27 pages • 54 minutes read
Mark TwainA True Story
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1874A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Mark Twain
Content Warning: This section references racism, enslavement, and white supremacist organizations.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, commonly known by his pen name Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835. After early jobs in printing, mining, typesetting, and riverboat piloting, Twain started his career in writing in 1863 for the Virginia Daily Union. His early writing was characterized by light, humorous work that quickly gained him popularity. His first published work, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” earned him jobs writing travel letters and travel correspondence across America. This early travel literature was often humorous and poked fun at American traditions, society, and romanticism. In 1874, Twain published “A True Story, Word for Word as I Heard It” in the Atlantic Monthly. The short story featured his now well-established light tone but also prefigured his later complex looks at America, the South, and racism. The figure of Aunt Rachel was based on a real woman named Mary Ann Cord, though it is impossible to know whether Twain did in fact record her story in her own words.
In 1876, Mark Twain published one of his most famous works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which tells the story of a boy living on the Mississippi River. The novel also introduced a character who would serve as the protagonist in Twain’s other best-known work, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Published in 1884, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was one of the first novels written in American vernacular—the white working-class dialect of its narrator, Huck, as well as the African American Vernacular of Huck’s friend Jim, whose voice in some ways resembles that of Aunt Rachel. Jim’s character has attracted a great deal of critical attention and is variously described as both challenging the racism of 19th-century America and perpetuating some of the era’s racist stereotypes.
Twain’s later works delved into many genres, including a compilation of the personal memoirs of President Ulysses S. Grant, a novel called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, and Twain’s own autobiography. His work changed as his views of the world changed. Originally a proud imperialist, Twain’s viewpoint changed as a result of America’s involvement in the Philippine-American War of 1899. He also became heavily involved in unions and was critical of the US government. One stance that remained strong throughout his life was his view on slavery: Twain was an ardent abolitionist who said of the Emancipation Proclamation, “Lincoln’s Proclamation […] not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also” (Twain, Mark. “Independence Day.” 4 July 1907, American Society in London banquet at the Hotel Cecil, London, England).
Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910, in Connecticut. His works are widely read across classrooms and amongst readers in the United States. He is one of the most famous American authors of all time, even referred to as “the father of American literature” by William Faulkner.
Historical Context: The Reconstruction Era
Published in 1874, “A True Story, Word for Word as I Heard It” appeared only nine years after the conclusion of the US Civil War. This was the period of Reconstruction, when states were dealing with the consequences of the war and of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved Americans in 1863, but racism and inequality did not end with the 13th Amendment.
Reconstruction, which began during the war and continued until 1877, was in large part an effort to reintegrate Southern states into the US. As a condition of reentry, they were required to ratify the 13th and 14th Amendments, the latter of which granted citizenship and equal protection under the law to anyone born in the US. States also had to adopt universal male suffrage—i.e., extend the vote to Black men. However, Southern states resisted these measures from the start, adopting “Black codes” that effectively forced African Americans back into indentured servitude through legislation on vagrancy and labor contracts. The era also saw the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, which terrorized Black communities.
President Andrew Johnson and the national government’s response to such resistance was uneven and ultimately insufficient. Although significant progress towards racial equality occurred during Reconstruction, with Black men elected to governmental positions across the South, that progress was quickly lost when the US government withdrew most of its troops in 1877. No new civil rights legislation appeared after that, and some protections were overturned by the Supreme Court. Southern states were thus left free to enact the Jim Crow laws that would remain in place until the mid-20th century. Twain published “A True Story” as Reconstruction was drawing to its close, and the position in which Aunt Rachel finds herself—still doing the same work she did as an enslaved person, even as her status has nominally changed—in many ways anticipates the era’s failures.
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