Letters From Earth: Mark Twain's Most Controversial Tale

I saw a scene on FaceBook, of a bench on a cliff overlooking surf and beach below.  The caption read, "If you could spend an hour in conversation with anyone living or dead, who would it be?"

It is a fascinating question.  I would undoubtedly opt for conversing with someone who is now dead, some personality from history.  They might include Thomas Edison, Robert E. Lee, General George Patton, John Lennon, Jesus Christ, Vince Guaraldi, Jefferson Davis, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin...the list goes on and on.

Mark Twain

However, one of my top choices would be Mark Twain, the great American writer of the 19th Century.  I find him to be a fascinating personality; I love his wit and wisdom.  Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemmons, was born in 1835 and died in 1910.  He is most famous for his novels, like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, as well as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and The Prince and the Pauper.  He also wrote some great short stories, like "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyville."  All of these works have strong moral messages, and focus on the hypocrisies and idiosyncrasies of the human race.

Two of his novels, Connecticut Yankee and Prince and the Pauper, make the reader see through the other guy's eyes, and take a walk in the other guy's shoes.  If you are not the pariah in a society, reviled and spat upon, you should consider how it would feel.  Some believe these two novels were a disguised appeal for better treatment of blacks in America, at a time when a more obvious appeal would have been met with derision and rejection.

Mark Twain had an amazingly open mind for his time.  I especially enjoyed one of his most controversial short stories, "Letters From Earth."  In this story, Satan is one of Heaven's Archangels but gets on the wrong side of God, and is banished from Heaven for a time.  Having nothing to do, Satan visits earth and finds human concepts of God and Heaven to be highly errant and humorous.  He writes to the other Archangels still in Heaven about his observations.  It is a thought-provoking read, and quite funny -- at least, in the first half of the story.  The second half isn't funny at all, but quite alarming.

Satan finds the tale of Adam and Eve strange and contradictory.  He writes:

Naturally you will think the threat to punish Adam and Eve for disobeying was of course not carried out, since they did not create themselves, nor their natures nor their impulses nor their weaknesses, and hence were not properly subject to anyone's commands, and not responsible to anybody for their acts. It will surprise you to know that the threat was carried out. Adam and Eve were punished, and that crime finds apologists unto this day. The sentence of death was executed.

Satan continues:

Very well, God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden, and eventually assassinated them. All for disobeying a command which he had no right to utter. But he did not stop there, as you will see. He has one code of morals for himself, and quite another for his children. He requires his children to deal justly -- and gently -- with offenders, and forgive them seventy-and-seven times; whereas he deals neither justly nor gently with anyone, and he did not forgive the ignorant and thoughtless first pair of juveniles even their first small offense and say, "You may go free this time, and I will give you another chance." On the contrary! He elected to punish their children, all through the ages to the end of time, for a trifling offense committed by others before they were born. He is punishing them yet. In mild ways? No, in atrocious ones.

And this:

You would not suppose that this kind of Being gets many compliments. Undeceive yourself: the world calls him the All-Just, the All-Righteous, the All-Good, the All-Merciful, the All-Forgiving, the All-Truthful, the All-Loving, the Source of All Morality. These sarcasms are uttered daily, all over the world. But not as conscious sarcasms. No, they are meant seriously: they are uttered without a smile.

It is obvious that Mark Twain did not have a high opinion of many Judeo-Christian beliefs.  Through the years I have come to agree with "Letters From Earth," or much of it anyway, and have rejected many of these doctrines.  A just God would not torture souls in Hell for all eternity for being just what He made them to be.  Nor would he order the slaughter of innocents, as He allegedly did to the Midianites.

I will say that being a Christian has the effect of making people more loving and forgiving of each other, and kind to strangers, and predisposed to do good towards their fellow passengers to the grave.  Christianity does much good for the world, and for the human soul.  However, its bad points are that it saddles its adherents with feelings of guilt and fear, for merely being human; and this deters Christians from fully enjoying their lives on earth.

I like Mark Twain very much.  Like him, I refuse to live a life of guilt and fear.

