Command terms - Explanations and examples

Prompt: Evaluate Steinbeck's tone in the novel, Of Mice and Men.

State: This command term asks the writer to identify the topic, term, definition, etc. that best satisfies what is requested in the prompt.  For instance, if the prompt asked the writer to state the author's tone, the response might be, "The author demonstrates a lugubrious attitude." Since simple identification is the easiest portion of the answer, it is lowest on the hierarchy of thought.  That is why multiple choice prompts are easier.  The test taker is only stating the answers, not describing why they were chosen, explaining why they were "true," analyzing their wider significance, or evaluating their relative position within set of values.

Describe:  This command term requires that the writer go a step further and detail the characteristics that make the stated answer correct.  For instance, if she wrote that "The author demonstrates a lugubrious attitude," she might follow that up with, "which is implied by the fates of his characters.  George felt he had no choice about whether or not he should let Lennie live, because he knew that Curly and the others would make his friend suffer.  After Lennie's death, George became just like the other ranchers: lonely and crestfallen.  This implies the author's depressed nature, his despair about humanity."

Explain: Yet again, "explain" asks the writer to raise the bar.  Here, she must explain why the stated and described answers are congruent and appropriate.  Therefore, to the above answers, she might add the following: "An idyllic ending would have had George, Lennie, Candy and Crooks moving out to a ranch together.  Candy's dog may have lived out his natural life, providing his master with a loyal companion during his later years, and Lennie would have tended his rabbits.  Steinbeck, however, had a different attitude about humans that he disseminated throughout his plot.  Despite their best efforts to avoid trouble, trouble found them - in the form of people like Curly.  The author implied that human nature dictates such heinous tragedies - some people want to see others suffer, whether we like it or not.  Sometimes, life is unfair, and often with tragic consequences.  Lennie's death and George's sense of reclusiveness cement the author's grave tone in readers' minds."  Notice that one way to explain is to provide an antithetical position and refute it.

Analyze: Up another notch, there is analysis.  This is where the writer looks at the explanation and then extends the answer beyond the text, extrapolating the earlier data to other portions of the novel or even to the world outside of the text.  Continuing from the above responses, the writer might continue as follows:  "Steinbeck's discourse about humanity pervades the text; his predilection towards cynicism towers over the entire tragedy like a bank of cumulonimbus clouds smothers a beauteous summer evening.  Two unlikely friends had developed a sturdy and poignant bond amidst the decay of the Great Depression.  Thus the seeds were sown for a tale of courage, heroism and fortitude, but Steinbeck could not leave it at that, for he knew the world was not always that kind.  Neither Lennie nor Curly could avoid their natures, insinuating that many humans are likewise weak when opposed by their instincts. The author dangled the dreamy vision of a farm before us, just as that sun peering through the mountainous clouds teases us with visions of a pleasant day.  When the torrents ended, many lives were left in ruins; thus Steinbeck revealed his intentions: when mankind's backs are against the wall, they often revert to their base and depraved natures."

Evaluate: This level requires the most thought and writing skill because it asks for the most independent thought.  The writer must place values on the text, determining its relative worth from her personal perspective - thus, "e-'value'-ate."  Rolling forward with the above examples, the writer may continue thusly: "John Steinbeck enmeshes readers in the tragic tale of George and Lennie, and he convincingly supports his position that human nature frequently rears its sadistic side.  However, his snapshot of humanity is less than panoramic.  It is invariably true that humans are capable of titanic and horrific sadism; however, there are more Slims than Of Mice and Men suggests, so one's perspective on human nature need not be quite so bleak.  For instance, Viktor Frankl told a much different story about our nature, though from a viewpoint of a thoroughly different milieu.  Frankl watched as many of his loved ones were murdered by the Nazis in the death camps of the Holocaust.  In the midst of one of the most tragic events of history, Frankl noticed how many of those who were living the lives of the condemned would, instead of giving up or being self-serving, reach out to their fellow prisoners and offer solace, assistance, even their very own lives.  Frankl concluded that people have what he called a "will to meaning," that they want, more than anything, to have their lives mean something in the grand scheme of the cosmos.  Unlike Steinbeck, Frankl was able to see the glorious potential in human nature, and he did so under direr circumstances than most Americans of the depression era could comprehend.  This is where Steinbeck falls short: Certainly there are tragedies that befall us, but within the human spirit is a magnanimous capacity that has been known to overwhelm tyranny and heartache.  There is no question that Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is an important, even a defining work of American culture, but he leaves out the human potential for majestic, unselfish transcendence of our primal natures.

Dissevering the layers of authorial intent in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

At the beginning of the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is printed this notice:  "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

Thus it is that, at great personal risk, I go forward with this blog about the novel.  Please send me pleasant wishes.

First off, "dissevering" may be a daunting piece of diction, but notice the word "sever" within it, and it should be more recognizable.  This entry is concerned mostly with Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but many of the concepts will be relevant to other works, both prose and poetry.  For one to fully immerse himself in a literary work, he must recognize all of the nuances that arise from the stew of diverse voices, both stated and implied, in that work, and then he must discern and savor this variety of tastes.

As we mature, humans develop a greater ability (some more than others) to put themselves "in another's shoes," as the idiom goes.  This is true in our day to day lives as we interact with our peers, acquaintances, and even with strangers.  Empathy is all about the ability to imagine how others may be feeling, and those who have both empathy and the ability to tailor their reactions so that they complement the feelings of these others, often have a vast advantage in their social exchanges with them.  Empathy, then, can be seen as an evolutionary cherry on top of the sundae called personality.  Identify and acknowledge the feelings of your peers, and you will flourish amongst them, socially.

Conversely, if one has difficulty reading the feelings of others, or worse, if he has this ability but is too prideful to acknowledge or otherwise respect the validity of their emotions, he will struggle to "fit in" socially.  We call this being "socially awkward," or perhaps we might say, "What a/an %&*(#!"  Whichever way it goes, it tends not to be a fruitful condition for that individual.  He may even fall into the trap of assuming that the rest of the world just does not "get him," when in fact it is the other way around.

What does all of that have to do with authorial intent and Huck Finn?  Well, people who have a difficult time being empathetic or sympathetic regarding real humans will likely struggle when trying to see the world from the perspective of a fictional character or a dead author.  Sans this competency, a reader is limited in her proficiency at delving beyond what is literally seen in the text to what is more subtly implied by the author.

For instance, people who first experience Twain through Huckleberry Finn may assume that he is not very literate himself, since the vast majority of the narration is ungrammatical and elementary.  As evidence against this notion, I offer the example of his essay, "Advice to the Youth."  Read but a little and one  shall see that he is not only eloquent but also a sardonic genius.  About lying, for example, he tells youngsters,

You want to be very careful about lying; otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught. Once caught, you can never again be in the eyes to the good and the pure, what you were before. Many a young person has injured himself permanently through a single clumsy and ill finished lie, the result of carelessness born of incomplete training. Some authorities hold that the young ought not to lie at all. That of course, is putting it rather stronger than necessary; still while I cannot go quite so far as that, I do maintain, and I believe I am right, that the young ought to be temperate in the use of this great art until practice and experience shall give them that confidence, elegance, and precision which alone can make the accomplishment graceful and profitable. Patience, diligence, painstaking attention to detail -- these are requirements; these in time, will make the student perfect; upon these only, may he rely as the sure foundation for future eminence.

Now, does Twain believe this to be true?  Is he really expounding on the virtues of lying well?  It is up to the reader to decide whether he is doling out truths or speaking "tongue in cheek."  It takes mental acuity and discipline to discern what the author's intent was.  Was Twain sharing his philosophy of life or was he being facetious?  If I were asked which one I believed to be true, I would probably settle on the author's intent to be equivocal, because, while I see Twain as someone who appreciates and celebrates honor and loyalty, I also know that he often portrays those who attempt to emulate these virtues as easy prey for those who do not, as is seen in Huck Finn when the new judge tries to reform the raging alcoholic, Pap Finn.

What does seem obvious is Twain's cynicism about human nature.  He hoped for the best, but he expected the worst, and those who had faith in the exemplary characteristics of humanity were often the victims of those who sought "suckers."  As P.T. Barnum famously purported, "There's a sucker born every minute." (Note: In writing this blog, I found that it is possible that P.T. Barnum did not actually say this.  One site claimed that it had been spoken by a competitor.)

The Author - 

Now, let's begin the dissevering.  We have the author, a Mr. Mark Twain, formerly known by his given name, Samuel Clemens.  He was raised alongside the mighty Mississippi, just as Huck and Tom Sawyer were.  It was natural, then, for him to use this setting for his two most famous stories, one about Huck and the earlier story which placed Tom at the forefront, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  In his youth, Twain wanted to be a riverboat captain, and at one point, he realized this dream, but only temporarily.  The majesty of the grand waterway had him enthralled, and controlling a vessel upon this powerful river captured his imagination in much the same way that children are mesmerized by the heroism of policemen or firemen.

