The Five Boons of Life by Mark Twain

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Telangana Intermediate First year

The Five Boons of Life

Mark Twain

The Five Boons of Life is a moral short story with a twist at the end. It was written by Samuel Laughorne Clemens, popularly known as Mark Twain (1835–1910). He was a humorist, journalist, lecturer, and novelist who is well known for his adventure stories of boyhood, especially The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). 

The story is about choosing the right option in one's life. Prioritizing things in our lives is the most important thing. Characters:

The Fairy

The man

The child

 

The story contains five chapters, each about a boon.A good fairy offers a youth five boons, i.e., pleasure, love, fame, riches, and death. She asks him to choose one valuable gift wisely from her basket. Fairy says only one of the five boons is valuable. He immediately chooses pleasure, which leads to feelings of disappointment. So he laments his choice and asks the fairy for another chance. The fairy appears and offers him the remaining four boons. The boy thinks hard and decides to pick ‘love.’ In his long life, death takes his lovers from him. He grieves, sitting beside his last of many lovers. With the three remaining boons, the 'good fairy' returns to the man. Now he has picked up fame after prolonged consideration. Envy, gossip, defamation, and hatred follow fame. Because of all these negative consequences, the man finds his life filled with misery as a result of all these negative consequences. The fairy reappears and presents the remaining two boons. The fairy reminds him that only one of the five boons is valuable, and that value remains unchosen.The fairy asks him to choose wisely this time, as it is his last chance. He chooses wealth among two boons. After three years, the 'good fairy' reappears and discovers the man in a pitiful state. He is eating dry bread and lamenting the blessings of life. Finally, he realizes that all the boons of the fairy were curses in disguise. He now craves death because he can’t deal with the pain of life. But the fairy discloses that she has given death to a child, who asked her to choose the boon for him. She grants him death, which is the only boon worth the sum of all five. Three years have passed. The man becomes lean and pale and sits shivering in a small room.The man is destined for a miserable old age.The writer teaches us that death is the most valuable thing of all. Death relieves us from the unending pain and suffering of life. 

Click the link 

https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/FiveBoon.shtml

 






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