Mark Twain - What is Human?

What is Human? It has a different place among Twain's other works in terms of both the way it is presented and its content. The book is written in the form of a dialogue between two men. As we read the book, we witness a Socratic dialogue between an old man who has sifted flour and sifted it, withdrawn and somewhat sarcastic, and a young man who is inexperienced, too hasty and excited in his judgments - just as in many of Plato's famous dialogues or written in dialogue form. As in the work, we see that the topics discussed are evaluated from different perspectives. While the Old Man puts forward and justifies his own ideas of man, of what man is, the Young Man constantly objects to them. However, the Old Man's questions compel the Young Man to question whether these objections are justified. Twain thus includes those of us who read the book into this conversation, and we find ourselves questioning the sides of this dialogue.