Mighty Mississippi: River's influence on literature

Some of the greatest writers in American literature were inspired by the Mississippi River.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minn., and grew up there. His observations of the affluent lifestyle of the rich on the bluffs of the city and the poor on the low-lying flats influenced his writing, including his masterpiece The Great Gatsby.

William Faulkner's fictional setting for his novels was Yoknapatawpha County near the Mississippi River in his native state of Mississippi. Faulkner was regarded as one of the most influential southern writers of the 20th century.

Tennessee Williams, who grew up in Clarksdale, Miss., used the conflicts in his family as inspiration for his characters in his plays, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie.

St. Louis native T.S. Eliot, author of The Waste Land, said his poetry was influenced from "having passed one's childhood beside the big river."

But the writer most associated with the river is Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the pen name Mark Twain. He took his literary name from his days as a riverboat pilot.

Henry Sweets, curator of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Mo., says that as a riverboat pilot, Clemens saw everything along the Mississippi River from Hannibal, where he grew up, to New Orleans.

"The culture, the people, the activities were all ingrained in him," he said. "He saw every level of society along the river, from rich to poor, from slaves to plantation owners."

Twain's strongest writing - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - drew from this personal experience.

"These great books really engulf the reader in the river even if they have never been to the river or been on it," said Sweets. "He was able to introduce characters into American literature that had not been there before. Huckleberry Finn, for example, puts the story in the eyes of a common street boy using his language and his experiences. This was new for American literature and was a powerful tool that has been used by writers ever since."

Mike Dean is a CNHI News Service Elite Fellowship recipient.