Corn-pone
Opinions
Though America
had become united and slavery had been abolished, Mark Twain’s conception of
the meagerness of humanity was only slightly shaken. His essay serves as a
caution to all people who feel too highly of themselves; his essay serves as a declaration
for those who cannot, or are too busy, to reason; his essay serves as a
manifesto for the nature of change in a society.
Human conformity
is the main topic surrounding Twain’s interesting essay. In his terms, the
rational explanation for the desire of conformity is self-approval, and
everybody has the need for self-approval.
Twain himself
also lived an interesting life. Though his early writings could be categorized
as “light”, his later writings were overshadowed by a mood of despair toward
mankind. Although he was widely acknowledged as a great thinker and writer,
some even gave him the title “father of American literature”, his shift in tone
could also possibly be attributed to his financial troubles and family deaths
later in his life. Nevertheless, the strategies and rhetoric Twain used to
convince his readers in the essay is powerfully gripping.
With amusing anecdotes, both historical
and personal, Twain proves his idea of human conformity by slowly moving from
the basis of an individual to a nation. At first, Twain only uses interesting
personal stories, such as how a slave preached and said, “…gits his corn pone,
tell you his ‘opinion”(Oates 1), but the reference becomes bigger as the essay
goes, and by the end it is about nations, and how their parties operate: not
because of rational, but because of personal feelings and the desire for
self-approval.
Twain has deeply persuaded me of
conforming to his opinion, and therefore achieves his purpose. The first
anecdote in his essay has already aroused my interest to move on, and as
numerous other examples are listed afterwards, I cannot help comparing my
experiences with those. Microsoft was overcome by Apple; tablets gradually
replaced laptops… How many people can really list the improvements between
these products? Not many, probably.
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