Roughing It | Themes

Roughing It Themes

Language

Mark Twain's "Roughing It" is a novel about the American language as much as it is a travel journal about the author's adventures in the Western United States. The journey itself takes the narrator to the mining districts of Nevada, as well as to San Francisco and Hawaii. While recounting his adventures, Mark Twain dedicates an important part of his journey to an informal study of the English language. He constantly quotes the people he encounters by using a written form of English that imitates the phonetics and expressions of the speaker. The following quote illustrates his linguistic method quite clearly:

"'Seth Green was prob'ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson —Sarah Wilkerson—good cretur, she was—one of the likeliest heifers that was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said that knowed her. She could heft a bar'l of flour as easy as I can flirt...
(read more)