Customer Reviews

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World, Vol. 2

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Twain's two-volume travel journal is rich with Twain's wry, intelligent humor, and strong in evaluation of cultures put up against his own American sense of truth, which is, of course, not every American's truth. Set upon a lecture tour around the world, Twain gives wonderful instances of sailing, enriched by his own early history on the Mississippi. He studies, particularly, the cultures he finds in Australasia in the first volume, and in India and South Africa in the second. He is very clear on the plight of the Aborigines and blacks of other countries visited, and also about the place and difficulties of women in these places. He provides astute and wise pieces about the hubris of the Westerner in bringing "civilization" to other countries through missionary work and via the spread of the British Empire. He spends a good bit of ink on the Sepoy Uprising of 1856-57 in India and the massacre at Lucknow. He loves "difference" between cultures, and bright colors and brown skins. It is clear he feels affinity with the brown races. Most enlightening is to read his struggle with Victorian sentiments and the mistreatment of others. One of my favorite parts are the bits from Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar at the head of each chapter. Equating these with the contents of their respective chapters is also enjoyable work for the reader.