Two Views of the Mississippi – Mark Twain (Synopsis/Analysis)

Twain gained a new attitude towards the river when he became a riverboat pilot. After being trained to navigate the river, it soon lost it's magic, and he became neutral to it's charms. But worse that that, he also saw the dangers to his boat within the river. Not only was he desensitized to the majestic, bewitching qualities of the river, but it also became his enemy, trying to damage his boat, the cargo, and the passengers in each of its twists and turns.
Twain expects the readers to feel much like the passengers of the riverboats did, and as he once had. He expects them to think of the river as a simple beauty, although not fully understanding the implications of the visions they saw. To quote his writing, "The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface, but to the pilot that was an italicized passage".

After learning how to pilot a riverboat, Twain lost the ability to see the simple beauties in the river. After that, he could only see the dangers in the river's subtle details. I believe that he wished he could go back to seeing the river in as simple a manner as the passengers of his riverboat. In the story, Twain fondly recalls a memory of when he had witnessed a beautiful sunset when he was still new to steamboating. He described the majestic reflections of the fading sunlight, and the delicate waves of the water. He then goes on to describe how after becoming a pilot he would only recognize upcoming winds from the sunset and a dissolving sand bar from the bubbles and ripples. Where he had once found beauty in the river, he could then only find work.

By becoming a riverboat pilot, Twain gained both skills and knowledge. With his new skills, a new experience was opened up to him. This riverboat experience was the precursor to Twain becoming one of America's most famous writers. With his training, he also gained knowledge about the river that would be vital for the safety of his steamboat. He learned how to read the subtle signs of the river that the untrained could not begin to comprehend. As he wrote in one passage, comparing the river to a book; Twain said, "The passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it&ldots; Whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading matter". He gained so many experiences as a pilot, that later in his life, he said his happiest days were spent on the river.

I believe the main point of the selection is Twain trying to persuade you that you both gain and lose something while learning, not only learning a profession, but rather learning about anything. By finding out how and why something functions as it does, you learn better ways of dealing with and manipulating it. However, it also loses the mystical qualities it had before you knew how it all worked. I believe there is a natural human instinct of assigning such magical qualities to anything we don't understand. These qualities make the thing we assigned them to interesting and exciting, as we can not be sure of what will happen. However, as sure that there are people who will be mystified with their non-understanding, there will be others who will debunk the magic by asking questions of why and how. These people are the ones who further the pursuit of knowledge.
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