie and labouring people.

Contrast can also be incarnated from humanistic good and evil. Goodness and badness is not owned by a certain kind of people, that is to say, not all persons are virtuous, equally, not all nobles are evil. In the Prince and the Pauper, John Canty and Hugo even though are from lower class, they abandoned honest and virtuous nature of labouring people and what they only knew was to drink, fight and cheat. John didn't love Tom and punished him by cuff and kick. Though Tom beared torture, he received spineless mother love and care from sisters. The writer ingeniously put good and evil, beauty and clown into one family, reflecting the temporal society, inflicting different status and social environment on contrast, exposing domineeringness and atrocity of English nobles in 16^th century, displaying the distressed and formidable life of common people.

I read the book The Prince and the Pauper, by Mark Twain. It is a book about Edward, the Prince of Wales, and Tom, a poor boy from the streets of London. Tom ventures out to the palace to meet a real prince, which was his lifelong desire. Edward rescues Tom from a crowd that jeered at him because of he was clothed in rags. The two become friends. They switch clothes and realize that they look exactly alike! But then everyone mistakes Edward for being the poor boy and Tom for being the prince. The boys are separated.
Tom is thought to be the Prince by everyone in the palace. When Henry VIII dies, Tom is declared Edward VI, King of England. He denies it and tries to tell them he is a pauper, but they think he is mad and teach him what he needs to know to act like a king. Tom learns to enjoy being king, but wants to return to his home and family.
Edward goes on a quest to find his way back to the kingdom and Tom. During his adventure, he meets Miles Hendon, a kind fellow who was on a journey to his home, for he had finally gotten out of a war he was fighting. Miles rescues him from another crowd that is about to throw him into the Thames River. He decides to take Edward in with him. Together, they travel to Miles' old home and then to the palace to declare Edward's rightful place as the prince.
I enjoyed this book very much. It has got a straightforward theme: Don't judge a book by its cover. I would recommend this book to either teens or adults, since Twain uses some hard-to-understand archaic English words like "hither" and "thither". This book is book is not easy to read, but has interesting adventures.

Conclusion:

The Prince and the Pauper is the representative work of American writer Mark Twain. It describes a story of prince Edward and pauper Tom. They exchange their social position by chance and Edward becomes a pauper while Tom turns to be a prince. Tom dressed up prince's clothes enjoying everything and finally became the king but Edward strolled outside the palace and had to endure privation and tease and taunt from other beggars. With the help of Horton, Edward experienced many difficulties, corrected his bad habits and eventually came back to the palace. As for Tom, returned throne to the real prince with the blame of himself. Ever since that, Edward became a humane king and lived happily with his people. It is a real fancy story with humourous words, bringing happiness to children as well as greatly stimulating imagination of them and yearn for pure, goodness and glorious things.

This is based on the novel of the 19^th century the British in the background, a description of poor children, Tom and a rich exchange of Prince Edward social status of the fairy-tale. Tom lived a pauper clothing from a young age not to Biti, the hungry living in poverty, their imagination can one day become rich princes, Edwad are tired as a result of rigid, empty palace life, but also a fantasy to try to make non-poor child's taste. Through the fairy tale plot, the first novel in sharp contrast with the way that shows the life of the working people of the extreme hardship of the ruling class and the lives of extreme extravangance and luxury. At the same time, the novel is also clear that the life of democratic ideas are born when the only child of poverty, Edward is not only born the prince, all in different customs and status. This is the conscience or the whim of a sudden they do to recover? No, this is the objective character of the environmental impact of health is, the simple people who live on the transformation of the role. Those who do whatever they want, it is natural that the bourgeoisie think of the United States at the time of arbitrary government fraud; from Tom and Edward and the exchange of words and ideas of identity, and it is only natural to think of profound racial discrimination. As a result, although the novel based on 16^th century Britain, but its critics point to is the spearhead of the 19^th century America. Misunderstanding and exchange of identity is the main plot of the development of fairy tale, which appears to be the conventional settings. But in Mark Twain's rendering shows the hidden brilliance. Reading this, simple-to-earth language, practices, ideas and social background on the three aspects of the intent of the author, concise style, sharp vision.

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