Quote 3
Mr.
Walters fell to “showing off,” with all sorts of official bustlings
and activities. . . . The librarian “showed off”—running hither
and thither with his arms full of books. . . . The young lady teachers
“showed off”. . . . The young gentlemen teachers “showed off”. .
. . The little girls “showed off” in various ways, and the little
boys “showed off” with such diligence that the air was thick with
paper wads and the murmur of scufflings. And above it all the great
man sat and beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house,
and warmed himself in the sun of his own grandeur—for he was “showing
off,” too.
This Sunday school scene from Chapter 4 shows
the height of Twain’s leveling satire. While Twain makes explicit
jabs at the religious spirit and the structures of organized religion
elsewhere in the novel, in this scene he directs his mockery toward
human nature in a more generalized way. Much of the comic effect
of this scene stems from the uniformity of the ridiculous behavior
exhibited by teachers, students, boys, and girls. So strong is the
human need to impress and to win approval that not even Judge Thatcher
is exempt from the temptation to “show off.” Twain suggests that
the desire to stand out is universal, which means that in their
efforts to distinguish themselves, people wind up all looking alike.
For the adults, “showing off” means attempting to conceal
the rough edges of their schoolroom establishment, prettifying the
Sunday school so that the judge will get an enhanced sense of what
is normal there. Such sugarcoating of reality is a particular object
of Twain’s contempt, and it is exactly what he does not want
his fiction to do. Twain is committed to realism, to depicting the
everyday world with all its irregularities and imperfections. In
fact, Twain’s penchant for roughness and variation makes his satire
more tender and compassionate than it might otherwise be.
