Twain's "The Diaries of Adam and Eve" and "Journalism in Tennessee"

I read this same piece from "The Diaries of Adam and Eve" for a Satire course a couple years ago; we read it as an example of travesty (something that trivializes its subject by treating it with levity). I like this piece a lot. It satirizes multiple things in society, such as gender stereotypes, fashion, and relationships. The difference in Eve's perspective and Adam's perspective are another aspect that I enjoyed.

I also think it's interesting the way that Twain characterizes Eve as being both a stereotypical female and as being the dominant creature in some aspects. For example, Eve's act of naming everything goes beyond just being a woman and wanting to talk and use language for everything. Naming all of the things in the new world  was supposed to be Adam's job, but Eve takes full control of it. She is inquisitive and admits that she thinks she is more intelligent than Adam. It is also Eve who decides what a man is and what a woman is; establishing gender was supposed to the Creator's job.

The relationship between Adam and Eve is also interesting. It starts with Eve wanting to please Adam. She names things because she wants to take the burden off of Adam. She talks to him in attempts to form a friendship, but he mostly ignores her. She gradually grows on him though. First, she gets into his mind with all of her words and he finds himself using some of the same language (such as "we"). Eventually, he comes to love Eve. As Adam comes to love Eve, Eve becomes more traditionally "female." She describes herself as weak and Adam as strong, although that isn't the impression we first get from her. It's strange that Adam doesn't decide that Eve would be a good companion until after they eat the apples.

By the end, Adam makes the beautiful comment of, "Wheresoever she was, there was Eden." This remark is quite sentimental and it's a dramatic shift from how Adam originally felt. When I previously studied this piece, I learned that Adam's feelings by the end were mostly an expression of Twain's feelings for his own wife. The "Niagara Falls" references are also included because of something in Twain's life; Twain was asked to include references to the Falls to promote the site as a new Eden.

"Journalism in Tennessee" is a humorous story that also offers some social commentary on the world of journalism. I think that through all of his humor, Twain is saying that journalism is a cut-throat business and that it is often not the objective and factual work that it should be. The first article that the narrator writes is a straight-forward piece. When the editor rewrites it, he turns it into a biased and potentially offensive piece and then gives it to the narrator as an example of what he should be writing. The goals of journalism are completely removed from the editor's version.

All of the violence that occurs at the newspaper is funny, but I think there's a point to it. The narrator keeps becoming the unintended victim of all the violence. When a man tries to shoot the chief editor, he ends up shooting the narrator instead. This happens multiple times through out the piece. The narrator is shot, thrown out a window, and scalped, among other things. I think this implies that the type of subjective, biased journalism that the chief editor wants written is producing unintentional harm to other people.