As we have discussed in class the ending of the short story "The Mysterious Stranger" was sad, depressing and discouraging. The notion that our world is a dream and the entire novel was thought up by Theodor Fischer.
I'm interested to read the other versions of "They Mysterious Stranger" because I believe Twain left them unfinished and did not publish them for a reason. I think it would be interesting to examine the other versions to help understand why Albert Paine and Frederick Duneka used the pieces they did in order to form the story we read in class.
The story was sad to read, because in the beginning of the semester we read books that showed Twain's hope and desire for society to change and become better and this piece basically says, nothing is real so nothing is worth it.
Throughout the class I viewed Twain as a likable person who wrote pieces to enlighten and provoke thought, but this piece was too much for me to handle. I enjoyed reading it, but it was so dark and sad in the ending I wish I could go back to Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn!
I also think it would be interesting to see the other versions of The Mysterious Stranger, especially to cross examine the themes that Twain addressed multiple times. I think that would be interesting because if Twain examines them several times, it most likely means they are particularly troubling or profound for him. In the interest of knowing which things truly troubled Twain and which he threw in simply for good, sardonic measure, I believe an analysis of all of the texts would be helpful.
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ReplyDeleteConsistency of major themes such as futileness, social class dynamics, religion, and solipsism would be particularly interesting to analyze. Did Twain intend to emphasize all of them within this one piece, or are they just several individual main themes arbitrarily thrown into a pot of textual stew without any regard for context? I think a close study of the other versions, like Whitney suggested, would yield a better understanding of Twain’s intentions. But, without a completely finalized text, I guess we’ll never know. Unless, we had a Matt’s time traveling phone booth . . .
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