One must also consider Twain's experiences growing up in the antebellum South, when slavery was a fact of life.  For more information about Twain's lifetime, check out either this brief written biography at Biography.com or view the series of videos.

In short, though he was raised in an age of institutionalized slavery, he developed great enmity for the tradition.  This can be seen in this essay, in which he ridicules the mob justice enacted on blacks during the mid-1800s, when "guilty until proven dead" was the standard practice for blacks accused of crimes.  One must consider the author and his intentions while reading literature.

Authorial Intent - 

What was Twain trying to accomplish or portray while weaving the drawling, languid tale of a twelve year old and a runaway slave?  This is where the reader's ability to draw inferences becomes important.  Was Twain an atheist, or did he just dislike the ways that religious zealots imposed their faiths upon others?  Maybe it was somewhere in between?  Did Twain hate romantic literature?  His ridicule of Tom Sawyer's penchant for making the simplest of tasks into grandiose and even dangerous endeavors indicates that he found it to be unnecessary nonsense.  Or was this just what Huck thought?  Maybe it was only Huck who did not understand the intricacies that Tom built into these adventures.  The fact that Tom's choices risk the lives and livelihoods of others indicates that Twain was not a big fan of these elaborations.

Unless the author is blatant and direct, delivering his themes to readers verbatim, without the smokescreen of indirect messages, then readers must use their analytical skills to unearth the nuggets of meaning spread throughout the text.  What did Twain intend in writing Huckleberry Finn?  Let's just say that none of the answers, neither evens nor odds, are found at the end of the book.  The reader defines the meanings of the text for herself, but in the end, can we confidently identify Twain's purposes for writing the text?  If we do not accurately gauge his meanings and purposes (which may only be verified through a séance, does the book have no value?  I think not.  Meaning and value are generated by gray matter.  They should not be exalted upon pedestals erected by academics.  I will not be waiting for other human minds to determine meaning in my life, since I too was endowed with a three-pound meatloaf called a "brain."

Authorial distance - 

Twain successfully created a broad chasm between his own voice and the personality of his main speaker, the narrator, Huck Finn.  It is quite obvious from the very beginning of the story, that, while Twain is reputed to have written this text, the narrative is not in the voice of a middle-aged man.  Still, one can readily imagine Twain's sense of humor, somewhere within that chasm, lurking behind Huck's narrative.  Huck is an unreliable narrator, partly because he has prejudices that superimpose lenses through which he sees his world, and partly because he is just plain ignorant, relying as much on time-hardened prevarications as he does on disinterred facts.

Novice writers find it difficult to create any writing voice that is much different from their own.  If the author successfully distances herself from the narrator, then she will more likely have orchestrated a powerful and unique speaker's voice.  If Twain had not successfully achieved authorial distance, then the themes in Huckleberry Finn may have come across as preachy and heavy-handed.  For readers, it is absolutely necessary to infer the implications as the author in mid-life seeks to reveal intricacies about life in the South for both young white boys and for slaves, and he attempts to do so through the voice of a fairly ignorant 12 year old.  This was in no way an easy task, especially since Twain carefully concocted a goulash of dialects from Huck's time period, and yes, from Twain's own childhood.  For more details about Twain's use of dialects, click this link.

To create this effect would take extreme attention to detail, a meticulous intensity which guided the narrative towards realism, not idealism.  Perhaps this is why the dialects, particularly Jim's, are so very controversial.  Huck's world was not always pretty, so taking a "slice of life" from his journeys is going to have a little bit of "the good, the bad, and the ugly."  That's what Realism is: Not the world as we want to see it, but the world as it is.  Click here for a slideshow that details the movement from Romanticism to Realism, and some of the reasons for the movement.

Mood - 

In literature, the term "mood" denotes the emotions that the author attempts to evoke from readers.  If she wants to truly get into the minds of the readers, pathos matters.  For writing to be poignant, it must target not only the head (logos) but also the heart (pathos), not to be confused with the melodramatic bathos, which we will see with Emmeline Grangerford.

