Mark Twain's Trauma Behind The Humor

Mark Twain is an outstanding American writer in the 19^th century and a world-renowned humorist,whose magnum opus Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a classic in world literature,which has been attracting full attention in academia.This book not only displays Mark Twain's extraordinary humorous skills but also expresses his deep thought on civilization and concern about society through the adventures of Huck and Jim.This thesis attempts to apply Freud's“pleasure principle”,“reality principle”and“death instinct”theories to analyze the profound meaning of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn so as to reveal the humor and thoroughly explore the trauma behind the humor.Trauma,caused by the external environment and momentous events,is the inner restraint and powerlessness,which are consistent with the experiences of Huck,Jim and Mark Twain.Studying humor and the trauma behind humor can give us a glimpse of Mark Twain's psychology of writing,help us understand the influence of his own experience on the creation of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and deepen our understanding of the connotation of this work.The thesis consists of three parts:the introduction,the main part and the conclusion.The introduction includes the brief introduction of Mark Twain and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,the relevant literature review and the theoretical framework of the thesis.The main part falls into three chapters.Based on Freud's pleasure principle and his view on humor,the first chapter analyzes the good representation of Mark Twain's humor,the product of the victory of the pleasure principle,by means of careful reading.The second chapter starts from Freud's reality principle and his view on civilization,then goes deep into the constraints of the reality principle upon Huck and Jim and the traumas that they suffer in the civilized society.The third chapter adopts Freud's death instinct to analyze the death instinct implied in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain's outlook on death.On the basis of theories and textual analyses,the last part presents the conclusion of the thesis:Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is full of trauma behind the seeming humor.