Case Study: In the interest of Progress and Civilization

Studying the Satire of One of the All-Time Greats

I visited Mark Twain’s house recently. He wasn’t home. An architect of churches built the house in 1874. Tiffany, & Co. hand-stenciled the wallpaper. It was stunning and gorgeous and detailed and devastating and photos inside were not allowed.¹

The visit itself probably meant more to an architect and to a historian than to a writer, but I enjoyed it, would go back, and recommend you go, too.

In the gift shop, I bought The Portable Mark Twain, edited by Tom Quirk. This is a case study.

How does Mark Twain help the reader to identify his work as satire? Why does he use satire?

The following excerpt is from “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” Written in 1901, Quirk calls it Twain’s “most eloquent, if not his most venomous, attack on imperialism.”

Now, my plan is a still bolder one than Mr. Chamberlain’s,² though apparently a copy of it. Let us be franker than Mr. Chamberlain; let us audaciously present the whole of the facts, shirking none, then explain them according to Mr. Chamberlain’s formula. This daring truthfulness will astonish and dazzle the Person Sitting in Darkness,³ and he will take the Explanation down before his mental vision has had time to get back into focus. Let us say to him:

“Our case is simple. On the 1st of May, Dewey⁴ destroyed the Spanish fleet. This left the Archipelago in the hands of its proper and rightful owners, the Filipino nation. Their army numbered 30,000 men, and they were competent to whip out or starve out the little Spanish garrison; then the people could set up a government of their own devision. Our traditions required that Dewey should now set up his warning sign, and go away. But the Master of the Game happened to think of another plan—the European plan. He acted upon it. This was, to send out an army—ostensibly to help the native patriots put the finishing touch upon their long and plucky struggle for independence, but really to take their land away from them and keep it. That is, in the interest of Progress and Civilization…

“We and the patriots having captured Manila, Spain’s ownership of the Archipelago and her sovereignty over it were at an end—obliterated—annihilated—not a rag or shred of either remaining behind. It was then that we conceived the divinely humorous idea of buying both of these specters from Spain! [It is quite safe to confess this to the Person Sitting in Darkness, since neither he nor any other sane person will believe it.] In buying those ghosts for twenty-millions, we also contracted to take care of the friars and their accumulations. I think we also agreed to propagate leprosy and smallpox, but as this there is doubt. but it is not important; persons afflicted with the friars do not mind other diseases.

“With our treaty ratified, Manila subdued, and our Ghosts secured, we had no further use for Aguinaldo and the owners of the Archipelago. We forced a war, and we have been hunting America’s guest and ally through the woods and swamps ever since.”

At this point in the tale, it will be well to boast a little of our war-work and our heroisms in the field, so as to make our performance look as fine as England’s in South Africa; but I believe it will not be best to emphasize this too much. We must be cautious. Of course, we must read the war-telegrams to the Person, in order to keep up our frankness; but we can throw an air of humorousness over them, and that will modify their grim eloquence a little, and their rather indiscreet exhibitions of gory exultation. Before reading to him the following display heads of the dispatches of November 18, 1900, it will be well to practice on them in private first, so as to get the right tang of lightness and gaiety into them:

“ADMINISTRATION WEATY OF PROTRACTED HOSTILITIES!”

“REAL WAR AHEAD FOR FILIPINO REBELS!”

“WILL SHOW NO MERCY!”

“KITCHENER’S PLAN ADOPTED!”⁵

“rebels!” Mumble that funny word—don’t let the Person catch it distinctly.

Kitchener knows how to handle disagreeable people who are fighting for their homes and their liberties, and we must let on that we are merely imitating Kitchener, and have no national interest in the matter, further than to get ourselves admired by the Great Family of Nations, in which august company our Master of the Game has bought a place for us in the back row.

Of course, we must not venture to ignore our General MacArthur’s reports—oh, why do they keep on printing those embarrassing things?—we must drop them trippingly from the tongue and take the chances:

“During the last ten months our losses have been 268 killed and 750 wounded; Filipino loss, three thousand two hundred and twenty-seven killed, and 694 wounded.”

We must stand ready to grab the Person Sitting in Darkness, for he will swoon away at this confession, saying: “Good God, those ———⁶ spare their wounded, and the Americans massacre theirs!”

We must bring him to, and coax him and coddle him, and assure him that the ways of Providence are best, and that it would not become us to find fault with them; and then, to show him that we are only imitators, not originators, we must read the following passage from the letter of an American soldier-lad in the Philippines to his mother, published in Public Opinion, of Decorah, Iowa, describing the finish of a victorious battle:

“We never left one alive. If one was wounded, we would run our bayonets through him.”⁷

You can read the rest of the essay here.

My questions were: How does Mark Twain help the reader to identify his work as satire? Why does he use satire?

How does Mark Twain help the reader to identify his work as satire?

Firstly, satire, per Merriam-Webster, is: “a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn.”

What makes Twain’s essay satire? Well, he is purporting one idea while really agreeing with the opposite. Throughout the passage I transcribed, he is giving directions for how to convince People Sitting in Darkness to accept colonization from the Western world. However, because the directions are absurd, the reader knows he is really trying to scorn attitudes of colonization.

But how is that what the reader knows? How does Twain cue the reader to interpret his directions to the Person Sitting in Darkness as absurd?

(I would add something to the definition of satire. I think good satire can, in the face of scrutiny—say, by the body so scorned—dissemble to be, albeit badly, written in support of the body’s actions.)

