Mark Twain's 'Two Ways Of Seeing A River'

“Two Perceptions With Different Meanings”
Through young eyes we can see a whole different image of what the world is. Through this world we tend to have a whole different idea on our surroundings and look at things in a whole new way. If one was to take what we know as adults and try to compare and contrast that with what we knew as children we can see how we develop but at the same time how we forget. In Mark Twain’s, “Two Ways of Seeing a River”. Twain is able to speak of how a young man begins a journey seeing things he never saw before and taking in the beauty of it such as a small child would take his mother or fathers hand with no hesitation. Then he is able to express to the reader how no matter how many times you see images in
life they all start to become in a sense, “routine with continued exposure,” in a way that we start to lose grasp on the things that we once grasped with open arms. Many times we as humans can see a small child playing and we tend to miss the youthful vigor and livelihood we once had.
We tend to remember those things that we had but realize that we have our normal day to day lives to live and can never fully be able to recover that particular way of life. As Twain wrote, “I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river!” (438). Through this he says how we may have once saw the beauty and fun in life through which we actually see in our day to day lives but given time everything is routine and more ordinary to us. Twain also said, “I still kept in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steam boating was new to me” (438-439). We should rather like a child enjoy those things that we had with a passion and to never let them go. When loved ones die do we just forget about them and never remember, or do we move on and remember those things that made us happy and too never forget those memories in order to move on and hope that once again we can feel again that joy. Remember the times when we once used our imagination in such a way where we bask our very minds with joy and
hope. Joan Didion also wrote a great peace called, “On Keeping a Notebook” (114-119). Joan seemed to have a different idea on remembering the past, while still keeping up with her daily life. She also seems to realize how only children and the elderly seem to wade in the glory of what is all around us. Joan writes, “Only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast, dwell upon self, interrupt with memories of beach picnics and favorite Liberty lawn dresses and the rainbow trout in a creek near Colorado Springs” (117). Didion expresses how many individuals seem to go about their day to day lives in the middle of their lives without seeing the bigger picture. Routine seems to be more important. Children, on the other, hand seem to laugh and enjoy all of the beautiful images that everyday life has to offer. Those very things that made us comfortable as children like seeing a tiger at the zoo, fishing for the first time or even seeing a rainbow on a beautiful spring afternoon. It seems we tend to forget those simple things as we grow. As Twain says, “a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river’s face”. (439) Should adults cease to forget? Do we leave everything from those beginnings tucked away in a box never to be seen or heard from again. In all honesty, adults should embrace our childhood ideas and grow up seeking those very adventures that made us whole. Twain embraces this by telling the reader of a wonderful sunset that he as a young man witnessed: “A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water”. (439) He thus goes on to tell us how through time he learned to take these things as day to day sights to be used to help him throughout the day. We as humans seem to do the same. When we see a beautiful rainbow colored sunset do we not tend to think rather that it is time for bed, or when we see a majestic rain in that very sunset that touches the hills at a distance do we still not tend to think rather of just staying dry or how long it may last. For through the authors, Twain and Didion, we see an idea of the beauty of life and why we should remember the past while keeping with our daily lives. So in comparing and contrasting the lives of youth compared to the daily lives of adults we see we do forget a lot of what we should actually remember. For through our very youth we grew to what we are today. No, we may never be a samurai warrior or an African safari guide but those ideas helped us develop and understand the very world around us.

Works Cited Comley, Nancy. Fields of Reading. Didion, Joan. On Keeping a Notebook. 9th edition. New Yorkand Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. 114-119. Print. Mark, Twain. Two Ways of Seeing a River. 9th edition. New York and Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2010. 438-440. Print.