The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain - Robert Keith Miller (essay date 1983)
Robert Keith Miller (essay date 1983)
SOURCE: "The Growth of a Misanthrope," in Mark Twain, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1983, pp. 161-95.
[In the following essay, Miller suggests that The My sterious Stranger draws together concepts expressed in Twain's earlier work, but does not truly represent his own sentiments.]
The most important of Twain's shorter works, it [The Mysterious Stranger] is also the most contemptuous. In various manuscripts, it engaged Twain's attention from 1897 to 1908 and was "published" only after his death. His last work, in a manner of speaking, and one of his most problematic, it must be considered in detail.
Twain had a lifelong fascination with Satan that can be traced to his childhood. In his Autobiography, he recorded how his mother was once moved to defend the devil:
She was the natural ally and friend of the friendless. It was believed that, Presbyterian as...
[The entire page is 7540 words long]
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