Okay, so how does Twain help his reader understand he is not pro-imperialism, even though everything he says is, on its face, in favor of imperialism?

In that first paragraph, it’s the word choice: Twain overuses modifiers to “strengthen” his case, weakening it. He calls his plan “bolder” than Chamberlain’s, says we should be “franker,” “audacious,” “daring,” and “truthful,” and that this will “astonish and dazzle.”

It’s too much. The enthusiasm strains credulity, as it means to.

I can’t help but think of The Colbert Report, where the term “truthiness” comes from. All of these words here ring of the same derision of the fascist strategy to find buzzwords to lean against to coalesce power.

Twain then takes on a tactic that lets him, basically, shoot himself in the foot, by suggesting we speak truthfully to the Person Sitting in Darkness. He uses the visage of “truth” to lay out all sorts of true hypocrisies.

He says the Philippines is in the hands of its “proper and rightful owner,” meaning, ostensibly, the Filipinos, but actually, the Americans, no? He also uses transitional phrases to connect his ideas causally:

…ostensibly to help the native patriots put the finishing touch upon their long and plucky struggle for independence, but really to take their land away from them and keep it. That is, in the interest of Progress and Civilization…

He tells us something, how the body he is criticizing wants it interpreted (“ostensibly”), and then how it should be interpreted (“but really” and “That is,”). In this way Twain puts himself in indirect conversation with his opposition, letting “them” have the first say but then refuting it and pointing out its hypocrisy. Keep in mind, too, that he does all of this under the guise of telling the reader, presumably American, how we can persuade the Filipinos to accept American rule. He is pretending to be letting us in on a secret. Under scrutiny by the US government, he could argue just that.

Twain then finds a way to force the hypocrisy of America’s actions to the fore of the conversation, “in order to keep up our frankness.” He then goes on to list brutal headlines accounting the massacre of Filipino people, including MacArthur’s mind-boggling description which encapsulates the lopsidedness of this affair (“268 killed” versus “3,227 [Filipinos] killed”).

In doing so he sounds patriotic. He is invoking one of the era’s great generals, and what could someone like MacArthur be but staunchly pro-American?

So then, Twain has to maneuver out of the situation he’s backed himself into. Surely, he posits, the Person Sitting in Darkness will note how the Americans massacre their foes far more than those they oppress. To do this, he suggests we point out what we do is only imitation, not original action; the English did it first in the Boer Wars, so is it so wrong if we do it now? And in this way, Twain gets one last shot in at Chamberlain, while also dunking on the Americans’ prevailing strategy.

Why does Twain use satire?

Why not just come out and say it? “Just because the Brits did it in South Africa, doesn’t mean we have to do it in the Philippines!” “War never leads to peace! Do the right thing!” “What the Americans are doing in the Philippines is wrong! Imperialism goes against everything that we purport to stand for!”

He could say all of that. Based only on what’s written in this essay, I would speculate Twain would agree with each of those statements.

I’m reminded of the first stanza of “Advice to a Prophet,” by Richard Wilbur.⁸

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,

Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,

Not proclaiming our fall but begging us

In God’s name to have self-pity

Especially “Mad-eyed from stating the obvious.” I think this is why Mr Twain devised to use satire. It holds up a behavior to scorn it, to ridicule it, as Merriam-Webster explained.

You cannot ridicule an idea by coming at it so direct. You come off as preachy, hand-wringing, soapbox-standing, mad-eyed from stating the obvious.

It also arms the mind of the reader with an argument. When one who has read this essay hears another say, “yes, but McKinley’s men know well what they are up to, it will work itself out,” he can respond, “Yes it’s just as Chamberlain did in South Africa. We will skewer those Filipinos with our bayonets because it is good for business.” And the other will balk and blink as mumble, “I never said anything like that.”

“No,” the reader can respond. “But I did.”

1. The tour guide gave three reasons for this: 1) the flash can degrade certain materials inside. 2) numerous pieces inside are on loan from other museums, and it is part of their agreement with those places to not have these objects photographed. 3) people taking photos are careless and bump into things. I would posit a fourth: if you can see photos of it online, who would come?

2. Earlier in the essay, Twain criticizes how Joseph Chamberlain (Secretary of State for the Colonies of the United Kingdom) has handled the crown’s incursions into South Africa, where his soldiers recounted slaying Boers begging for mercy.

3. Twain creates a motif of this Person Sitting in the Darkness. On its face, he is referring to the “uncivilized” human, meaning the one outside of Progress, meaning the one not of Christendom, meaning the one being oppressed by the colonizing Imperialists of the era.

4. Twain means George Dewey, who coined the phrase, “You may fire when ready.”

5. Kitchener refers to this guy. He was a military leader for the crown in the Second Boer War. I quote Wikipedia to say, “Historian Caroline Elkins characterised Kitchener's conduct of the war as a "scorched earth policy", as his forces razed homesteads, poisoned wells and implemented concentration camps, as well as turned women and children into targets in the war.” He would later, years after Twain penned this essay, be granted an Earldom over Khartoum, Sudan, and Broome, England.

6. Twain here uses a word that I just cannot publish.

7. This is again a reference to Chamberlain’s men, who skewered with bayonet the Boers pleading for mercy.

8. I beseech you to play the red ‘play’ button beside the title and let Mr Wilbur read his poem to you.