Little Jim Didn’t Get His Dues – A Critical Examination of “A Christmas Fireside” by Grandfather Twain

Mark Twain parodies the Sunday School stories taught to little children in his story “A Christmas Fireside” and calls it “the story of a bad little boy that bore a charmed life.”  In his work he calls attention to a few myths about late 19^th century society, namely that life is fair and that there is a karmic entity that doles out punishments to bad people and that the world works in black and white, good and bad. 

Twains sardonic tone is evident from the start he signs his story as Grandfather Twain, setting up a tone that mocks the “grandmotherly” source of many of the tales he is parodying.  In the story he talks about Jim and sets him in contrast to the “bad Jameses in the books.”  He describes Jim by what he is not and what he does not do or have.  Jim “didn’t have and sick mother …, terrible feeling didn’t come over him …, something didn’t seem to whisper to him, etc.”  Jim was in fact very strange, he didn’t line up at all with the bad boys named James in the Sunday School stories.   Throughout Jim’s life he escapes from the supposed karmic consequences of his actions; how he manages to escape “is a mystery” to Grandfather Twain. 

The stark contrast between Jim and the hypothetical James highlights the myth of fairness and a universal entity responsible for punishment.  Jim does not get punished for what he does; in fact by the end of the story, after axing his family and becoming rich by cheating and “rascality” he becomes “universally respected, and belongs to the Legislature.”  Twain boils down Jim’s life, and everyone’s life, to streaks of luck.  The world is not inherently geared towards punishing the bad and rewarding the good. 

Twain highlights the problematic black and white, good and bad, reward and punishment binary thinking that existed in the Sunday School stories.   He creates a world that exists in reflection of the world he, and everyone, experiences: a world of grays.  In this world that he creates in his story thing reflect the complexities of the world.  His mocking and condescending tone illustrates the grays and seems to call the writers and story tellers that created the black and white world ridiculous and foolish for believing that the world can be broken down so simply, or at least teaching children that the world is such.  

Twain is cynical and sarcastic, as evidence through his writing.  “A Christmas Fireside” shows this well as it calls to question ideas and teachings that had been considered the “norm” for the late 19^th century American culture.