The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain - Patricia M. Mandia (essay date 1991)
Patricia M. Mandia (essay date 1991)
SOURCE: "The Mysterious Stranger and '3,000 Years Among the Microbes': Chimerical Realities and Nightmarish Transformations," in Comedic Pathos: Black Humor in Twain's Fiction, McFarland, 1991, pp. 102-22.
[In the following essay, Mandia discusses pessimistic themes in The Mysterious Stranger and "3,000 Years among the Microbes. "]
"When I was a man, I would have turned a microbe from my door hungry. . . . The very littleness of a microbe should appeal to a person, let alone his friendlessness. Yet in America you see scientists torturing them, and exposing them naked on microscope slides, before ladies," Huck, a man who has been transformed into a cholera germ, points out in "3,000 Years Among the Microbes." In The Mysterious Stranger, Theodor Fischer fears that the beautiful image of Satan dissolving himself is only a dream. Theodor marvels, "You could see the bushes through him...
[The entire page is 7591 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
