How To Tell a Story By Mark Twain-Review

Mark Twain: How to Tell a Story

Introduction

Mark Twain explains that though he is not a perfect story teller, he has knowledge on how stories should be told. He classifies them into humorous, comic and witty stories. He says that the humorous stories are best done in America while the comic ones are English. He adds that the witty stories are practiced by French people. He differentiates the humorous stories from the comic and witty ones. According to him, the humorous stories may be lengthy and lacking a specific point in their conclusion. The comic and witty stories are short and are concluded by a certain point. However, he compares the humorous stories to move the emotions of the audience more than the comic and witty ones do. They are strictly work of art and hence require skills in telling unlike the comic and witty ones, which can be told by anyone.

How Mark Twain Tells His Story

            Mark Twain succeeds in telling a humorous story- From Roughing It which creates eager to the audience right from the beginning. He gives it a title “When the Buffalo Climbed a Tree” which traps the attention of the audience to known how could that have happened! He takes time to explain the long story just as he had explained to be the nature of a humorous story. He tells about how a joyful buffalo hunt which began with a party turned to be disastrous. This becomes funny to the audience because it creates a scene where the hunter becomes the hunted! He creates suspense to the audience who pay more attention to know the fate of the hunter. He further creates another scene where his horse, which could have been used to escape the wrath of the buffalo dropped down. Instead of struggling to escape he lays down to pray. This makes the audience laugh at the act since he lacks any other option.

At the start of the struggle with the buffalo, he did not pray but when there seems to be no other option, he is forced to pray. He gives the buffalo the power to reason and get surprised. The buffalo should have attacked him when he laid down to pray but instead it became frightened. He says that”… it stopped pawing sand and bellowing to contemplate the inhuman spectacle…” Also the act of saddles starting to slip when he tried to escape creates a funny scenario where one struggles to flee for his life in vain. When audience hear that the buffalo stopped pawing sand, it relieves their tension which had built up, eagerly waiting know the fate of the author. It relieves them from the burden of deep concentration and prepares them for suspense again. This starts creating when he says that all of a sudden, the bull made a snatch on them which brought away some of his horse’s tail.

He says that something triggered the horse to get up and makes it funny by saying that he is not sure about it because he was pretty busy at that time. The audience is aware that the horse got up to escape from the attack of the bull. They are also aware that what the author was doing, was struggling to get to the back of the horse but he tries to hide it. This provides the audience with a chance to reason ahead and try to connect the whole story. The act then draws the emotions of the audience close to the story and starts to empathize with the author. He relieves their attention when he says that the horse managed to escape and exaggerates its speed which makes it funny. All of a sudden, he says that the horse threw him off when the rotten girths got loose of him. At that high speed which he says the horse was almost overtaking an antelope, it creates doubt whether he could really have survived. The horse did not stop but instead it continued to escape and this is shown when he says that it gave his saddle a four hundred yard lift high. This brings in a possibility that the bull might have attacked him. The horse had escaped and it is likely that he got injured when he fell down. The thoughts of the audience are directed towards thinking that there was no other option which he could have adopted in order to escape.

Miraculously, he falls on the foot of the only tree in all the nine neighboring counties. It results into other doubt about whether he was able to climb the tree with the injuries he had incurred. He dramatizes it by saying that he used both his four nails and teeth to climb up the tree. He adds that he was unwound which corrects the idea the audience could have created in their minds. He climbed the tree hopefully to make a step towards saving his life which would be impossible for the bull to make. Climbing the tree did not help since the bull followed him up there. He says that the bull was making attempts to climb without despairing. It sets the audience eager to know whether the bull caught up with him. Awarding the bull an ability to climb a tree shocks the audience and sets them keen to know how it happened. As he explains step by step how the bull was attempting to climb the tree, it builds tension to the audience and creates scene whereby they can figure out how it was happening.

They are eager to know whether it made up to the top of the tree. They also start figuring out what each of them did if it made it to the top of the tree. His story traps the mind of the audience and directs to believe that impossible things can happen. As he narrates, though everyone knows that it is not possible for a bull neither to climb a tree nor to think as humans do, he makes it possible. He says that the bull took time to contemplate what he was doing. Though this is not true, he manages to set the audience into a world of imagination where they can assume it happening. He manages to introduce options where the audience had assumed to have none. He shows how his expectations do slip away leaving no alternative options at that moment, only to start finding for others.

His story is humorous since it draws the imaginations of the audience close and involves them in participation of the narrative. When he fell down, he says that he wished that he could have died for a minute if the horse did not. This shows the audience the hopelessness which had struck him after the fell down and the horse escaped. For continuity of the story, he introduces other options. Throughout the story, he has used misfortunes to be the driving factor towards establishing possible options. He has created an imagination that everything he tries to long for help, it turns him down. This is seeing when his horse drops down and also when the girths unstrapped causing him to fall down from the horse.

Conclusion

Mark Twain has followed the explanations he gave on his text how to tell a story.  He has created a humorous story which is long but funny enough to break the monotony of long period of concentration by the audience. He has managed to direct the thoughts of his audience to certain directions then correct them where they make wrong assumptions. He has based the whole story on imagination in order to be able to manipulate the thinking of the audience easily.

He also set the audience into dilemma trying to clear any possible options towards his survival from the attack. This involves the audience fully into participation through thinking of any possible solution to make him escape. After a while, he introduces an option and this relieves the audience from the hard mental work.

His story has not ended with a main point but only a resolution to the problem. This has cleared the suspense of the audience about whether at the end he managed to survive in good health or the battle with the bull left him wounded.