Postscript:  "Letters From Earth" becomes a bitter rant against the God of the Bible in the second half of the tale, describing the mass murder of the Midianites, saving only the virgin women (to be later raped or sold into slavery) and some of the little children.  Indeed, the Midianite episode describes a cruel God similar to Allah, and is comparable to Mohammed's slaughter of the Quraysh, a Jewish tribe, in 622 AD.  When I first read these Biblical passages, many years ago, I was disgusted and immediately concluded that no just God would order such an atrocity.  However, man is quite capable of such slaughter while using God as his excuse and justification.

"Catcher in the Rye" Author J.D. Salinger Dead at 91 -- What the Book Meant to Me

J.D. Salinger, famous author of "The Catcher in the Rye," has died at the age of 91.  His novels were always special to me, about the confusion and angst of life and one's inability to figure it out or deal with it.

I read "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger as a freshman in college.  The book was in paperback, with a red/brown cover with the title in gold print.  It made quite an impression on me -- and I still have the book.  Years later, my youngest son came home from classes at Bellarmine College Preparatory carrying the same book, with the same red/brown cover.  It was his turn to read it.

The book is written from the point of view of Holden Caulfield, a rich 17 year old high school student who is disaffected and alienated from the adult world around him.  After getting expelled (again) from yet another private prep school, Caulfield spends three lonely days in New York City.

"The Catcher in the Rye" seems an appropriate read for young people who are on the verge of leaving adolescence for adulthood, and who are going through that period of life when everything is reassessed.  Prior to adolescence, everything seems pretty rock solid -- your parents know everything, good always triumphs and if you play by the rules you get to stay up late and eat cookies.  Adolescence is that lonely, painful passageway to adulthood when you first realize your parents aren't perfect and don't know everything, that the world is a messy and dangerous place, and that even people who play by the rules can get hurt.  Worse, there is no place to run to, no place to hide.

Adolescents feel betrayed when they realize this.  It's like finding out there is no Santa Claus.  All the magic and wonderment of existence is deflated like a balloon in a pin factory.  Many if not most adolescents rebel, against what, not even they know.  They are just mightily pissed, depressed and cynical when they find out that there is no free lunch, that life is largely a series of petty humiliations and setbacks, a constant struggle to survive.  Some would just as soon forgo the whole experience, drop out, smoke dope or join a gang.  Holden Caulfield is someone who wishes he could drop out.  He wants nothing to do with adulthood.  He fantasizes about having a cabin somewhere in the woods where he can isolate himself from the rest of humanity.

The story of Holden Caulfield lets adolescent readers know that they are not unique.  Almost everyone goes through the same emotional roller coaster at this stage of their lives.  It is a rite of passage.

The things I most remember about "Catcher in the Rye" are these:
1.  Holden's little brother Allie is dead due to some childhood disease.  Holden remembers that his brother used to love baseball and poetry, and wrote poetry all over his fielder's glove in ballpoint pen [that didn't seem realistic to me then or now].  Now Allie is dead and buried.  Holden finds it strange that his brother is now "surrounded by dead guys" in the cemetery.  Holden's unspoken denial leaped out at me -- the refusal to admit that his brother was one of those "dead guys."

2. Holden hates obscene graffiti and notes that the term "F**K YOU" is written everywhere -- on walls, in bathrooms, on the sidewalk.  He theorizes that after he dies someone will write "F**K YOU" on his tombstone.  This resonated with me, as I always hated seeing obscene graffiti, or any graffiti, the language of contempt for anything and everything.

There are other details I remember, but they aren't important:  how Holden's fellow student at the prep school would clip his toe nails in Holden's room, leaving them on the carpet.  How one of his teachers, with a bad cold and smelling like Vicks vaporub discussed his term paper with him, which he held gingerly "as if it were a turd."  How Holden seemed terrified by homosexuals, thinking that one of his male teachers had made a pass at him.  The novel's gritty details make it seem very real.

"Catcher in the Rye" has been listed in literary circles as one of the best novels of the 20th century.