Not land, not money, not dominion - no, something worth many times more than that dross: our share, the spectacle of a nation of long harassed and persecuted slaves set free through our influence our posterity’s share, the golden memory of that fair deed. Rich winnings to be gathered in, too rich and permanent indestructible a fortune transmissible forever to the children of the flag. For it was the very place and time to play the American game again. It was a pity it was a great pity, that error that one grievous error, that irrevocable error. It was strong it was too strong, and made that bad mistake: he played the European game…. My comments are in brackets.Īfter Cuba, the Philippine temptation. Hereunder are more excerpts from the Person Sitting in Darkness. It’s now an American colony, but a colony just the same thus, in Mark Twain’s essay, the Person continues to sit in the dark as the “Imperyalistang Kano” continues its rule. America defeated Spain, ending the 300-year of the Philippines as a Spanish colony.
Mark Twain’s era was the era of Aguinaldo that saw the end of the Spanish-American War. With the power of the printed word, Mark Twain showed how America followed the footsteps of the White Colonizers in Europe. The Person in the state of darkness is the personification of the Filipino as well as other colonized peoples being preyed upon by the White Colonizers. One such essay is To the Person Sitting in Darkness. Several of these discourses censured the hypocrisies of his era and came out only after his death. Mark Twain (1835-1910), the great writer of literary works, is less known for his essays, satires that piqued the status quo.
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