How Does Mark Twain Use Satire In The Lowest Animal

Provide supporting evidence from the texts to support your responses to these questions. All answers should be in the form of complete sentences.

The use of Satire in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn In his novel the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884, Mark Twain uses satire frequently as a medium to display his feelings on a range of issues related to society at that time. Throughout the book he ridicules many aspects of society, including the prevalent views on slaves and religion, and their social structure. Even though the novel was set fifty years before it was published, the themes still held true for contemporary society. This led to the novel being criticised widely as a result of it condemning the very society it was presented to.

What makes a being more evolved? Who are we to say that humans are the most evolved or even the least? It is believed by some that we are descended from the "higher animals", whereas others believe that we have ascended from the "lower animals". In Mark Twain's essay, "The Lowest Animal" (1896), he portrays the idea that the human race has no hope, as we have too many flaws. It is undeniable that we have our flaws, but what creature on this planet does not? The human race may not be perfect, or reaching perfection anytime soon, but it does progress and develop as time goes on. As humans, we are neither substantially higher nor lower than animals. Although foolish actions are performed towards each other and our planet, we have also

The statement that can best be made about the purpose of The Lowest Animal by Mark Twain is that he believes that mankind is immoral, vulgar, wasteful, vengeful, discriminatory; cruel, greed, and obscene. This is because he has a moral sense and conscience despite this, doesn’t make our decisions right and properly. However, contrast with Mark Twain’s thesis; I think human beings are not that all bad and not the lowest animal, but perhaps not the highest animal either.

It can cause shock in the beginning but that makes it even stronger. He manages to instill the idea that we are all special, everybody in their own way and the person sitting next to us deserves as much respect and appreciation as we do. He also demonstrates that we need to live life for the better of ourselves and others equally because that will bring us true satisfaction.

In his essay, “The Lowest Animal”, Mark Twain attempts to prove a pessimistic opinion of his. He compares humans to animals, and explains how contrary to widespread belief, humans are a lower animal to other species. While he makes some valid points about greed, selfishness, and violence, he misses the overall picture of human nature. I firmly believe that the human race is made of not only civilized, but caring human beings. If humans were as abominable as Twain attempts to make us out to be, we would not have countries, communities, or any other caring and loving, individual connections. We would also have countless amounts of prisons, prisoners, high mortality rates due to violence, and lower life-spans. Twain writes from a subjective point of view, allowing his opinions of

Mark Twain’s logical fallacies wash over his readers like depression in the mind. They creep in like a soft voice heard just by the ears at first, but soon they take over the entire limbic system. Attacking the amygdala in a verbal hijacking, rendering the host unable to feel conversely. Satire is by definition Mark Twain’s View of the man in “The Damned Human Race.” It’s his use of ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices and follies to scorn (Merriam-Webster.com). Mark Twain’s approach to prove his hypothesis that; man is at the bottom of evolution, is enticing but not successful.

What is humor? With humor we think of something that is obvious, something that sticks out to us in a book or in a paper that makes us laugh. Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, included numerous occasions of humor throughout his writings, though Mark Twain makes his humor very dry and sometimes hard to tell that it is even there. Mark Twain, unlike most authors, includes humor in his writings without it being blatantly obvious.

According to Ernest Hemingway, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Along with Hemingway, many others believe that Huckleberry Finn is a great book, but few take the time to notice the abundant satire that Twain has interwoven throughout the novel. The most notable topic of his irony is society. Mark Twain uses humor and effective writing to make The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a satire of the American upper-middle class society in the mid-nineteenth century.

People always say that laughter alleviates tension. If this is the case, then it makes sense that the use of humor when discussing uncomfortable topics can make the conversation easier and more light-hearted. One of Mark Twain’s most frequently used devices in works such as “Advice to Youth”, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness”, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is satire, which can provide society a method to bond over uncomfortable topics, and facilitate the ability to sustain that bond through an easier way to create discussion.

Twain uses satire through Sherburn's speech to criticize human nature and the society as a whole. Sherburn describes the mobs and the town people as cowards since they wouldn't be able to lynch him and go against him if they were not in a group. Through this satire from Sherburn's speech, the readers can understand Twain's view on human nature. Twain pokes fun of the fact that in society, people often times follow with whatever the crowd believes in rather than what an individual believes

Although people disagree over what makes someone morally “good” or morally “bad,” most people can agree that caring and compassion are good qualities while intolerance and selfishness are bad qualities.  Mark Twain uses satire in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to amplify the good and bad qualities of people.  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn exposes Twain’s thoughts on human nature by showing undesirable qualities of people in the racist white people and showing preferable qualities in the African-American slave, who is a victim of racism.  The racist white people are portrayed by Twain as prejudice and egotistic while Jim portrays compassion.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines satire as: “literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn.” Besides this definition satire can also be seen as the particular literary way of making possible the improvement of humanity and its institutions. In the three works: Moliere’s “Tartuffe,” Voltaire’s “Candide,” and Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” the authors indirectly criticize and ridicule human behavior and characteristics but with the goal for improving these faults rather than just demolishing them.

In Both Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller there is a lot of satire included in the novel. Although they both use satire Twain uses different types of satire unlike Heller who mostly uses comical satire. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the different types of satire used are slavery, racism, religious hypocrisy and superstitions. Twain uses satire more efficiently because he relates it to serious problems that people could relate to.

Another example of satire is the incident of Boggs in chapter twenty-one. After Boggs, the town drunk, had clearly annoyed Colonel Sherburn with his nonsense, Sherburn had no choice but to pull the trigger on Boggs, desperate to kill him. When Boggs is shot dead, everyone jumps with excitement, all appalled of witnessing a shooting. Twain analyzes how the “loafers” imitate Boggs calamity. As Huck sees this chaos in town, he describes the scene, “The streets was full, and everybody was excited. Everybody that had seen the shooting was telling how it happened, and there was a big crowd packed around each other… One long lanky man, marked down the place where Boggs stood, and where Sherburn stood, they watched him mark the places on the ground with his cane, and then he stood up and straight and stiff where Sherburn had stood, frowning and having his hat-brim down over his eyes, and sung out, ‘Boggs!’ and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says ‘Bang!’” (Pg. 146). This quote supports the theme because here people have enjoyed witnessing a real shooting. The people feel the need to celebrate and make fun of something they don’t realize it is something tragic and wrong. Twain has this quote as an example of man versus society because it has Huck exposed to a