Examples Of Satire In Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain once said, “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” Twain centers his well-known novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, around this common and contagious plague, stupidity. This lengthy novel leads the reader through the thrilling adventures of a young boy and his runaway slave as they travel north. Mark Twain utilizes satire to expose the stupidity of the people in his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain uses satire to exhibit the blatant stupidity that occurs countless times throughout the novel. To begin, Huck Finn’s father Pap attempts to gain full custody of his son. The narrator recounts this sorrowful reality, “He said courts mustn’t interfere and separate families

This nonsense has seeped too far and for too long into their lives. It has blurred their consciousness, effectively making them execute stupid acts. The author uses satire in this instance to reveal how foolish the family is for carrying on a feud when most of the people involved do not know why they are fighting. The method of satire used is incongruity because normally, a group of adults can recognize that fighting for no reason is uncivilized. Lastly, if a crowd of people is motivated by stupidity, they will, therefore, perform stupid actions. A prime example of this is when the whole town swarmed to Colonel Sherburn’s house after he murdered a drunk named Boggs. The townspeople were furious that Sherburn could carry out a vicious deed and wanted to avenge Boggs’s death. The narrator explains, “Well, by and by somebody said Sherburn ought to be lynched. In about a minute everybody was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and snatching down every clothesline they come to to do the hanging with” (145). They all knew that taking the law into their own hands was wrong, even in their deluded minds, but they did not want to be thought of as