Unit Four Research.

Mark Twain received his name while working as a riverboat pilot. Mark Twain really means "Two Fathoms" or that it was clear for the boat to keep going. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. We find racism or rather slavery ways to be of great controversy. In that time the through of a black and white equal was absurd. An example would be, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn we see a boy who leaves his home to be away from his abusive father and runs into a slave with whom he travels down the Mississippi with. This slave becomes his friend and they both treat each other equal. That was so controversial, especially in that time, because of the ways of society and their beliefs on how wrong this was. In many things throughout the book we find irony displayed. One example being when the runaway slave, Jim, calls Huck "white trash". This irony is there to show in different ways how stupidities, follies, abuses, and so on are put up to ridicule and contempt so that it shows the usage of poking fun at others and society in which one lives (paraphrased from http://www.123helpme.com/assets/15702.html). Irony is shown in real life too, not only in stories like the ones of Mark Twain.
A little bit about the background of Mark Twain will show you his reasoning for the way he portrayed slavery. Twain was raised Missouri, a slave state. His father had had few slaves come through their home and his uncle had had twenty slaves. So as we can see he saw slavery first hand just when he was around family. When he was younger he witnessed a murder of a slave by his owner for the reason of "just having done something awkward". This impacted his view on slavery and writings.
^Twain said once in a letter, "I reckon I had better black my face, for in these Eastern states, n***s are considerably better than white people."
^"The skin of every human being contains a slave."
^In "The Lowest Animal," Mark Twain wrote: "Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some man's slave for wages, and does that man's work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living."
Quotes- work cited- http://classiclit.about.com/od/marktwainfaqs/f/faq_mtwain_slav.htm
His view on slavery is easily portrayed through this and that also with his views in life and ways of writing. A few facts are that he was born on November 30, 1835. He married Olivia Langdon having four children of which one that lived. The one child that lived they named Clara and she had but one child that also died. He published more than thirty books in his career. Also, his most known books of today are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.