"Tom Quartz" Short Story

By Mark Twain
 
 

Hilda Patricia Escalante 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Laura Nicole Ayala Gil 
Nicolás Esteban Gómez
Cristian Álvarez 

Julio 2020

Universidad distrital Francisco José de Caldas

Literature II
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 46.............................................................................................................................. 3
TITLE.................................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 1................................................................................................................................ 4
BEGINNING.......................................................................................................................... 4
Chapter 6................................................................................................................................ 5
POINT OF VIEW................................................................................................................... 5
Chapter 12.............................................................................................................................. 6
SENSE OF PLACE................................................................................................................. 6
Chapter 14.............................................................................................................................. 8
INTRODUCING A CHARACTER..........................................................................................8
Chapter 16.............................................................................................................................. 9
TIME SHIFT.......................................................................................................................... 9
CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................... 10
 INTRODUCTION

This paper is made to analize and describe some different literary and narrative

aspects of the short story “Tom Quartz” by Mark Twain”. 

This text is going to employ different knowledge learnt at Literature II subject, and use some

chapters of the Lodge´s book, Lodge, D. (1992).  The Art of Fiction to describe some

techniques and narrative features inside the story.

Chapter 46.
TITLE

According to Lodge, D. (1993). “The title of a novel is part of the text - the first part

of it, in fact, that we encounter - and therefore has considerable power to attract and condition

the reader's attention.”

In the short story “Tom Quartz “is very short title for a text, but their simplicity itself

is a prove of how only a name can make us ask, who is Tom quartz? Maybe for us, as

Spanish speakers that would mean a person or someone from other country, maybe someone

of an exclusive family with strange surname, or maybe a fantasy history about a non-existent

character, but in fact, those two little word together can fulfill the purpose of a title attracting

the reader to know about its meaning.

 Chapter 1.
BEGINNING

Tom Quartz is a short story written by Mark Twain. The story is about a cat and all its

characteristics. . The story starts giving us a description of the main character the owner of

the cat. ONE OF my comrades there

--another of those victims of eighteen years of

unrequited toil and blighted hopes--was one of the gentlest spirits that ever bore

its patient cross in a weary exile: grave and simple Dick Baker, pocket-miner of

Dead-Horse Gulch. He was forty-six, gray as a rat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly

educated, slouchily dressed, and clay-soiled, but his heart was finer metal than

any gold his shovel ever brought to light--than any, indeed, that ever was mined

or minted.

(Twain,1872)

This first description allows us to analyze the introduction from Lodge’s theory.   

Many novels may begin with a “frame story” which explains how the main story was

discovered, or describes it being told to a fictional audience (Pg. 8).

In this part, the author described the characters who are going to be part of the

following story. This chapter represents many of the aspects that David Lodge describes, in

the beginning; a novel may begin with an arresting self-introduction by the narrator Lodge,

D. (1993). (Pg. 7) the central aspect is the use of the first person as a resource to

contextualize to the reader. We think these cases of beginning are the most relevant in the

story. They are mixing into them in order to present to the main characters. This resource is
useful in this part of the story because it highlights that its owner influences the main

character, and there are some aspects that they share between them.

Chapter 6.
POINT OF VIEW

“We are not yet familiar with the author's tone of voice, range of vocabulary,

syntactic habits. We read a book slowly and hesitantly, at first.” (Lodge, 1992, p5). And the

text is nothing near simple, but at the very beginning we can read the statement of someone

having a friend, and his voice is the one that narrates the whole story

“One of my comrades there--another of those victims of eighteen years of unrequited

toil and blighted hopes--was one of the gentlest spirits that ever bore its patient cross

in a weary exile: grave and simple Dick Baker, pocket-miner of Dead-House Gulch.--

He was forty-six, gray as a rat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly educated, slouchily

dressed and clay- soiled, but his heart was finer metal than any gold his shovel ever

brought to light--than any, indeed, that ever was mined or minted.” (Twain,1872)

During the whole text the narrator describes the story including aspects that imply an

assumption or understanding the feelings of the gad, as with the “God-like altitude”

(Lodge , 1992 , p26) bringing us a context about how the cat was physiologically after the

blast:

“Well sir, it warn't no use to try to apologize--we couldn't say a word. He took a sort of a

disgusted look at hisself, 'n' then he looked at us-- an' it was just exactly the same as if he had

said--'Gents, may be you think it's smart to take advantage of a cat that 'ain't had no
 experience of quartz minin', but I think different'--an' then he turned on his heel 'n' marched

off home without ever saying another word.”(Twain,1872)

We can see the direct reported speech used to describe the dialogues that the character used

between them.

