Activity 3

I believe Mark Twain wants us to characterize the persona of the speaker as gracefully intelligent with her play of words. First of all she uses many metaphors and abstract speaking to describe emotions or situations. "In the common walks of life" people don't literally "walk" through life but it's a nice way to put life since it describes life just as common as walking, always happening and never stopping. "Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy" meaning that imagination flourishes and the spontaneity overwhelms her with joy, indulging her in the "voluptuous" world. The speaker uses many big but most of all powerful words like "voluptuous", "elysian" and "embittered". These words carry a strong connotation and emotions that the author is trying to tell. The writer seems emotionally indulged and logic and reasoning does not seem to be present. She writes abstractly, talking about the mind, the feeling, the desire and the disappointment in the end. She seems excited at first as she says “anticipated scene of festivity!” it is obvious that she is looking forward to this event of exploring and expecting to experience the wonders of a world she knows nothing of. However, she describes that “how fairylike does everything appear to her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming than the last. But after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity”. She is disappointed that everything so exciting and beautiful were actually created by vanity. The materialistic adrenalin feeling quickly drained away because there is simply not enough to satisfy this growing monster. The question asked then, is "after you have everything, what else do you want". Her reply is "the flattery which once charmed her soul now grates harsly upon her ear; the ballroom has lost its charms; and with wasted health and embittered heart she turns away with the conviction that earthly pleasures cannot satisfy the longing of the soul!" She admits that everything that had fascinated her suddenly turned ugly and the truth condemned her to stay away.
With all these fancy words to describe her emotions, she is characterized as naive, in the way that children wait for adulthood only to find it tiresome and stressful. He uses those idealistic adjectives and verbs to characterize her as blind by luxury and awaken by the ugliness of vanity.