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1、 Comparison among Twain, Howells and James Although Twain, Howells and James all worked for realism, there were obvious differences between them.At first, you should know their differences of background and life experience, because ones character is bravely close to those.Mark Twain was brought up i
2、n the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi. He was twelve when his father died and he had to leave school. He was successfully a printers apprentice, a tramp printer, a silver miner, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and a frontier journalist in Nevada and California. This knocki
3、ng about gave him a wide knowledge of humanity. With the publication of his frontier tale, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras county, ” Twain became nationally famous.Howells was born in a small town in Ohio and brought up in the humble surroundings of the rough-and-ready American Mideast. He
4、 had little formal education but was widely read, including many famous writers such as Heine, Irving and Jane Austen. Then, he became a reporter, and by 1860, had had three of his poems printed in the Atlantic Monthly.Henry James was born into a wealthy cultured family of New England. His father, H
5、enry James,Sr., was an eminent philosopher and reformer, and his brother William James was to be the famous philosopher and psychologist. Henry James was one of the few authors in American literary history who did not have to worry about money. His upbringing is unusual: he was exposed to the cultur
6、al influence of Europe at a very early age. Later he met and developed a life-long friendship with William Dean Howells, who became his “moral police.” For a while he attended Harvard Law School, Where he read, instead of law, French novelists and critics such as Balzac and George Sand. He also read
7、 intensively George Eliot and Hawthorne. He toured England, France and Italy.and met many famous person such as Flaubert.Secondly, you will be given some masterpieces of them to find more differences. The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, which was written by Twain, tells a story about the United State
8、s before the Civil War, around 1850, when the great Mississippi was still being settled. At that time, there are full of violence there. What is more, the machine and worship of money were on their way in, but the river-god, with its “sunlight, space, and danger,” had not been forgotten. The story t
9、akes place at the Mississippi River. Along this river floats a small raft, with two people on it: One is an ignorant uneducated black slave named Jim and the other is a little uneducated outcast white boy of about the age thirteen, called Huckleberry Finn or Huck Finn. The book relates the story of
10、the escape of Jim from slavery and, more important, how Huck Finn, floating along with him and helping him as best he could, change his mind, his prejudice about Black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man and as a close friend. The story is through Huck Fins eyes and words to show the cruelty of
11、 the slavery system and the humanity in two illiterate boys other than the rich.The Rise of Silas Lapham, which is known as the best masterpiece of Howells. It tells a story about a person named Silas Lapham, who is a self-made man. He starts his paint business from scratch and becomes a millionaire
12、. Then he spent a lot of money on building a gorgeous house in a “respectable” area of the town. Unexpectedly, his daughter falls in love with a young man of a upper class family, the Coreys. Unfortunately, the competition of his business becomes keener. Silas is in danger and facing two choices: to
13、 survive, or to bankrupt. To survive, he must do immoral things, which will do harm to many people in the future. To bankrupt, he will be poor again. Finally, he chooses the latter, and his company goes bankrupt, He falls and suffers, but manages to keep more people from suffering. Falling, he achie
14、ves his moral and ethical “rise.”The Portrait of a Lady written by James tells about the fate of one of those splendid Jamesian American girl, Isabel Archer, arriving in Europe, full of hope and with a will to live a free and noble life, only to fall prey and to the sinister designs of two vulgar an
15、d unscrupulous expatriates, Madam Merle and Gilbert Osmond. As a very rich and noble person, Archer is very self-willed. She refuses a very rich business man, because she wants to find someone unique other than his money or fame. As a result of her character, she is designed by Merle and marries Gil
16、bert who is a hypocritical man regardless of the persuasion of her relatives. After their marriage, Gilbert uncovers his mask. He is so bad a man,and she feel so miserable and tortured. But what she does makes no sense. At last, she escapes from his bad husband.There comes a conclusion from the information above. Different background and life experience leads to their differences in writing style and the class they represent. Mark Twain dealt largely with the low
