Mark Twain’s writings in Innocents Abroad communicate both humane
and unjust aspects of the human experience as opposed to experiences of other
societies around the world. Twain details his touristic experiences through
such locales as India, The Middle East, Italy, and more. His experiences
transplant the witty sardonicism of a Mississippi raised humorist to areas of
the world that are incredibly diverse and separate from Western understanding,
yet Twain finds himself still firmly rooted in an Americanized lens of
experience as he is traveling with a group of stereotypically insensitive
Americans that often pervert his experiences.
Particularly, this is witnessed in the section of Twain’s
reflection on the Middle East, as Twain and company experience the Pyramids and
the Sphynx in Egypt. Twain and his group are here engaging in a blatant act of
thanatourism, which is a particularly dark type of tourism that allows tourists
to visit sites of death or grief for a variety of purposes, from education to
entertainment to memorialization. Twain’s Egypt writings convey a definite
sense of thanatourism as the group experiences the Sphynx.
Twain
recounts of the Sphynx “It was gazing out over the ocean of Time – over lines
of century waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and nearer
together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward the horizon
of remote antiquity. It was thinking of the wars of departed ages; of the empires
it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations whose birth it had witnessed,
whose progress it had watched, whose annihilation it had noted; of the joy and
sorrow, the life and death, the grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow
revolving years. It was the type of an attribute of a man – of a faculty of his
heart and brain. It was MEMORY – RETROSPECTION – wrought into visible, tangible
form. All who know what pathos there is in memories of days that are
accomplished and faces that have vanished – albeit only a trifling score of
years gone by – will have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in these
grave eyes that look so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before
History was born – before Tradition had being – things that were and forms that
moved in a vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce knew of – and passed
one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a strange
new age and uncomprehended scenes.”
Here,
Twain describes the dark fascination he holds with the creature, which in
reality is merely a crafted artifact of a different time, a different
civilization – yet, he personifies the Sphynx and imagines the decay it has
witnessed. However, it is import to distinguish that while Twain seems to
utilize this moment of thanatourism to muse on and memorialize ages passed, the
group he is with does not hold the same reverence, as evidence by the incident
of one of the “reptiles – I mean the relic hunters” attempting to chip off a
shard of the Sphynx’s ancient face as a souvenir. This instance reminds the
reader that Innocents Abroad recounts
not only the historical and societal observations that Twain has made – rather,
members of his own country transform into touristic objects of spectacle within
the foreign nations as well.
Images taken from: clip art; http://paulbradleysmith.blogspot.com/
All outside information taken from class materials in Dr. Beringer's ENG 405 class.
Images taken from: clip art; http://paulbradleysmith.blogspot.com/
All outside information taken from class materials in Dr. Beringer's ENG 405 class.