Watch for the moments in the novel where Twain tries to get readers to truly feel the calamitous quandary that Huck is in as he attempts to navigate the treacherous waters of institutionalized racism and his loyalty to a newfound friend, of whom almost none of his peers would approve.  Be vigilant, also, for instances in which Twain tries to capture the emotions of Jim's predicament as he tries to put his faith in a pre-teen, semi-literate boy while still hoping to see his beloved family again.  Lastly, notice the stark contrast offered by others encountered by the duo.  Many they meet along the way are quite cavalier or outright ignorant about the heroic nature of the pair's quest, not only for freedom but also for self-discovery.  We are supposed to feel some pity, some contempt, a bit of enmity, and even outright rage about some of the injustices encountered along the way.

But, as it turns out, mood is a very personal experience, each reader being affected in subtly different ways.  Hopefully, your pathos will move beyond the typical "This book is sooooo boring."

Purpose - 

Certainly, there is some overlap between authorial intent and author's purpose, but they are not identical or necessarily synonymous.  With authorial intent, we look at what we believe the author meant when he wrote narratives in particular ways.  Did he mean to create the themes that seem evident?  Is Moby Dick a gargantuan symbol of the omnipotence of God or nature, or was he just an antagonistic, ginormous whale?

With purpose, we analyze what we believe the author was trying to accomplish by creating his narrative.  Was Twain out to ridicule racists and con-artists?  Did he hope to derail the locomotive of institutionalized racism?  Or, as many of my students have suggested, was he simply trying to sell another story?

I would contend that one purpose Twain had was to show the world how insidious a power an ill-formed education can be.  Huck, just as was true with Twain when he was a young boy, saw nothing inherently wrong with slavery.  It was as it always had been in his mind, and the institution itself was over 300 years old by the time Twain was born.  What institution or tradition of today can you name that is still primarily intact after 300 plus years?  I believe that Twain proposed that such an education was brainwashing disguised as wisdom, and he wanted to show that even children could see the ludicrous nature of such a tradition.

What do you think his purpose was?  Make sure you agree with your teacher.  Your grade depends upon it (based upon what you have read so far, what purpose do you believe I had for writing the sentences immediately preceding this one?).

Point of View - 

As mentioned elsewhere, how one chooses to narrate a story has a major impact on how the plot is received by readers.  Imagine if Jim were to narrate the entire story.  What would be left out?  What would be added?  For starters, we certainly would have had a much better perspective of the kind of terror he would have felt.  He had to know that his capture at any point along the journey down the Mississippi would probably have diverted that journey so that it ended at the looped end of a rope.  We would have been privy to his fears and doubts concerning Huck.

What if Twain had decided to narrate this tale as he had The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, in the third person.  Would we get the same dose of Huck's personality as we do in the current version?  Would we develop as much kinship with Huck as we do when he regales us with his own narrative?  After having seen some of Twain's other stories, do you believe that Huck's story would have been unchanged by a detached third person narrator?

What if Twain had floated the first person point of view so that we occasionally heard Miss Watson's perspective, then we floated directly to Pap's lens, tasted a bit of Jim's outlook, and only then returned to Huck's views?  How much better or worse would the story have been if told from these multiple angles?

Consider the other Twain story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."  That was in what is called a second person point of view.  In that story, the majority of the narration came from the speaker Simon Wheeler as he supposedly told the story to Twain.  In essence, then, Wheeler, the first person, told the story to Twain, the second person, and we listened in.  Because Twain decided to relate the story of Leonidas W. Smiley by filtering it through the mind and voice of Wheeler.

When an author changes point of view, he not only changes the perspective from which the story is told, but he also alters the speaker, style and voice of the story.

Speaker - 

The speaker is an artificial creation of the author.  Whenever we write, the genre, purpose, style, tone, mood, and more all impact the quality of the speaker.  Sometimes, the speaker has the same basic voice as the author.  Other times, the speaker's voice changes to fit his purpose.  If I am writing a poem, I will choose a unique speaker.  If I am writing a narrative poem, that speaker will be a first, second or third person narrator.  If I am writing an expository essay, my speaker will be more matter-of-fact and direct.  On the other hand, if I am writing a persuasive essay, the speaker that I create will likely use stronger language, diction with more powerful connotation, so that I can use pathos as well as logos it supporting my argument.

How about Twain's speaker?  Well, it is fairly clear that he chose a speaker who was uneducated and conditionally ethical.  When he chose such a speaker, he was immediately limited in some ways by Huck's personal limitations, like his grammar, his vocabulary, his experiences, his educational background.  At the same time, Twain was liberated by seeing the world from a different perspective imagining it through the eyes of a different human.

The number of speakers that any one author can create is nearly limitless, but the majority of us seldom learn more than one maybe two types of speaking voices.

