Satire In Mark Twain's 'The War Prayer'

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

Satire describes the literary technique that combines dark humor and irony to criticize and expose humanity's stupidity. The purpose is to entertain readers with perverted humor while illustrating the horrors of war that Vonnegut consistently describes, “anyone who seeks glory and heroism in war is deluded” (Vonnegut 26).

A satire is a piece of work that is designed to ridicule or tease a group or organization, generally for the purpose of being humorous. “The Importance of Being Earnest,” a play by Oscar Wilde, is a satire, ridiculing class, gender, and marriage. This essay will describe some points from each of these sections, as well as give a brief synopsis of the play these examples come from.

Mark Twain is satirizing the advice young people are given by authoritative figures on different issues in life. The words of wisdom used to guide youth usually promote the same ideals and are repeated so often that in some sense they lose their strength. That does not mean though that the issues they touch upon are not important. Twain uses humor to actually make young people go beyond the banality and conformity and ask questions of importance.

War has the ability to change many things about the world. While most associate the changes of war with boundaries and governments, people often forgot the influence it has over society and culture. The United States experienced a change similar to this shortly after the Civil war. Citizens were shown the brutality and devastation of war which lead to them having a grim outlook on the world. This viewpoint inspired a new generation of artists and authors who ,with their combined works, created Realism. Writers like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Abraham Cahan, Ambrose Bierce, and Henry James pushed the drastic shift from feelings to reality in the hopes of appealing to the more literate working class. Many stories, in order to capture reality, relied on similar techniques and themes such as: simplicity, truth, and criticism.

A satire, by definition, is a way of using humor that shows the weakness or bad qualities of person, government, or society (Merriam-Webster). Satires are used in everyday life to make fun of someone or a society. We see it used in newspapers, magazines, and on television shows. This element is used in literature, as well. Many authors have used this element in their books, such as Mark Twain in his classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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.

During the early 1900’s, Americans were caught up in the idea of imperialism, or extending their influence to other countries using military force. Mark Twain’s essay, The War Prayer, was written during this time, but argued against the popular philosophy of imperialism. Twain’s essay was too controversial and Harper’s Bazaar believed it was not suited for the public to read, so it went unpublished until after his death and after the idea of imperialism had lost its fervor.

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.

Mark Twain, in his writing of “Advice to Youth,” reveals what he believes to be relevant instruction to guide the youth to success. These statements in regard to who he’s speaking to is are as pertinent today as it was in 1882 when the speech was given. This didactic oratory, as it was written to the young, is expressed in the vernacular which allows for a sense of relation from Twain to those he’s speaking to. In addressing this advice, Twain uses several literary techniques including satire, diction, and hyperbole among several others. Specifically used by Twain is Juvenalian satire which bitterly and ironically criticizes society, in this case how children are raised to think and act.

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