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The Mysterious Stranger: A Romance by Mark Twain ( Author )
Lemonjar
N.A
01-01-1916
Click "free sample" to read the whole book. No need to purchase.Traum plays cruel tricks on the townspeople. He hides a wallet with gold for the priest to find, but it is the exact amount of gold lost by an Astrologer. Father Peter is put on trial for theft and only narrowly exonerated. He gives a housekeeper a cat that magically produces money, causing housekeeper’s mistress to be suspicious of her. He can see the future and foresees several unfortunate events. The boys refuse to believe him until one of his predictions comes true. Terrified, they beg him to intercede in other events that will befall their friends and loved ones. He agrees, but instead of saving one of their sick friends, he causes that friend to die quickly, instead of lingering in pain. Traum then magically transports the boys to see other parts of the world. He shows them people in the throes of religious fanaticism, villages that are burning and hanging people as a result of mass hysteria. He attempts to convert Theodor to his nihilistic, anti-Christian world view, but Theodor is horrified, both by the visions Traum shows him and by Traum’s casual amorality. Traum vanishes afterwards, telling them that there is no god, no universe, no heaven or hell. It is all just a futile imagining, a grotesque dream. Nothing exists but humanity wandering in an empty eternity. He admonishes them to find another, better dream. The story is an examination of solipsism, but it goes several steps further than this philosophy. Solipsism states that the only thing that can be known for certain is the self. Your experiences are the only reliable thing that you can truly know. Twain goes one step further by allowing his main character to realize that even the self that he knows is an illusion. There is nothing beyond himself and nothing to himself. It isn’t that he can’t confirm the existence of anything beyond himself. It’s that his own self doesn’t exist at all. This nihilism reflected Twain’s outlook towards the end of his life. Only two things in the book are worthy of praise, animals, and laughter, but there is very little laughter in the story. The malevolent being here is without morality or conscience and exists only to undermine Theodor’s sense of security. By the end of the story, Theodor is left with no hope at all.
2307240479
Book
epub
2,061.51 KB
English
Language and Literature American literature
MYR 0.01
1
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