Mark Twain's Messengers for a Fallen World: Supernatural Strangers in 'the War-Prayer' and the Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts

Abstract

Mark Twain Studies Vol. 2 Mark Twain’s Messengers for a Fallen World: Supernatural Strangers in “The War-Prayer” and The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts Nancy VON ROSK The stranger is a familiar  gure in Mark Twain’s work. Huck Finn, Pudd’nhead Wil- son and Hank Morgan are all dened by their outsider status as well as their superiority to the societies from which they stand apart. Yet whether these  gures have superior moral- ity, intellect or technical expertise, they are nevertheless not completely separate from the societies they implicitly criticize. Pudd’nhead Wilson becomes mayor of the town that once laughed at him; Hank Morgan marries a woman from Arthurian England and yearns to return there, and even Huck Finn joins Tom Sawyer in imprisoning Jim, never com- pletely understanding whether he or society is right. The boundaries then between the outsider and society are often ambiguous in Twain’s works, and the supposed superiority of the stranger may be called into question. The stranger continues to play an important role in Twain’s later works such as “The War-Prayer” and The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts; however, the strangers in these works are far stranger; now the stranger is a supernatural  gure—an angel or “messen- ger from God”—suggesting not only Twain’s more profound alienation from American society and politics, but also the keener sense of moral authority this position had given him. Indeed, as these  gures highlight the absurdity of the human condition, they are com- pletely detached from the societies they come to criticize, and there is no more ambiguity regarding where they stand. Twain’s language in “The War-Prayer” highlights the stranger’s newfound separation from humanity: Movement, noise, and passion are opposed to stillness and solemn calm. We are told in the essay’s opening that the crowd and the country are “up in arms”; violent energy is reinforced with words like “beating,” “hissing,” “popping,” and “spluttering” (218). The language evokes not just noise and movement, but emotional excess. There is not just applause, there are “cyclones of applause,” and as people listen to “patriotic orato-