Term Paper on "Story of the Good Little Boy by Mark Twain"

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But the Gilded Age, an age in which potentials were available to the few, made the many poor people appear to be fools, as they could never make it rich. The gap between rich and poor was obvious. While Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish threw a dinner party for her dog, who arrived wearing a $15,000 diamond collar, most of the other humans in America went hungry and wore rags. Those who worked in the factories owned by the rich felt uneasy and resentful of the instant fortunes of luckier fellow men and women. Immigrants were arriving by the boatload and jobs were hard to find. The 12 million families who earned $380 a year or less dealt with crime and crowded living spaces. Strikes and riots resulted, and the middle class became fearful of "carnivals of revenge" by the poor (PBS 1999).

Politics was the answer for many, and Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall began to provide services to the poor, while filling his own pocket. This mindset went to the highest levels and corruption reached into the presidency and his cabinet for Ulysses S. Grant (PBS 1999).

Oil and steel made millionaires out of businessmen, like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, who were also known as robber barons for their ruthlessness. Many fortunes and names were made famous during this time and the life of the rich and famous became fodder for the literary market. Mark Twain's the Gilded Age, was another ironic story of political leaders of the day who had made it by being "bad," rather than "good" (Library 2007).

All this prompted Mark Twain to decry, "What is the chief end of man? -- to get rich. In what way? -- dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must" (Twain-1873).

Ever the master of irony as a way to teach his fellow man what he felt was a lesson worth learning, Twain wrote the Gilded Age and the Story of the Good Little Boy to show the world that it doesn't take a lot of thought and observation to figure out that everyone who is good cannot become a millionaire. In his story, the little boy was good to the nth degree, never disobeyed his parents, loved going to church and obeyed all the rules at home, at school and at church, even when his "sober judgment" told him it might not be the most profitable thing to do. The other children did not understand him, but he didn't care. The others protected him because they considered him "afflicted." He read his Sunday-school books and believed everything they said, even though he never saw it in everyday life. He knew all the good boys died young, as it was demonstrated in all the books he read. So he decided he wanted to become one of them. He wanted to die young, too, and have all his relatives and friends standing around mourning his passing. He wanted a book written about him telling how he gave to the poor and refused to tell on other children who did bad things. He wasn't sure he really wanted to die, but that was the end result of good boys, as he saw it, and he was determined to see it through.

Up to this point, Twain is describing the aspirations of all children who want to take their parents' religion of Christianity seriously. They want to believe the literature put out by the church and by Christian authors, such as Horatio Alger. They want to be honored and considered to be "good little boys and girls" and reap the supposed rewards of being so good. He describes the rationale, which of course is faulty, and the observed end result, which is equally faulty, but depicted rather truthfully of the Christian literature of the day.

The boy goes on to realize that everything turned out the opposite of the way it was depicted in his church literature. It wasn't the good little boys who were rewarded and never broke their legs or had bad things happen to them, but the other way around. He saw that when he tried to do good, bad things happened to him. When he tried to help people or animals, they weren't grateful and blessed him. They were angry and he was the one who got hurt. When he tried to instruct the boys who were disobeying the law, he was punished, but he was still determined to be good.

He tried to get a job with the recommendations that he was a good boy from an affectionate teacher, but he didn't have the experience to get the job, so his recommendation was no good. He came to his end suddenly, trying to do a good deed, but no one knew this and he was simply blown apart "so they had to hold five inquests on him to find out whether he was dead or not." And so he perished without fulfilling his greatest wish, to be honored as a good little boy, because he was trying to do good and was caught by an Alderman who thought he was the one perpetrating the bad deed.

This story was written with "tongue in cheek" by a man extremely observant and knowledgeable about what life had to offer the good and the bad in life. He was able to point out that it often was no use to try to be good, because the bad sometimes got the breaks that the good ought to have had and the good ended up footing the bill. This was Twain's way of saying that the dominating literature of the day was so faulty as to be misleading and criminally ignorant of the truth. As a matter of fact, the truth, he was trying to say, was the opposite of the teachings embodied in the literature of the church, and the do-gooder Christians who had their children read Horatio Alger's novels were doing their children a misservice.

Still, human nature, as in the Good Little Boy's case, wants to believe. One tell oneself and one's children stories like Cinderella and one watches movies like "Shrek" and enjoys the idea that if one is good and continues to be good in spite of all odds that one shall be rewarded with some kind of crown and wealth. It is this idea, that good overcomes all, that humans want to believe, that if one is very, very good one will be very, very much rewarded. Unfortunately, as one comes to find out, this is not the case and often being very, very good annoys others so much that they will do anything to get even.

Still, even Mark Twain must have believed in the Sermon on the Mount:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for… READ MORE