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 …show more content…
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
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Show MoreIn Mark Twain’s famous Novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an exciting story that is told by a 13-year-old boy who ventures into a perilous expedition down the daunting Mississippi River on a puny wooden raft. The story's sensationalism sometimes makes Huck's journey seem unbelievable. Throughout his novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain uses several rhetorical strategies to portray the institution of slavery in America during the 1850s. To start off, Mark Twain published his book, the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, twenty years after the civil war.
In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses satire to teach an overall theme. One particular theme Twain emphasizes in this fashion is the treatment of slaves. During the Duke and the King’s funeral scam, Johanna questions Huck about slave treatment in England. Johanna asks: ”’... How is servants treated in England?
Twain's Satire Through The Eyes of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain, the author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, used satire in order to criticize and unmask certain topics, more specifically American society. In this novel, a young boy named Huckleberry Finn was thrown into a situation where he had to fend for himself but learned a lot on the journey. He went from living with Miss Watson, a widow, to living out on a boat with Jim, the widow's runaway slave, and two frauds who said they were a king and a duke. He faced many problems along the way but never resorted to violence when coming up with a plan or solution.
In Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain uses satire to bring attention to the problems in the society of that time period. These ideas include hypocrisy, government, and racism. All of these items were presented in the time period of which Huck Finn lived in, and Twain despised how people engaged in these acts on a daily basis. He used his satire to criticize society and its flaws for the greater good of human nature. First and foremost, Twain wrote these satirical scenes to bring attention to the problems of society in hopes they would try to correct them.
Mark Twain in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, uses satire to mimic many of the characteristics of the modern world. Throughout the novel, Twain’s main characters, Huck and his black friend Jim, encounter many different situations and people throughout the entirety of the novel. Mark Twain designs and uses all of these hilarious situations to mock the American people and American lifestyle during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, these primary plot stories contribute to what he thinks are the three most egregious and irrational human behaviors practiced by the American people at this time. Twain satirizes the practice of slavery, the core nature of a human being to “go with the crowd” instead of thinking for itself, and lastly how desperate
Satirical Essay of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn One of the many themes of satire in the classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the theme of slavery or racism. Mark Twain had a great eye for humor, especially the humor of satire. Focusing on the concept of slavery specifically, nearly the entire story is a single continuous satirical joke. Looking at the basics you could say Jim’s journey to the north is in a way satirical as a slave moving south so that he can get north.
Satire is the technique of using a variety of methods to make something look foolish or silly in order to point out faults. The novel The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain is about a boy who has a alcoholic father, Huck makes a decision to run away and seeks a runaway slave, Jim. Throughout his journey he learns more about the stereotypical judgement on blacks. Huck finds no difference between Jim and himself and risks his life to free Jim. Mark Twain satirizes institutions using Horatian because he wants to seek social change.
‘Him? He never done nothing to me.’ ‘Well, then what did you want to kill him for?’ ‘Why nothing – only it’s on account of the feud” (Twain 127), proving the pointlessness of the hostility. As the feud started so long ago, neither the Grangerfords nor the Shepherdsons understand why they are still fighting.
Satire in Huckleberry Finn Satire can be described as the use of humor and wit by an author, poet, or artist with critical irony, ridicule or sarcasm in order to bring out exposing faults and frailties of the activities of mankind, such as vice, folly, and stupidity. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn makes use of satire to mock numerous and varying aspects of the contemporary world. Throughout his escapade down the Mississippi, as well as prior departing St. Petersburg, Huck comes across a wide array of people and experiences that are intended to scoff at the American populations. Twain satirizes various aspects of the American life to paint a picture he intends in the mind of the reader.
Both Jim and Huck Finn want to achieve their own form of freedom and happiness. In conclusion, Mark Twain was a remarkable author. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain's use of satire is used to expose the wrongs of society and add to the theme of the novel. The satire of religion, racism, and honor are used to portray this humorous
Twain’s use of satire ridicules hypocrisy and ignorance in society before the civil war. Twain uses satire in his novel to make fun of hypocrisy. He uses it at the beginning of the novel when Huck’s father is complaining about the government. Pap
In the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, Huck, a young boy on his arduous venture toward adulthood, experiences a multitude of emotions concerning the principles of how the “inferior” race is to be treated. Twain uses Huck’s experiences on land, on the raft, and with the people he encounters every day as a tool to display the racial tendencies of the Antebellum South. Twain exposes Pap’s relationship with Huck to show one example of the hypocrisy that white people hold toward the black race. Huck’s turmoil relationship with Pap frequently leaves him to be the subject of Pap’s fury. Pap’s return to Huck’s life achieves little in regard to Huck’s well being, but that does not stop Pap from whisking Huck away from a healthy
Hypocricy and Blind Faith Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took place in the eighteen hundreds when religion and reputation were dominant in peoples everyday lives. It was very rare for someone to believe something different than everyone else. In Twain 's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer and Huck appear to be very different, but their actions, descriptions, and dialogue bring them together to symbolize society in order to show the blind conformity and hypocrisy that humans often display.
Mark Twain’s writing gives the impression that he follows an unexplored and uncharted path. While writing for newspapers, he exposed himself as an inventor and he actually patented three inventions. While he visited places to deliver his lectures he was celebrated for his fine and exceptional sense of humour. At times his speeches and writings bear the mark of satire about the mentality and behaviour of people in the United States of America. Satire is a tool for making remarks about absurdities of the society is a casual and mocking way.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a satire that Mark Twain had written with the motive to correct the vices of the American Society and government. Mark Twain was not