Mark Twain's view on capitalism's inherent flaw.

            There are many themes and ways to analysis Mark Twain’s “The one million pound bank note”.  Numerous people look at the meaning of Henry’s character and how Mark Twain tried to recreate the American Dream in a more structured class system (Britain).  Even though these views are correct, I interpret the short story in a different manner.  I see the short story as a representation of the banking system and Twain’s view on credit.  Twain’s view on the extension of credit plays an important role in the cliché of the “rich keep getting richer”. 

            Mark Twain uses irony to convey his point.  “Could I afford it? No; I had nothing in the world but a million pounds”.  The quote conveys the rational brother, Roderick’s view on how Henry could benefit from the note, he can not benefit from it because he can not use it.  Later when Henry goes to the store and hands the tailor the million dollar banknote, he is immediately extended a line of credit (something Henry was not offered when the tailor had no reason to believe he was rich).  The same occurred to Henry when he went to eat, he was offered a line of credit and people were more inclined to him. 

            The aforementioned examples are to convey Oliver’s point about the banking system, the irrational point, that he can use the note in society without cashing it.  Oliver’s thinking is symbolic of our credit system and how society treats the wealthy.  The rational person especially in the 1880s would not give money to someone and expect them to pay it back with no way to contact the person.  The appearance of having wealth made it easier for Henry to purchase things on credit.  In modern times the greater the wealth one posses, the better the line of credit they can open.  The problem occurs when the rich use the credit available to them and invest them into stocks and bonds adding more money to their value-the rich keep getting richer.  The top two percent in America own over ninety percent of all available stock on Wall Street.  If you are rich people/society are more willing to do more for you, and you do not have to contribute as much.   

            Mark Twain uses “The One Million Dollar Banknote” to convey his point on income inequality.  He also saw a fundamental flaw in capitalism; the rich keep getting richer.  The upper echelon of society, the one percent, is able to gain more wealth because society and the banking system treat them differently than everyone.  The appearance of wealth is all one needs to be prosperous in society because people invest things in what they want to believe, and the measures they take to make their false perceptions of reality look well.  For example, Henry was in rags when he handed the tailor the note, the tailor immediately gave him a line of credit because he thought he was rich. 

The Metaphoric Meaning of Blue Jays

In Mark Twain’s short story, "What Stumped the Blue Jays", he writes about a blue jay that comes across an antagonizing problem. The story starts out by talking about a blue jay that comes across an abandoned house with a whole in the roof. The bird wanted to know where the whole went so he dropped an acorn down it, and listened for it to drop. When he didn’t hear the acorn drop he went and got more and more acorns to listen for them. When he got to tired of retrieving acorns, he began to sit on top of the house swearing at the whole, so he called in other blue jays to come observe for themselves. When more and more birds arrive and place an acorn down the hole they all began to speculate about theories of where the acorns are going. At the end of the story one of the birds opens the front door of the house and finds all the acorns on the floor of the house, and all of the birds begin to laugh that the acorns were on the floor the whole time.

In this story, Twain is signifying that the blue jays are actually humans. He even stated in the book, “a jay is everything that a man is. A jay can cry, a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and plan and discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay has got a sense of humor, a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do - maybe better. If a jay ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all” (Pg. 160). By those quote Twain is saying that blue jays and humans are so closely related. I believe that Twain is not talking about blue jays at all in the story. I think he is taking it one step further and the whole story is about humans. Throughout the whole story, Twain expresses this in many different ways, such as through personality and problem solving.

Personality is a large characteristic that makes humans identity what it is. Twain talks about personality in the story by saying that jays will lie, steal, deceive, and betray. These negative personifications for the blue jays are directly reflected on humans and I believe that this is a direct insinuation on the people around Twain at the time. This could have been because this story took place post civil war, but only by about ten years, and there was still a lot of backstabbing and lying going on at that time.

The second reason of why the blue jays symbolize humans is because people have different ways of coping with difficult problems. Some swear at the problem, while others theorize about why the problem is happening, and finally others will search for a different approach to the problem. All of these different approaches, when working together, can solve any problem, even just a simple hole in the roof. Twain exemplifies this by stating, “There must have been five thousand of them; and such another jawing and disputing and ripping and cussing, you never heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his eye to the hole and delivered a more chuckle-headed opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there before him”(Pg. 162). This quote shows when the problem of the hole was at its ultimate annoyance and how the different jays worked through the problem.

Mark Twain’s personification of the blue jays is directly related to humans in the story of what stumped the blue jays. Through his connection of personality and problem solving he exemplifies his metaphoric meaning of the story, which is that the blue jays are actually humans.

References:
Twain, Mark, and Charles Neider. The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. New York: Bantam, 1981. Print.