ENGL 1406 Lecture 19: نههب

         from Life On the Mississippi

                by Mark Twain

The Boy's Ambition

1 - When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village [Hannibal, Missouri] on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboat man. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboat man always remained.

2 - I first wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a white apron on and shake a tablecloth over the side, where all my old comrades could see me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stood on the end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand, because he was particularly conspicuous. But these were only day-dreams,—they were too heavenly to be contemplated as real possibilities. 

What tool does Twain use in this excerpt from his autobiographical narrative to make it interesting?

1 - When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns;

A. Repetition

B. Imagery 

C. Dialogue