Summary:
This Mark Twain work starts out a tad slow, and with quite a few opulent words that make you want to smash your head into the wall. This story is about a man and his battle with his own conscience. This particular character's conscience was, for lack of a better phrase, a "mean little bastard". But, from reading the story, one could easily figure out why.
Our tale started out going one direction with the narrator all excited about his dear Aunt's arrival. Then, it sharply veered off in another direction with the arrival of his shriveled conscience. The man went on to defend himself, or at least attempt defense, whenever his little friend called him to task over something he had done. It seemed like he was slowly losing his mentalities.
Finally, by the end, it seems he had completely lost his mind! He blasted on his beloved Aunt, then he went off on a major crime spree.
Comment:
When I first started reading this story, I wanted to punch myself in the brain. I just couldn't seem to get my head around it. I just kind of sat there, scratching my head, and saying to myself "huh?". Twain always seemed to have an issue with "ultrapolysyllablism" (I invented that word to deal with the use of too many long words!). I have always found that kind of wordy work hard to digest.
Don't get me wrong, I like Twain's flair for the dramatic. I just wish it wasn't so damned confusing!
What he did do quite well in this story is to show the conscience as a living, tangible entity. We all have a conscience we have to deal with, so I guess we can all relate. Another good point to the tale is how he slowly, painfully slowly, built up to the main character's complete loss of his marbles.
Even with all of my complaining, I have to say that the story was pretty good. Once I got past the beginning.
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