Style - 

Many decisions are made by the author as she begins to craft her narrative.  What point of view will I use?  Should it be a character or not?  Will he or she be a key character or a secondary observer?  Will my narrator be objective and dependable or subjective and unreliable?  What would be accomplished by choosing one over the other?

How about diction?  Do I want to use verbose, elevated diction, or do I want to be more colloquial?  I suppose I should consider my audience.  For whom am I writing this?  I should make sure that the language is interesting and accessible for my target audience; therefore, I must not, as Goldilocks would agree, aim too high or too low, instead making sure my word choices are "just right" for my target audience.  Whatever words I choose, I must be careful about connotations.  Heaven forbid that I should choose the "n-word" over "negro," "black" or "African American."  The connotations of that atomic word are off the chart.

Figurative language?  Will metaphors, similes, hyperbole, understatement, synecdoche and metonymy enhance my story, or do I want to be more literal than figurative?  Should I keep my readers guessing with nebulous symbols that can only be recognized by academic elites, or should I keep my symbols more on the Seussian level?

Genre, yes, genre.  What type of story am I writing?  Is it a mystery?  If so, do I want to create a narrator who is evasive or ignorant?  Is it a fantasy?  Do I want grandiloquent verbiage that bespeaks a manner simultaneously majestic and pristine, such as that which would be purveyed by wizards and kings, princesses and knights?  Perhaps instead I will construct a tale of mobsters, and the words will be terse and guttural, indicative of a subculture that subverts formality in favor of expediency.

When we look at The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of the key style decisions Twain made regarded diction, most particularly the various dialects with which he chose to tell the story.  Twain wrote:

In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of the last.  The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

According to Twain, he endeavored to meticulously recreate the sounds of normal speech patterns around which he was raised.  In doing so, he was attempting to portray the reality of his childhood, lending to the verisimilitude of Huck's tale.

Another stylistic choice made by Twain was to employ satire by weaving a series of tragicomic vignettes around the frame story of the daring duo's journey down the Mississippi.  While wandering through each of these vignettes, one need only wait to see what portion of humanity Twain will be mocking next.  As readers peruse the branches that sprout from the trunk of the main tale, they will encounter Twain's sardonic take on religion, royalty, romanticism, lugubrious poets, mob violence, general gullibility, family feuds, and more.  Certainly, Twain's main focus is Huck and Jim, but along the way he diverges so he can take jabs at many others.

Twain's style is quite famous.  By now, the reader may be getting some inklings about my writing style.  Dear Reader, I wonder, do you know your own writing style?

Subject(s) - 

Opinions differ, but I make a clear distinction between subjects and themes.  Some would call love, hatred, revenge, and redemption themes.  I denote them as subjects, and then the themes would be what the author has to say about love, hatred, revenge and redemption.  It is fairly clear in the first few chapters that some of Twain's subjects include education, parenting, religion, romanticism and slavery, just to name some of the key subjects.

It takes some thought to become aware of even these basic ideas.  For instance, how many times have we heard people make comments such as, "This book is so stupid and/or "boring," "hard to understand," et cetera.  Chances are pretty good that these readers could not get past the dialect to even see what Twain's subjects were.  If one cannot identify what it is the author is writing about, it is highly unlikely that he can go beyond that elementary epiphany and establish the more subtle aspects of the work, like authorial intent, purpose, theme or tone.  If one did not realize that Twain was satirizing drunken ignorance when he had Pap Finn ramble on about "govment," then it is unlikely he will see the irony behind such a pathetic human looking down upon a very eloquent, elegant, and educated man as the black professor that Pap called "the mulatter."

Sure, it is easy to say that the main subject of the book is a journey down a big river by a young boy and a slave, but such a narrow view of this novel will leave the reader on the outside of a profound novel, one that changed not only American literature but also the American ethos.  One could argue that Twain - along with Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth and other nineteenth century civil rights pioneers - helped to pave the way for twentieth century reformers like Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lyndon B. Johnson.  Centuries of oppression did not stop on a dime when the Civil War ended.  Strongly rooted ideas, after having grown for centuries, must be hacked down, one chop at a time, and Twain was one of the first lumberjacks at the base of the subjects called "racism" and "slavery."

Tone - 

More so than other elements of authorial intent, it is sometimes arduous to dissever the author's attitudes about his subjects.  One must consider authorial distance when determining Twain's tone in this novel.  The unreliable narration of Huck leaves many spaces for Twain to imply his sarcasm, derision, sympathy, disgust and more.  What makes discernment dicey is that we "hear" Huck's voice directly, and Twain's persona is only hovering vaguely behind the narrative.  This means that we have to listen carefully to what Huck says, and then we must ask the question, "Why would Twain want him to say that in this particular situation."

