A LIfe Behind the Scenes

Emily Bender
9/28/10
A Life Behind the Scenes

Grief is like a forest. It's dark and deep, twisting around you, never yielding to your pleads and with permission it may cripple you. Samuel Langhorne Clemens is also known as Mark Twain. His story is beyond anything you might think; because he was talented and gifted in many areas. He seemed to have it all together but behind the curtains, the stage and story telling lived a man of many regret, full of bitterness and unyielding hatred towards his creator.

God on the other hand, seemed to despise Clemens, or so he thought. Samuel believed that everything that went wrong in his life was somehow God’s fault. If only he knew that much of the time he spent blaming God he could have spent praising and thanking him for the people he did have left in his life, but when tragedy strikes at such a young age it is hard to see the positive in negative situations. At a very young age, Samuel’s father was struck ill and died shortly after. The boy was taken out of school and made to work to support the family. His lack of education did not hinder Samuel at all. He was a stubborn young man, who was determined to become someone great but before Clemens pursued a career, he fell in love with a young girl from an upstanding Christian family, who were strong in their faith. Samuel knew how they felt towards God and pretended that he loved and honored the Lord as well so that he would be able to marry Olivia. The family consented and the two young lovers were soon married. During the first fifteen years of marriage, the couple was insanely happy. Clemens than pursued a career in writing and they settled down to have a family.


If life were easy, Samuel would have wished that things would always stay the same, but life isn’t easy and is by far fair. From the very beginning Clemens hated God, and his relationship with him was far from perfect. Since Samuel pretended to love God, but truly didn’t, the truth was bound to come out sooner or later. Olivia Langdon’s faith was strong but wasn’t strong enough to influenced her husband. It was his unbelief that took Olivia from the path of God, which made her give up her belief altogether.
After God was completely out of their life, change came upon them, not all bad at first. Clemens accomplished many great things and all his hard work paid, but the fame he had wasn’t enough and he needed more. He also needed more money. He pushed himself to become better, and to accomplish more in terms of writing books, and he took more opportunities to go on the road and speak. These choices brought him farther away from his family. He lost many special moments, which he would never again get back.

Fame, wealth, and love may be great but grief out does everyone of them. Grief has the power to consume a person as it did to Twain, and death followed him around. The world seemed unfair. Taking everything from him that he held so dear. While on a tour for his books, Twains favorite daughter died of meningitis, not being able to be there with her greatly deepened his bitterness. He never recovered from such a lost and shortly following was his wife and second daughter who died. All Twain had left was his last girl. He became frustrated, which helped increase his sorrows.

Bankruptcy hit him hard and his health also began to weaken. Everything seemed to be falling apart in Mark Twains world, and the person he blamed for it all was God and Adam. He writes in the 1890’s

“Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is,
Knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam,
The first great benefactor of our race. He brought death
into the world.” (Twain 1).

Clemens was miserable. His wish and only hope was death. He allowed everything to pull him down under. Nothing but death could comfort him now. His last wish was to at least see Halley’s comet appear once more in the sky. It appeared the day of his birth in 1835 and in time it also reappeared in 1910 the year of his death. Mark Twain was a beloved and famous author. His works will always be remembered for their humor and blunt remarks. All may not remember his life behind the stage but those who do will pay heed to the grief and bitterness he allowed to devour him alive.