Satire in Huckleberry Finn

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.

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 first time Huck went to get superstitious advice from Jim is when he went to ask Jim when his father would be returning in his life. He had already seen his father’s tracks in the snow and knew he would be coming real soon. He wanted to know what his father was going to do and how long was he going to stay. Huck heard Jim had a hair ball that was taken out of a stomach of an ox, that he used to do magic with. The hair ball supposedly had a spirit in it that knew everything. The hair ball told Jim about Huck’s father and Jim told Huck, “ Yo’ ole father doan’ know, yit, what he’s a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec he’ll go ‘way, en den agin he spec he’ll stay. De bes’ way is to res’ easy en let de ole man take his own way ( Twain 119).” He then began to tell Huck his father had two angels over him. A white, shiny angel that tells him to do right and a dark angel that tells him to do wrong. He told Huck that he also has two angels over him that does the same, and that nobody knows which one is going to get you in the end. This part of the story showed me Jim wasn’t as foolish and stupid as everybody thought he was, he was actually wise. That night when Huck returned home his father was waiting for him in his bedroom.

Devices like mockery, irony, parody, and sarcasm make the use of satire effective . Satirists typically use these devices when hoping to expose, or even humiliate an individual or a society. Writers also use satire when creating social change as well as preventing it. Well known satirists include Mark Twain, Jonathan swift, and many other extarident authors. Every satirists uses different methods or devices to get their point across and effectively at that . Satirists use many different methods and devices like mockery, mock-heroic, and others to use satire effectively and gain an audience's attention.

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been controversial ever since its release in 1884. It has been called everything from the root of modern American literature to a piece of racist trash. Many scholars have argued about Huck Finn being prejudiced. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses satire to mock many different aspects of the modern world. Despite the fact that many critics have accused Mark Twain’s novel of promoting racism, through close analysis of the text, it becomes remarkably clear that Twain is satirical in his writing as he ridicules slavery and the racist attitudes prevalent in his day.

Many authors use satire to discuss issues in society that they have opinions on. These authors express their opinions by mocking the issues in a subtle way in their writing. Throughout The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain satirizes many societal elements. Three of these issues include the institution of slavery, organized religion, and education.

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.

'So you've been gone a couple days,' Alison said. 'Hmm, what'd you miss...A celebrity did drugs. Politicians disagreed. A different celebrity wore a bikini that revealed a bodily imperfection. A team won a sporting event, but another team lost.' I smiled. 'You can't go disappearing on everybody like this, Hazel. You miss too much.'" ~John Green. John Green is criticizing how Americans only care about irrelevant events going on in the world. Americans would choose to hear the latest celebrity gossip, over an event that affected the world. John Green is comparable to Mark Twain, whom also is a big critic of American society. Mark Twain used humor to make fun of family feuds, hypocrisy among religion, and the gullibility of people to fall for a prank. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain used satire to his advantage and humiliated many aspects of American society.

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.

In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain used a lot of satire. Throughout the book readings discover many different themes. One of the motifs is freedom. People see examples of freedom in everyday life. Throughout Huck’s trip to Mississippi he realizes how much freedom he has.

Huckleberry Finn Satire Essay In Mark Twain's The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, there were a lot of examples of satire. The one that stuck out to me was the idea of family feuds. The feud between the Shepardsons and the Grangerfords is ironic in the story because they have been fighting for years and don't even know why they're fighting anymore. This is ironic to me because the Buck wants to fight against the opposing family extremely bad, but he doesn't know why.

Mark Twain purposely had satire put is his book “Huck Finn”, to show all the faults society has at this time. Mark Twain has satire, mostly on about human greed and violence. He shows this by everyday human interaction and people do to others. Also, people can be selfish because they scammed or something bad happened. They had to let others be affected to because they wanted them to suffer too. Satire in “Huck Finn” was meant to show the faults of society during this and how people can be selfish and really violent.

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.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was an American Novelist. Mark Twain was widely known for his books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, but many didn’t know for being America’s best humorist. Twain always finds a way to embrace his sense of humor on many touching subjects like death. He often joked about how dreadful the world would be if we were to continue to live forever. He gives us a new perspective on death through his quote. “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Death is Inevitable, something beyond our control, but yet Twain embraces the concept of death with is wry sense of humor. If you are to be fully engaged

Huck Finn is a picaro (adventurous hero), who despite being wronged by fate (motherless child, abused by his drunken father) has his own strong opinion about what good or bad for him and for his life. Throughout the narration, the reader sees how Huckleberry Finn evolves spiritually, morally and, even, intellectually in his own way. The reader sees that, in spite of lacking the proper upbringing and constant positive role model in his life, choices that Huck makes are the good ones. His common sense and humanity does not depend on a level of his “civilization”, education or social background. Huck’s grammatically incorrect speech is full of ironic, funny remarks as well as of really smart and precise conclusions. Only Huck is getting his knowledge in a practical way, not from books. For example, Huck’s conclusion about praying and getting for that everything that he needed from God: “I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without hooks” (Twain, 1994). Huckleberry Fin approaches each of the life dilemmas with his own native wit. In his spiritual and moral journey, Huck instinctively chooses to be influenced by Miss Watson’s runaway slave, Jim. Initially, Huck considers Jim is not worthy of respect, but, as always, he eventually makes a right conclusion and changes his opinion: “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither” (Twain, 1994).This quotation is momentous because it indicates the new stage of Huck’s evolution. Huck lives in society that long time ago decided that slaves are less human than their masters. Huck grew up in a racist society and, to some point, he was a racist himself. Thus, here the reader can see that Huck, once again, goes against the traditions and values of the society. He