The Innocents Abroad

For the Gene Wolfe collection, see Innocents Aboard.
The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress

Innocents Abroad cover
Author Mark Twain
Country United States
Language English
Genre Travel literature
Publisher American Publishing Company
Publication date
 1869[1]
Media type Print
Pages 685
Preceded by The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Followed by Roughing It

The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress is a travel book by American author Mark Twain, published in 1869, which humorously chronicles what Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City (formerly USS Quaker City), through Europe and the Holy Land, with a group of American travelers in 1867. It was the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime,[2] as well as one of the best-selling travel books of all time.[3]

Analysis

Innocents Abroad presents itself as an ordinary travel book. It is based on an actual event, in a retired Civil War ship (the USS Quaker City). The excursion upon which the book is based was billed as a Holy Land expedition, with numerous stops and side trips along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, notably:

All before the ultimate pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Twain recorded his observations and critiques of the various aspects of culture and society he encountered on the journey, some more serious than others, which gradually turned from witty and comedic to biting and bitter as he drew closer to the Holy Land. Once in the Holy Land proper, his tone shifted again, this time to a combination of light-hearted comedy and a reverence not unlike what he had previously mocked in his traveling companions.

Many of Twain's criticisms were based on the contrast between his own experiences and the often grandiose accounts in contemporary travelogues, which were regarded in their own time as indispensable aids for traveling in the region. Above all others, Twain lampooned William Cowper Prime's Tent Life in the Holy Land for its overly sentimental prose and its often violent encounters with native inhabitants. Twain also made light of his fellow travelers and the natives of the countries and regions he visited, as well as his own expectations and reactions.

Themes

Illustration: Leaning Tower

A major theme of the book, insofar as a book can have a theme when assembled and revised from the newspaper columns Twain sent back to America as the journey progressed, is that of the conflict between history and the modern world; the narrator continually encounters petty profiteering and trivializations of history as he journeys, as well as a strange emphasis placed on particular past events, and is either outraged, puzzled, or bored by the encounter. One example can be found in the sequence during which the boat has stopped at Gibraltar. On shore, the narrator encounters seemingly dozens of people intent on regaling him, and everyone else, with a bland and pointless anecdote concerning how a particular hill nearby acquired its name, heedless of the fact that the anecdote is, indeed, bland, pointless, and entirely too repetitive. Another example may be found in the discussion of the story of Abelard and Heloise, where the skeptical American deconstructs the story and comes to the conclusion that far too much fuss has been made about the two lovers. Only when the ship reaches areas of the world that do not exploit for profit or bore passers-by with inexplicable interest in their history, such as the passage dealing with the ship's time at the Canary Islands, is this attitude not found in the text.

Illustration (1855): Mount Tabor "stands solitary .. [in a] silent plain .. a desolation .. we never saw a human being on the whole route .. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country" ~ Mark Twain, 1867[4][5]

This reaction to those who profit from the past is found, in an equivocal and unsure balance with reverence, in the section of the book that deals with the ship's company's experiences in the Holy Land. The narrator reacts here, not only to the exploitation of the past and the unreasoning (to the American eye of the time) adherence to old ways, but also to the profanation of religious history. Many of his illusions are shattered, including his discovery that the nations described in the Old Testament could easily fit inside many American states and counties, and that the "kings" of those nations might very well have ruled over fewer people than could be found in some small towns.

This equivocal reaction to the religious history the narrator encounters may be magnified by the prejudices of the time, as the United States was still primarily a Protestant nation at that point. The Catholic Church, in particular, receives a considerable amount of attention from the narrator, specifically its institutionalized nature. This is particularly apparent in the section of the book dealing with Italy, where the poverty of the lay population and the relative affluence of the church causes the narrator to urge the inhabitants—in the text of the book, if not directly—to rob their priests.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Facsimile of the original 1st edition.
  2. ↑ Norcott-Mahany, Bernard (14 November 2012) "Classic Review: Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain." The Kansas City Public Library (Retrieved 27 April 2014)
  3. ↑ Melton, Jeffery Alan (The University of Alabama Press; Tuscaloosa, Alabama 2002) Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism: The Tide of a Great Popular Movement. Project MUSE (Retrieved 27 April 2014)
  4. ↑ Mark Twain (1997). Lawrence Teacher, ed. The unabridged Mark Twain : Volume 2. Kurt Vonnegut (foreword) (Unabridged ed.). Philadelphia, Pa: Courage Books. pp. 283–284, 304, 430. ISBN 978-0762401819. Retrieved 16 February 2015.
  5. ↑ Mark, Twain. Harim, Tsel, ed. "The Innocents Abroad". shechem.org. Machon Helkat Hasadeh Elon Moreh, Israel. Retrieved 16 February 2015.

As a travel book, Innocents Abroad is accessible through any one of its chapters, many of which were published serially in the United States. (A compilation of the original newspaper accounts was the subject of McKeithan (1958)). In many of the chapters, a uniquely Twainian sentence or word stands out. A sampling of chapter material appears below and includes links to visual representations as well as to dedicated Mark Twain projects that have included Innocents Abroad in their sweep:

Reviews

Secondary references

Mark Twain projects

On-line snippets

Scholarly works

Primary sources

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