"To the Person Sitting in Darkness" is an essay written by American humorist Mark Twain. He was an outspoken critic of American involvement in the Philippines and China, the foremost anti-imperialist literary figure, and the vice president of Anti-imperialism League of New York.
In this article, he taunted the people whom he considers to be immoral. In his opinion, the extension of the blessing of civilization was just a pretext for making money. The more industrialized nations actually did not bring the real civilization to the behindhand people, but the misery instead.
“The war prayer” is also an article written by this great author and humorist. It is a scathing indictment of the war by describing the scene at a church in an unnamed city before the war. It particularly satirized the blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.
At the end of the story is pessimistic. Because of the second part of the prayer for victory, the prayer for the suffering and destruction of their enemies, the God’s messenger (Aged stranger) was ignored. As we know, the coin always has two sides, so does the war. People in that time period were crazy, and pretty motivated by the fervor of patriotism and religion. They only cared about the victory of their own country, but not the happiness or the destruction of the enemies’ country.
In my opinion, I believe keeping the universal peace is absolutely the willing for all the people around the world, and opposing against the imperialism is a significant process in humanity. I really want to live in a world without war, terror, discrimination, poverty, etc…..
I would like to live in such a world, too. However, I doubt that we will ever see it. I wonder if we have changed much, as human beings, since Mark Twain wrote these pieces. I hope that I make sense to you when I ask this question: If there is one wolf, will that wolf not eventually rule over the sheep? What is the secret for keeping some violent person from ruling the rest of us? Twain seems to be trying to show us a rather frightening part that is built into all of us. At least that is my opinion. I don't believe that people today are any different. Perhaps we are all a bit crazy -- no matter what period of time we are discussing.
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