Mark Twain's The Turning-Point Of My Life

In “The Turning-Point of My Life”, Mark Twain makes the case that what we usually call a turning-point in one’s life is by no means the definitive cause or initiator of the effects that follow it, but instead are just links in a vast chain of “turning-points.” Most importantly, perhaps, he explains how we truly have very little control over the particular courses our lives will take. In fact, he argues that external circumstance and our own temperament are the main agents in determining the outcomes of our lives. Considering the events and turning-points in my own life, it is thoroughly clear to me that Twain’s message holds true. Being an adept writer, Twain lucidly demonstrates how an event that appears to have no relevance or relation to his own life, namely Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, is, in fact, indispensable for the events of his own life, and the lives of all to take place. He begins by pointing out that even the event of the crossing of the Rubicon was a result of a previous chain of events linked together. “[A]ll the incidents, big and little, of Caesar’s previous life had been leading up to it, stage by stage, link by link.” (1). Furthermore, this one turning-point is merely another link in a much larger chain that spans out through causal relations all the way up to our lives. “You, the reader, have a personal interest in that link, and so have I; so has the rest of the human race.” (1). Consequently, it could conceivably be that it is only because