# XXXIV explained — The Innocents Abroad

> Chapter companion for The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.

## What happens

The narrator recounts his disillusioning experiences with Turkish culture, including a disappointing Turkish lunch, a fraudulent Turkish bath, and the narghile. He satirizes the slave-girl market in Constantinople, the lack of commercial morals, and the suppression of newspapers under the Sultan. The chapter contrasts romanticized Orientalist expectations with grim realities.

## Themes in this chapter

### Satire of Tourism

The narrator mocks the romanticized expectations of Turkish baths and lunches promoted by travel books, contrasting them with squalid reality.

### Colonialism and Otherness

The chapter exoticizes and criticizes Ottoman customs (slave market, morals, press suppression) from a Western perspective.

### Religion and Hypocrisy

The narrator notes that Greeks, Turks, and Armenians attend church but lie and cheat, highlighting hypocrisy.

## Character check-ins

### The Narrator

Describes his disappointment with Turkish lunch, bath, and narghile; reflects on Orientalist travel books.

### Jack

Repeatedly says 'I pass' during the unsanitary Turkish lunch, refusing to eat.

## Key lines

> When I think how I have been swindled by books of Oriental travel, I want a tourist for breakfast.

The narrator feels so deceived by romanticized travel books that he could eat a tourist in anger.

_Expresses the theme of disillusionment with Orientalist expectations._

> The reality is no more like it than the Five Points are like the Garden of Eden.

The actual Turkish bath is as different from the description as a slum is from paradise.

_Hyperbolic contrast between ideal and reality._

> Everybody lies and cheats⁠—everybody who is in business, at any rate.

In Constantinople, all businessmen are dishonest as a matter of course.

_Critique of commercial morality in the Ottoman Empire._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_innocents_abroad_se/chapters/xxxiv
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_innocents_abroad_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_innocents_abroad_se/chapters