Advice to Youth

"Advice to Youth"

Mark Twain, 1882

Being told I would be expected to talk here, I inquired what sort of talk I ought to make. They said it should be something suitable to youth-something didactic, instructive, or something in the nature of good advice. Very well. I have a few things in my mind which I have often longed to say for the instruction of the young; for it is in one’s tender early years that such things will best take root and be most enduring and most valuable. First, then. I will say to you my young friends—and I say it beseechingly, urgingly—

Always obey your parents, when they are present. This is the best policy in the long run, because if you don’t, they will make you. Most parents think they know better than you do, and you can generally make more by humoring that superstition than you can by acting on your own better judgment.

• The title lets me know that the audience is the youth.

• Twain says his purpose is to teach a lesson to youth (his audience was a group of young girls). He also reveals that he believes learning advice like this at a young age is when it is most beneficial; when we are young we can learn things that stick with us as we age. The audienceshould be thinking, okay, what does Twain want us to learn? The audience may now be expecting a typical speech from an adult giving correct and possibly stereotypical advice to children.

• Beseechingly and urgingly – hyperboles used to create an exaggeration of the advice to come.

• He tells the youth to obey their parents when their parents ARE present. This is funny and unexpected; the audience probably thought he was going to just straight out say “obey your parents.” However, with his line, it makes the audience think-- what about when the parents are not present?Is he poking fun at the youth by implying that sometimes they don’t obey their parents when they are NOT present? Thinking about the point of satire, he could be helping the audience (and us—readers now) realize one of the things they need to improve on is obeying their parents whether their parents are present or not.

• He states most parents think they know more than kids and that it pays off in the long run to obey them. He uses some humor here in saying that it is just easier and less of a hassle to just go ahead and obey them because they will end up “making you” obey them anyway (and that doesn’t sound too enjoyable!).

• When he states that parents think they know more than kids, this may get us to think about and question whether or not parents really do always know better than children. Are there any situations where a parent might not know more? Situations where a youth might need to listen to their own inner voice?

• When he says you can “make more” by just following what your parents say, he might be saying that you can get more (more freedom, more trust, etc.) by just obeying them than by disobeying them.

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any, also to strangers, and sometimes to others. If a person offend you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick. That will be sufficient. If you shall find that he had not intended any offense, come out frankly and confess yourself in the wrong when you struck him; acknowledge it like a man and say you didn’t mean to. Yes, always avoid violence; in this age of charity and kindliness, the time has gone by for such things. Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined.

• In his first line, he uses some irony here as we expect him to just say “be respectful to everyone” and yet he doesn’t; he says to be respectful to superiors, strangers, and just sometimes (not all the time?) to “others.” However, underneath it all, as we read the rest of this paragraph, he really does want us to be respectful to everyone equally.

• He uses more humor and exaggeration by saying we shouldn’t resort to extreme measures if we are offended by someone, yet he tells the audience to go ahead and hit the person with a brick when we are offended; this is certainly extreme! This is irony as of course he doesn’t want us to go around hitting people with bricks when we have been offended. What does he want us to do? Thinking about the point of satire he probably wants us to examine our behavior and see that we too often react violently, aggressively, or inappropriately when we are offended and we need to change our behavior. Violence is never a good response to a situation.

• When he speaks about confessing to a wrongdoing (after realizing the person that offended you didn’t mean to offend you and you were in the wrong when you hit him or her with a brick) it is humorous in that what good does it do to apologize after you have already hit the person with a brick? Thinking of the point of satire Twain might be telling us that we need to think before we act. When we don’t think before we act, often the action we took cannot be undone, even if we say we’re sorry, the action isn’t erased.

Go to bed early, get up early- this is wise. Some authorities say get up with the sun; some say get up with one thing, others with another. But a lark is really the best thing to get up with. It gives you a splendid reputation with everybody to know that you get up with the lark; and if you get the right kind of lark, and work at him right, you can easily train him to get up at half past nine, every time—it’s no trick at all.

• He starts off with a take on a familiar aphorism (Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise). Then he uses an old idiom about “being up with the lark” which refers to getting up early. The audience probably expects him to support this old cliché and yet he has a new take on it.

• The last part of this section pokes fun at the conventional teaching that says you need to get up early to be successful (healthy, wealthy and wise). Getting up “early” is all relative, you can get up at nine, for example, and do just as well!

• Thinking about the point of satire, Twainmakes us think about why we care what others say or think about us. He says society thinks we are “great” (have a “splendid reputation”) if we get up early, that it says something about us and our character that we got up early, but Twain is trying to make us wonder why it matters when we get up and why it matters what others think.

Now as to the matter of lying. 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 out 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…

• At the start of this section, the audience probably thought he would come straight out and just say “lying is bad, don’t do it.” But instead he uses irony to go about revealing this message. He ironically states that you shouldn’t lie until you have enough practice to get really good at it and then you won’t get caught.

• He drives home the point that if you are caught in a lie it will injure your reputation and the way people see you.

