Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. He was the sixth child of John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens. His father was a lawyer and a judge. His mother died when he was young, and his father remarried.
In 1851, when Twain was 16, his brother Henry died in a steamboat explosion. This event had a profound impact on Twain. He was devastated by the loss of his brother, and he never fully recovered from it. The death of his brother also led to Twain's decision to become a writer.
In his autobiography, Twain wrote about the death of his brother: "I think that was the beginning of my life. I had never known sorrow before. I had not understood then what it was. I never felt anything so exquisite, so delicious, and so enchanting. I did not know that such a thing was possible. I was not capable of understanding that anything could be so enchanting as the pain that I was feeling."
The death of his brother also led to Twain's development of a complex relationship with death. He was often fascinated by death, and he wrote about it frequently in his work. In his novel "Tom Sawyer," for example, he writes about the death of Tom's friend, Huckleberry Finn. In his novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," he writes about the death of Jim, a runaway slave.
Twain's relationship with death was complex and multifaceted. He was both fascinated by death and afraid of it. He was drawn to the mystery of death, but he was also repelled by the pain that death caused. In his writing, Twain tried to come to terms with his own fear of death and to find meaning in the death of his loved ones.