Lucky Blunder

Charles Henn


                                                          “Lucky Blunder”

In Mark Twains’ short story “Luck” a hero’s image is compared to what he truly is through a story with in a story. The story is told about a man named Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby by a clergyman who was an instructor in a local military academy. The speaker in the story then retells the events that led to Scorsby becoming a well-recognized man by sheer luck and not by his own gumption. The areas that bring this story together the best are, the plot and theme, point of view, social and political events during the writing of the story, and the things that influenced the author during the time this story was written.
The plot and theme play a major role in putting this story together. The theme basically says that success is not achieved by ability, but sometimes rather by pure luck. The luck is strongly portrayed by the clergyman when he tells of the many stories of how dumb Scorsby is, and how he felt sorry for him and helped him cram for his examinations. Of course by sheer luck he would only get asked the questions in which he knew every answer. The clergyman would say that he basically “blundered” (Twain pg. 215) his way through it.
The plot of the story would basically build up or paint a good picture of how admired Scorsby was to everyone except the clergyman. He somehow knew or maybe a sense of jealousy was there from the clergyman, because of the luck that Scorsby was getting through his life. The examinations that took place, and all the way down to the war that they were both involved in really brought together the focus on the characters in the story. Although the plot and theme play a major role in bringing this story together, the social and political events during the time this story was written well affected the way the story was portrayed.
While coming out of the brink of the civil war period was a milestone for society at the time this story...