Non-American Culture

The journal feeds heavily on travelers who have never known anything but their own American culture. At each stop along the way, Mark Twain and his fellow American companions learn how many different ways people live in fashions dissimilar to their own. The sense of superiority among the Americans is always present, but the cultural ignorance soon fades and is replaced by cultural understanding and historical appreciation.

At first, Twain struggles with the absence of American comforts, such as soap and reading lamps. He is accustomed to good business practices, submissive customer service and honorable transactions. Every time one of these things is missing from his experiences, he shrugs it off as inferiority to the preferred American culture. There is a brief time in Milan, when Twain does actually accept the Italian culture. Everyone is laid back; everyone stays up late to sit around listening to music...