A Study Guide for Mark Twain's "Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Mark Twain's "Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535828048

Book preview

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The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

Mark Twain

1899

Introduction

The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg first appeared in Harper’s Monthly in December 1899. Harper Brothers publishers reprinted the story in 1900 in the collection The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Sketches. Twain wrote the story in 1898 while he lectured in Europe, and the manuscript, which is held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, was written almost entirely on the stationery of Metropole Hotel in Vienna. Twain had hoped that a lecture tour would help him recover recent financial losses, which resulted from investing heavily in the unsuccessful Paige typesetting machine. Along with his financial burdens, Twain was depressed after his daughter Susy died, and he also was concerned about the failing health of both his wife Olivia and his youngest daughter Jean, who suffered from epilepsy. Hence, critics often interpret The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg in relation to Twain’s personal discontent, attributing the story’s pessimistic tone and its theme of disillusionment with human nature to his own misfortunes during the 1890s.

Many critics discuss the town of Hadleyburg as a microcosm of America, comparing the activities and personalities of the townsfolk to various features of the American character. Whether Twain based Hadleyburg on an actual place or constructed it as a fictional symbol remains unclear, although various American towns have claimed to be the model for Hadleyburg. Critics often debate whether The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg represents a story of revenge or of redemption. Some critics emphasize the revenge theme, pointing to the hypocritical characterizations and the deterministic tone of the story. Others analyze Hadleyburg in terms of a revised Eden myth, citing the moralistic theme that demonstrates the possibility of salvation. Commentators often identify the mysterious stranger as a Satan figure. Like the Satan of seventeenth-century poet John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the stranger leads the town to a fortunate fall, but critics disagree whether he is an agent of moral destruction or rejuvenation.

Author Biography

The son of John Marshall Clemens, a judge, and Jane Lampton Clemens in Hannibal, Missouri, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain when he began to write professionally. Before beginning his literary career, Clemens held diverse jobs, ranging from riverboat pilot and occasional gold-miner to journeyman printer and journalist. He spent much of his early adulthood traveling up and down the Mississippi River by steamboat and throughout the western frontier with his brother Orion, who became Nevada’s secretary of territory in 1861.

Clemens’s earliest works include a series of letters published in regional newspapers that reported the risk and adventure of life on the frontier. Sensing America’s appetite for news, especially the sensational kind, Clemens often peppered his reports with outlandish hoaxes and tall tales, which often caused controversy as readers assumed they were true. A headline Clemens wrote in 1853 for his brother’s Hannibal newspaper, Journal, evinces