Written during a time when slavery and segregation were much alive, Mark Twain writes the essay, Corn-pone Opinions to shine a light on the instinct of conformity in American society. He starts the essay off with an anecdote from his childhood, where their slave said something that he very much agreed with, “You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is”, meaning that no human can strive above their ‘corn-pone opinions’ and everyone must get approval from other people. This ties into Twain’s purpose of wanting to make American society aware of their conformity issue, and hopefully stop it. To achieve his goal, Twain uses the strategy of rhetorical questions, which includes his audience of Americans in his writing, making them question themselves and hopefully change their actions. He defines public opinion as “the Voice of God” when he talks about how countries get divided over issues they have no true feelings about. When talking about this, he asks the audience, “Do you believe that a tenth part of the people, on either side, had any rational excuse for having an opinion about the matter at all? I studied that mighty question to the bottom -- came out empty.” Because of public opinion, people have developed no true opinions and or feelings about anything; they just follow whoever the “Voice of God” is. Americans have conformed to having no opinion at all because the only one that matters is public opinion.
When it came to women’s fashion, Twain points out, “Public opinion resented it before, public opinion accepts it now, and is happy in it. Why? Was the resentment reasoned out? Was the acceptance reasoned out? No. The instinct that moves to conformity did the work.” Since people do not have a brain for themselves, they always conform to what society thinks is correct. Twain wants the reader to question themselves and about their individuality in hopes to create the urge to change. By using rhetorical questions, Twain successfully achieves his purpose by making the reader want to change and become more original.
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