The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain

The Mysterious Stanger by Mark Twain

The publishers will never stop if they can make a dollar. Twain’s newly posthumously published novel The Mysterious Stranger came out this year. It revealed to me Twain’s hatred for organized religion but I could hardly discern the subtle touch of an artist’s hand amidst the incessant religious platitudes and allegories. The novel is a first person narration of a young boy, Theodore. Satan is one of the main characters and tells a group of young boys living in an Austrian hamlet that many bad things will happen to people dear to them. Well, using the platitude of impulsive young person trusting an ominous magical being, which has been used in many a fairytale, Twain critiques the concept of believing in something more powerful out of fear or practicality. After Satan wreaks havoc on the town, before he suddenly vanishes, he pontificates “the meaning” of the novel Twain heavy-handedly put in his mouth,

"In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever—for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!"

And this is just a sliver of Satan’s speech. He goes on to talk about how no God exists and the only thing that exists is “you”, the self, and one must dream because thoughts and dreams is all one has. Thanks Twain. Another novel to give the melancholic youth some fake insight. But, with all that, the novel does still possess some glimmers of Twain’s wit — like when Satan uses the Christian virtue of Mercy in the most literal sense and puts to death the narrator’s friend who’s sick, showing the hypocrisy of subjective virtue being imposed on another.