Satire In A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
“Satire is traditionally the powerless against the powerful.” – Molly Ivins. Satire is a style of criticism that can be used in many ways and in many different situations. Occasionally satire is easy to find, other times it may be disguised. Most of the time satire is found in literature. Twain uses exaggeration, parody, and incongruity for satiric effect in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
The first tool of satire that Twain uses for satiric effect is exaggeration. Exaggeration is to enlarge, increase, or represent something beyond normal bound so that it becomes ridiculous and its faults can be seen. Sir Kay tells his story of encountering the Yankee, exaggerating excessively. As Sir Kay rises and tells his tale of capturing the Yankee in the land of wild barbarians
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The Yankee was considered different in the people’s eyes but they were the odd ones. Hank says, “boys and girls were naked; but nobody seemed to know it” and “people stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts and fetched out their families to gape at me” (14). In the Yankee’s time people wore clothes, but considering it’s thirteen hundred years earlier than his time people don’t understand what he is wearing. Adults were engaging in childlike activities. At this point Hank is thinking that these people are lunatics:
Many a time I had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by chance, and say simultaneously, “I can lick you,” and go at it on the spot; but I always had imagined until now that that sort of thing belonged to children only, and was a sign and mark of childhood; but here were these big boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it clear up into full age and beyond. (23)
The type of action that the people were engaging in was childish, and in the Yankee’s eyes, it had to be only the young doing it. To conclude, in order to get satiric effect, Mark Twain uses three tools of satire; exaggeration, parody, and
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