the white race more mercilessly than he ever condemned any other race. Sadly, the cynical and sarcastic Mark Twain can never be fully understood because only he knew what thoughts he was trying to convey. Twain often used burlesques to get a point across by showing the ignorant how ignorant they actually are. In Huck Finn, Twain linked religion and slavery by showing how the former can pervert knowledge and cause acceptance of the latter over objections of conscience. When Huck is "’born again’, he forgets his vow to aid Jim, and his euphoria as being ‘born again’ resembles the feeling of being ‘light as a feather’ that he experiences after deciding to turn Jim over to the slave-catchers (Fulton 83)." This commentary is as much about the sorry state of slavery as it is about slavery’s Biblical foundation. James L. Johnson dedicated Mark Twain and the Limits of Power to outlining how, like Emerson, Twain’s "solipsism is a fundamental ingredient in much of [his] best work (Johnson 8)." Twain’s characters had or wanted "an extraordinary ability to dominate the worlds in which they find themselves (Johnson 1)." Twain had little faith in a Christian God so he put more faith in the self. Johnson also thought Twain’s bitterness increased as he unearthed that "the larger and more masterful the Self became, the less benevolent he was likely to be (Johnson 7)." Although Twain’s life was common because it had limits he "envisioned a character who might not have to make those accommodations, a hero who might break out of the prison of limitations into a brighter life (Johnson 187)." Frustration with the world, hence a caustic temperament, arose as time wore on but Twain never lost sight and hoped for "mastery over it and freedom (Johnson 189)." In 1907 Bernard Shaw remarked to Archibald Henderson that, "Mark Twain and I find ourselves in the same position. We have to make people...