• Thinking of the point of satire, he may want us to really examine ourselves and if we are good liars to recognize the kind of work and practice it has taken us to be good at it. This realization might be a part of shaming us into changing our behavior.

• Also in this section, he addresses those that say “you shouldn’t lie at all.” This might make us question whether this familiar advice is really true or just what people want to hear. Most people never want to admit that lying can sometimes lead to success. Is this then a necessary part of functioning in society? What does it say about that kind of society?

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. Think what tedious years of study, thought, practice, experience, went to the equipment of that peerless old master who was able to impose upon the whole world the lofty and sounding maxim that “Truth is mighty and will prevail”—the most majestic compound fracture of fact which any of woman born has yet achieved.

• In this section too, we have some of the same points: He may want us to really examine ourselves and if we are good liars to recognize the kind of work and practice it has taken us to be good at it. This realization might be a part of shaming us into changing.

• And these points again as well: Most people never want to admit that lying can sometimes lead to success. Is this then a necessary part of functioning in society? What does it say about that kind of society?

• For the maxim, “Truth is mighty and will prevail” it might make the audience question this idea. Does the truth always prevail? Why or why not? What does that say about our society?

For the history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sewn thick with evidences that a truth is not hard to kill, and that a lie well told is immortal. There is in Boston a monument of the man who discovered anesthesia; many people are aware, in these latter days, that that man didn’t discover it at all, but stole the discovery from another man. Is this truth mighty, and will it prevail? Ah no, my hearers, the monument is made of hardy material, but the lie it tells will outlast it a million years. An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is a thing which you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid; such a lie as that has no more real permanence than an average truth. Why, you might as well tell the truth at once and be done with it. A feeble, stupid, preposterous lie will not live two years—except it be a slander upon somebody. It is indestructible, then of course, but that is no merit of yours. A final word: begin your practice of this gracious and beautiful art early—begin now. If I had begun earlier, I could have learned how.

• If this is true, that a lie lasts forever and that truths are not hard to “kill,” what does this say about the society we live in?

• Thinking about the point of satire, as he stresses how lies that slander people are indestructible (lasting forever), he might want us to reexamine how what we say about others (lying, gossiping, etc.) can having lasting damage. People should not believe liars but often do. What aspects of our society would need to be changed in order to quit lying and gossiping about others?

Never handle firearms carelessly. The sorrow and suffering that have been caused through the innocent but heedless handling of firearms by the young! Only four days ago, right in the next farm house to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson crept in and got down an old, battered, rusty gun which had not been touched for many years and was supposed not to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost against her very breast and pulled the trigger!

• This is an engaging anecdote to capture the attention of the audience as he tries to make a point about being careful with guns, especially having guns around children.

He had supposed it was not loaded. And he was right—it wasn’t. So there wasn’t any harm done. It is the only case of that kind I ever heard of. Therefore, just the same, don’t you meddle with old unloaded firearms; they are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever been created by man. You don’t have to take any pains at all with them; you don’t have to have a rest, you don’t have to have any sights on the gun, you don’t have to take aim, even. No, you just pick out a relative and bang away, and you are sure to get him. A youth who can’t hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his grandmother every time, at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it make one shudder.

• This is an unexpected and anti-climactic ending. The audience probably thought the gun really did have ammunition in it and the grandmother had been killed. People often use worst case scenarios as examples to get an audience’s attention and Twain did not; this twist ends up making it even more attention getting.

• Twain uses a lot of humor here with the ironic examples that old, unloaded firearms are sure to “kill” people. We know that unloaded firearms cannot kill anyone but the message he is really trying to give is that people need to be educated about guns. They have the potential to be dangerous and deadly.

There are many sorts of books; but good ones are the sort for the young to read. Remember that. They are a great, an inestimable and unspeakable means of improvement. Therefore be careful in your selection, my young friends; be very careful; confine yourselves exclusively to Robertson’s Sermons, Baxter’s Saint’s Rest, The Innocents Abroad, and works of that kind.

• Twain emphasizes that books can help us improve and grow. This is a conventional belief.

• However, then Twain stresses that “good” books are the kind for the youth to read. The audience (and us as the reader) should immediately question “what are the requirements for a good book?” Also, we should ask ourselves, “Who gets to decide what the “good” books are?”

• Then he uses irony to state that the youth should only, exclusively read these books he states and ones like them. Of course, he doesn’t only want the youth (or us as the reader) to read only these books. So what is his point? We shouldn’t limit our reading to what other people tell us to read.

But I have said enough. I hope you will treasure up the instructions which I have given you, and make them a guide to your feet and a light to your understanding. Build your character thoughtfully and painstakingly upon these precepts, and by and by, when you have got it built, you will be surprised and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resembles everybody else’s.

• The second sentence is a paraphrased reference from the Bible as he tells his audience to use his advice as a guide and a light.

• The last sentence is an interesting comment about how following his advice will help the youth grow up to have a character that resembles everyone else. He might want the audience to question this—is it always a good thing that everyone resembles everyone else? What about individuality? What about creativity and freedom of thought? Perhaps he is leaving the audience with a word of caution about finding a balance of following advice given by elders like him and being your own person.