Chapter 12.
SENSE OF PLACE

As the description if a place in a good novel is not never just description, (Lodge,

1992, pp.57) the narrator shows us and speech were the owner of Tom Quartz introduces the

place.

While he mentions the skills that the cat Quartz has he mentions some sentences that can may

us understand that his senses are the best for that camp, where lot of people work mining, and

there are places for digging.  

"Gentlemen, I used to have a cat here, by the name of Tom Quartz, which you'd a took an

interest in I reckon--most any body would. I had him here eight year--and he was the

remarkablest cat I ever see. He was a large gray one of the Tom specie, an' he had more

hard, natchral sense than any man in this camp--'n' a power of dignity--he wouldn't let the

Gov'ner of Californy be familiar with him. He never ketched a rat in his life--'peared to be

above it. He never cared for nothing but mining. He knowed more about mining, that cat did,

than any man I ever, ever see. You couldn't tell him noth'n 'bout placer diggin's--'n' as for

pocket mining, why he was just born for it.”  (Twain,1872)

 Then the narrator introduces another important feature of the place where we can see

that they use a pan to extract the gold, what means that the camp can be close to a river or a

shore.

“But by an' by Tom Quartz begin to git sort of reconciled a little, though he never could

altogether understand that eternal sinkin' of a shaft an' never pannin' out any thing”.

(Twain,1872)

Finally, we can assume that the camp he has was not only close to a river or close to a

sort of water, there must be also a hill or mountain where to create caves or where to explore

to extract more minerals, which may be the reason to use a blast: 

“Well, one day when the shaft was down about eight foot, the rock got so hard that we had to

put in a blast--the first blast'n' we'd ever done since Tom Quartz was born. An' then we lit the

fuse 'n' clumb out 'n' got off 'bout fifty yards--'n' forgot 'n' left Tom Quartz sound asleep on

the gunny sack”.(Twain,1872)

As we see the speech can give us features of the place without being a speech

emphasized in the features that the camp has, also there are clues about the place in which the

cat used to be, because his name was related with the activities that his owner does, mining ,

and you can get Quartz by doing it. 

 Chapter 14.
INTRODUCING A CHARACTER

CHARACTER is arguably the most important single component of a story; character

is probably the most difficult aspect to discuss in technical terms. This is partly because there

are so many different types of character and so many different ways of representing them.

(Lodge, 1992, pp 67).

We have from the start Dick Backer that seems to be a Foil character, because he

triggers situations. Dick backer is described as a 46-year-old California pocket. Miner who

has become a victim of 18 years of unrequited toil and blighted hopes. Gentle, patient, and

big-hearted, he is given to mourning the loss of his wonderful cat, Tom Quartz, Who we

thinks may have been supernatural.

Then the story introduced us to Tom Quartz, he is an animal Round character

because he interacts and changes throughout the story. Is a large gray cat that Baker owned

for eight years, Tom Quartz was a remarkable animal whose only interest in life was

MINING. He always supervised pocket-miners closely.

 Chapter 16.
TIME SHIFT

Time-shift is a very common effect in modern fiction, but usually it is "naturalized" as

the operation of memory, either in the representation of a character's stream of consciousness.

(Lodge, 1992, pp 77).  In addition, this story “TOM QUARTZ” tries to put us into the world

of memories that Dick Baker has as the owner of tom. 

"Gentlemen, I used to have a cat here, by the name of Tom Quartz, which you'd a took an

interest in I reckon--most any body would. I had him here eight year--and he was the

remarkablest cat I ever see. (Twain,1872)

As we see here the speech about what was the cat, and where were them living and

having adventures is the flashback of their lives, where in a certain moment of his present

Baker wanted to tell a story about his old cat.

 CONCLUSION

“Tom Quartz” is another of Mark Twain’s stories that is actually a story within a

story. The way the story is told in dialect and accent. The story involves a cat, dynamite and

miners who only half know what they are doing.

The story of Tom Quartz reminds readers that miners are regular people, too—they

love their pets and enjoy bragging about them, too. Dick's tale is obviously exaggerated—the

cat was probably not blasted a mile and a half into the air. (Moreover, if it had been, it

certainly would not have survived the return to earth!) However, the personality of the cat

comes through clearly and makes the reader smile. Who has not known a prissy cat that

thinks it is a human? The cat creates a connection between the reader and the miners, making

their lives seem more real somehow.

References

Lodge, D. (1992). The Art of Fiction.

Twain, M. (1872). Roughing It. Chapter LXI. United States: American Publishing Company.