Blog #11

I think that in Mark Twain's Two Views of the River, he refers a lot to nature as well as how his feelings about the river have changed over time. He talks about how he once had a strong desire to be where he is now, but now that he has finally accomplished his goal he wishes he still had the same view of the river as before. Now that he is gotten to where he had alwasy wanted to be, he says that he ignores the beauty of the river that he once could see just as easily as the passengers he carried on his steamboat. It seems that Mark Twain's story here has a theme in it that goes along with society today, because it seems like we always want what we do not have, and then once we finally get it we do not want it anymore.

I think that Mark Twain used a lot of description in this story as well as referring a lot to nature and its beauty. Henry David Thoreau also wrote about nature a lot, so there is one similarity between the two authors. Throughout this story, Mark Twain describes to us how his feelings changed over time as he traveled the Mississippi River. He tells us about how he used to view the river as something beautiful, but as time went on began to shift his views from seeing the beauty of the river to only navigating his steam safely from point a to point b. He describes how at first while he sailed on the river he loved the nature and the beauty of it, but as time went on he slowly stopped noticing how beautiful nature is. I think that this would make me kind of sad to know that something that you once thought was so beautiful is constantly around you and you do not even notice it anymore. Overall I think that this story has a good theme and is similar to the way Thoreau wrote because it includes a lot about nature.

Twain, Mark. "Two Views of the River." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus; McGraw-Hill, 2010. 504-505. Print.