For instance, we may assume that Twain is indeed not a racist.  Perhaps we learned that by reading some of his other works, such as his essay, "Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy," in which he berates people who chastised a young boy for throwing rocks at a Chinese immigrant, especially since these very adults were the ones who taught the boy his prejudices.  If we operate from that premise, that Twain is not a racist, then we can also assume that, when Huck makes comments that can be construed as racist, Twain is implying that he, too, was brought up to bear such biases.  At that point, we could say that Huck's tone, as he looks down on Jim as a naturally inferior human (according to prejudices taught to Huck by Pap Finn and others) as being condemnatory or condescending.  This is the narrator's tone.  Behind the scenes, though, we might imagine Twain feeling pity and remorse for both Huck and Jim because both of them are immersed in an ocean of bigotry, and neither of them escapes it unscathed.

In this way, the author can state the narrator's tone while concurrently implying his own attitudes about the situation.  In this case, the authorial distance creates an irony: In order to combat the ideologies of racism and slavery, Twain invented a racist little boy who could help him make that point.  Huck's tone, then, reveals Twain's tone, especially as the plot moves forward and we realize that Huck is a truly dynamic character.  When he abandons his condescension for Jim, he shows that he has outdone all of his elders who still cling to archaic edifices.

Theme(s) - 

As noted earlier under the heading, "Authorial Intent," that three pound meatloaf is all I need to decipher themes embedded in texts.  I need not wait for some expert to deliver meanings to me because I have a meaning making machine resting atop my neck.  To reiterate - subjects are not the same as themes.  A subject is a main idea covered within the text, it refers to a topic covered by the text, but it does not necessarily reveal how the author felt about that topic.

Themes are not the same as authorial intent, however.  The author may not have intended any meanings whatsoever, as Twain claims in the quote at the top of  this blog.  I do not concern myself with authorial intent when I consider themes that are either stated or embedded deeply within the text.  Once the author releases his work to the world, it is owned by readers, and when their minds meld with the static text, a dynamism occurs within all of the new and diverse meatloaves.  When my meatloaf engages Twain's now static writing, it brings to the text all of my experiences, including every memory, every event, every other story I have read, all of my own personal tragic and comic moments, the plethora of films I have seen, the gaggle of philosophers I have studied (what, "gaggle" doesn't work there?), and my meatloaf brings the inert prose to life.

Side note: I grew up in a house where my parents would almost always argue on meatloaf night.  Dad insisted on stirring his meatloaf, peas and mashed potatoes together into a cumulonimbus concoction.  Mom would chastise him for ruining the dinner she so carefully prepared, and Dad would say, "It all mixes together eventually anyhow!"  See, now who else is going to bring that memory to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?

In the end, the key point is that theme is very personal, especially since we cannot ask many of the most famous authors what they meant anymore, not without psychic mediums.  Themes, then, are meanings that readers skim off of the top of the text, the cream that makes reading worthwhile.  Sadly, many young people have stopped developing the capacities of their meaning making machines as Hollywood, Xbox and Playstation have usurped that function, leaving these zombies with some truly bland meatloaves.

Voice - 

Writing voice is essentially the personality implied by the text.  When one is writing an expository essay, his voice tends to be arid and somewhat didactic.  When writing a love letter to that special someone, the voice tends to be sappy, slobbery (?) and romantic.

Voice has much to do with style.  The persona that one creates through words is heavily impacted by diction, figurative language, syntax, et cetera.  The sophistication of one's writing voice - in fact the ability to write in numerous, diverse voices - improves over time with more writing.  We develop our writing voices by writing, editing, reading others' writing, getting feedback from people about our efforts - in short, to be a better writer, one must read and write prolifically.

Twain's voice, in the novel in question, is largely constrained by his chosen speaker, Huck.  In this case, the voice that relates the tale is that of a pre-teen, partially literate, ethically-challenged boy.  In other writings, Twain tends to be somewhat magniloquent (that's a new one for me).  He loves irony, juxtaposing oddities for humorous effect.  I am a huge fan of Twain's writing voice, perhaps because I would like mine to be just as sophisticated.

The next time you want to include the following thesis in an essay, "There are many similarities and differences between these two things," please endeavor to improve your writing voice before your readers succumb to an epidemic of terminal boredom.