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영어

Shin, Younghun. “Rethinking of Twain’s Pessimism in The Mysterious Stranger.” Studies in English Language & Literature 43.2 (2017): 137-158. This article aims to reappraise Twain’s pessimism in his posthumous novella, The Mysterious Stranger. This novella is often referred to as powerful evidence that later Twain had a pessimistic view of human society. This novel can be defined as a bildungsroman where young Satan, the main protagonist and ostensively Twain’s mouthpiece, teaches the narrator to become aware of the bitter and miserable reality of human life. He sneers at and despises the human race for their servility to moral sense and deterministic view of life. However, this novel is a very subversive text in that it discredits what the supernatural mentor is saying by showing his extremely cruel propensity from the onset. This negative quality of Satan causes the reader to sift what he says with a critical eye. As a result, Theodore, the mentee and narrator succeeds in gaining a more balanced perspective of the human race and its destiny. Similarly, it can be said that the author wants, though indirectly and passively, his readers to have a more tolerant and patient view of human society rather than comply with Satan’s fierce misanthropy. (Hansung University)