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Situational Irony
Chapter 15: Tom as King
Explanation and Analysis:
The Prince and the Pauper is written in a clear, highly descriptive, light-hearted style. The narrator of the piece adopts a very familiar tone with the audience, often referring to the central character as “our little friend.” He often leads the reader to and from the main action with a phrase that implicates the reader (e.g., “let us return to the vanished little King [Edward] for now”). The effect is reminiscent of a fairytale or folktale, adding levity to a thematically heavy story. The reader feels she is being guided clearly from one event to the next, a common feature of children’s literature.
Twain’s sentences are clear and unambiguous, and they rely on detailed visual descriptions of events:
The next day the foreign ambassadors came, with their gorgeous trains; and Tom, throned in awful state, received them. The splendours of the scene delighted his eye and fired his imagination at first, but the audience was long and dreary, and so were most of the addresses—wherefore, what began as a pleasure grew into weariness and homesickness by-and-by.
In two sentences, a number of scenes pass under the reader’s eyes: the fabulous arrival of foreign dignitaries, Tom uncomfortably seated before them, the slow, dull speeches of each ambassador. The sentences are long, but effective, and move the reader quickly from one scene to the next without drawing much attention to themselves.
Twain continually injects humor into his writing, never passing up an opportunity to make fun of royal customs and conventions. He uses a variety of techniques, including hyperbole, irony, and satire to draw attention to the moral of the story. Like many children’s books, The Prince and the Pauper is didactic. The concept of the story itself, that a prince and a pauper cannot really be differentiated from one another, has an implicit message about the value of every person.
Related Themes:
