Mark Twain's Critiques Of Society In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

In Mark Twain’s book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the protagonist, Huck Finn, struggles in-between the Southern values of slavery and his own conscience, letter revealing situational irony. Situational irony is an occasion in which the outcome is significantly different from what was expected or considered appropriate. Slavery was commonplace in Huck’s time. No one has told him differently, but somehow the isolation on the raft, away from the laws of civilization changed that misguided outlook.as a port uneducated boy, Huck questions the precepts that society takes for granted. This self questioning is heighten by the difference of social orders: Huck and Jim’s microcosmic community where everyone wants everyone else to be satisfied

Throughout the novel, Twain shows his contempt for corrupt human nature. Although these instances are often satirized and exaggerated, the message is still the same. For instance, when the King and the Duke first start to lie about being the dead Peter Wilks’ brothers to obtain his money, Huck says, “It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race,” (191). In this instance Twain is utilizing Huck to show his aversion to the way people lie and cheat, and how a couple of people can make a bad name for all of us. Another example is when Jim sells the King and Duke out to the townspeople and they are carried on a pole, tarred and feathered. Although Huck, has tried to escape the King and Dukes several occasions and has witnessed the cruelties put on others and lies they tell, he does not think that they deserve similar treatment. In fact, he says, “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another,” (269). Through Huck, Twain is voicing his opposition to how people treat one another, whether they deserve it or not. Thus Twain is using his novel to voice his enmity for the cruelty in human nature.

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn satirizes gratuitous violence, excessive greed, and racism. First, Twain illustrates the satire in the gratuitous violence with the backwater families and the rural country people starting with the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons. Huck first meets the Grangerfords when Huck and Jim’s raft breaks apart and Huck ends up on a shore. Huck meets Buck Grangerford who asks if Huck is a part of the Shepherdson family, in which Huck responds that he is not. Buck explains to him that the Grangerfords and the Shepherdson’s have been in a feud with each other for as long as the families can remember, however, no one knows or can even remember how or why these two families are fighting. Twain goes on to explain that the two families even go to church with their rifles while the priest preaches about love and peace. Twain also uses Boggs and Sherburn to further satirize these nonsensical violent habits. Boggs, who is very drunk, keeps causing a ruckus and speaking ill of Sherburn. Sherburn tells him to stop, but Boggs does not listen, so Sherburn shoots and kills Boggs. Soon after a mob forms declaring that they must kill Sherburn in retaliation. Sherburn tells the mob that they do not have the prowess to go through with their plan to kill him. He says that “Because you’re brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man’s safe in the hands of

The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn emphasizes the strategies of ethos, logos, pathos to satirize religion in the mid nineteenth century. It is arguable that Huckleberry Finn is obviously centered around the degree of racism during the given time period, but other topics are apparent when audited. Throughout Huckleberry Finn, religion is cultivated in a humorous way such that Huck’s views, a warring family’s morals, and the teachings of the time period are prime examples of religious satire in Huckleberry Finn and utilize ethos, logos, and pathos.

Mark Twain once described his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as “a struggle between a sound mind and a deformed conscience”. Throughout the novel, Huck wrestles with the disparity between his own developing morality and the twisted conscience of his society. In doing so, he becomes further distanced from society, both physically and mentally, eventually abandoning it in order to journey to the western frontier. By presenting the disgust of Huck, an outsider, at the state of society, Mark Twain is effectively able to critique the intolerance and hypocrisy of the Southern South. In doing so, Twain asserts that in order to exist as a truly moral being, one must escape from the chains of a diseased society.

Twain 's use of satire is one of the many things that makes this book a classic. By pointing out human weakness Twain helps show flaws in society and how society can be wrong. This book serves as a lesson about forming your own opinions and in Huck’s cause it is about breaking from society’s morals and deciding that slavery isn’t wrong. Huck 's experiences with Jim, helping him escape slavery illustrate this. Huck sees how people can be cruel even when they claim to be civilized. “”Twain 's satirical attack on slavery, hypocrisy, and prejudice in antebellum America compels readers to look not only at slavery and racism, but also at the whole tradition of American democracy””(PBS). Twain satirises the people Jim and Huck meet and the society they are in. Huck and Jim must oppose the “respectable” people they meet along the Mississippi, Miss Watson, Pap, the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons, and the Duke and King(Nichols 13) because they don’t agree there ideas and they would take Jim back into slavery. How Miss Watson can be a

4, 12), frowns upon them . Then, as evidence of the King and Duke?s ability to manipulate others through lies, Twain writes, ?And he always let on that Peter wrote him the things, but that was a lie: he got every blessed one of them out of that young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat. Then Mary Jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the king he read it out loud and cried over it? (ch. 25, 139). Here Twain displays the Kings contrived attempt of remorse over the death of his so-called brother, his conscience unaffected . These hollow signs of emotion portray the two men?s cold response to a man?s death, as they attempt to profit off of his passing. Similarly, in another instance, ?one of them got on one side of the coffin, and t?other on t?other side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and let on to pray all to theirselves?I never see anything so disgusting? (ch. 25, 138), giving the reader another glimpse of the immoral tactics of the King and Duke . In this situation, the two crooks play off of the sympathy of others so that they might better pry them for money, an act properly referred to by Huck as ?disgusting? (ch. 25, 138). The duo?s spurious act, as a means of swindling innocent townspeople, underlines their immorality by showing how effortlessly they use their guile to delude others and bring upon them great misfortune. Another attempt by the King and Duke to rob people of their money comes when the

In the novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain satirizes and points out common human weaknesses. Within the content, readers are shown the flaws in most all characters including the unreliable narrator, Huckleberry Finn. Some of the most obvious human weaknesses satirized by Twain are ignorance, racism, and self conflict. Twain’s intention of satirizing is to point out common and ironic flaws within their society, considering the time period.

The men pose as great men, but they have unethical intentions. Twain’s use of satire is a parody of the duke and king to add a comical effect, but it also serves to enhance Huck’s character. He humorously juxtaposes the morally intelligent but uneducated Huck in contrast to the duke and king who perceive themselves as educated but indeed the two are arrogant con

Similarly, another display of faulty logic would be when the new judge rules that Huck should be in Paps custody, despite Pap’s history of alcoholism and abuse. These events and moral misjudgments serve to make up the society that Huck inhabits. The message that Twain is expressing with this kind of atmosphere is that, no matter how “civilized” a society might claim itself to be, it cannot be civilized or just so long as it enacts the practice of slavery. When terrible acts of injustice go unpunished but minor offenses result in execution, the society cannot be just.

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

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a book about a boy who travels down the river with a runaway slave. Twain uses these two characters to poke fun at society. They go through many trials, tribulations, and tests of their friendship and loyalty. Huck Finn, the protagonist, uses his instinct to get himself and his slave friend Jim through many a pickle. In the book, there are examples of civilized, primitive, and natural man.

Once back on the river after the Shepherdson catastrophe, Huck meets two characters who make careers out of not being who they claim to be. Huck senses early on that the king and duke were just “low-down humbugs and frauds,” but he resolves not to confront them about it because they remind him of his own father. He reasons that “the best way to get along with [Pap’s] kind of people is to let them have their own way” (125, 126). Huck’s likening of the king and duke to Pap after they first meet shows that he will not be looking up to these characters; his familiarity with their type helps to clue the reader in on these rapscallions. While these men never claim to be morally upstanding, they never acknowledge their unscrupulous way of life as wrong and hurtful to others. They get by on deceiving people, which is an unacceptable way to live. Twain wants the reader to dislike these characters regardless of the entertainment they provide, and they do not end up getting away with all of their cons. Twain illustrates with the fates of the Shepherdsons, Pap, and the king and duke alike that neither those falsely claiming to be pious nor those who are unapologetically corrupt will be fulfilled in the end. Considering Huck

The King creates a show, just for men. He states, “ “The people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over again, and after that they made him do it another time” In the show the king comes out a begins embarrassing himself just to make money. He crawled on his hands and knees nude just to make a profit. Twain uses the King to show how society will do anything for a profit. He satirized Silas, the preacher, when he states, “"He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see. But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church and schoolhouse, and never charged for his preaching, and it was worth it, too. There was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and done the same way, down South.” Silvia's is a farmer and also a preacher, the townspeople consider him great because he preaches for free. He owns slaves on his plantation, that makes him a slave owning preacher. This puts him in a situation where he is disobeying the Bible by owning slaves. Another reason Huck rejects civilization is because society believes that they are perfect and are being “proper christians” but in reality, people in society will do anything for money, and they also have twisted values. Huck himself also satirizes himself, he states, “She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up.” Huck feels that Ms. Watson has confined him back into her bubble of civilization by putting him into new clothes. Twain shows that even though you change someone's appearance, you can't change who they are in the

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (published in 1885), considered a classic of American-literature, and to some the zenith of American realism in literature and the apex of satirical writing in history, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has proven itself as a milestone in the history of literature and a turning point in American literature. The garnering of such acclaim, and accolades were due to The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn possibly being the most poignant and successful critique on society every put into writing. Twain does not waste any time with sophomoric cant in his meditation, but instead critiques the inherent cant present in society and the people entertaining this cant throughout that time; showing