Sunday, December 1, 2013
Hey everybody! While reading chapters 23-29 I noticed that Twain seems to have a lot of funerals going on in his book. So far there have been three major instances that he writes about funerals: once when he talks about Emmeline Grangerford and how she makes up poems for funerals; another time when Boggs died when being shot by Colonel Sherburn; and now Peter's funeral. Are there any ideas about why Twain might be writing about so much death? Could there be some type of symbolism?
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That's true-I hadn't given that a lot of thought before! One thing that occurred to me is that maybe Twain is trying to use satire by showing that Southern society is too obsessed with death and upholding the legacy/honor of people who have already died. For example, from what we know about Emmeline Grangerford, she didn't do much with her life other than rushing to scenes of people's death to write obituaries for them, and spending most of her time in her room making pictures about death and grieving. Ironically, she dies after having spent most of her life focused on other people dying instead of living her own life, and her family carries on the pattern of being focused on her death - Mrs. Grangerford spends much of her time sitting in and maintaining Emmeline's room from before she died. This parallels the bigger irony of how the Grangerfords are focused on the death of the Shepherdsons, devoting their entire lives to fighting a feud on behalf of people who have died long ago to uphold the family honor, even to the point of letting their 13-year old son die for this cause. This is similar to how the townspeople are in a huge uproar over both Boggs being shot when they could have prevented it by locking him up, or can barely pay attention during Peter's funeral after days of discussion over his will and all of them following his "brothers" around when they first arrive. I think the ridiculously exaggerated drama in each of these scenarios used to create burlesque could show that Twain is showing the southerners as people who are more focused on tradition and family honor than the present. Death is a symbol of this looking back on the past, so Twain uses it in his satire to show that the people are more likely to simply follow what their ancestors did for the sake of tradition than think for themselves. By emphasizing death, Twain shows that he wants the southerners to think more in the present and not uphold institutions like slavery for the sake of tradition.
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