Essay The Satire of Blazing Saddles

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.

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 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is not educated, but through his adventures he proves himself to be more quick-witted by outsmarting the educated people throughout the novel. Huck was not raised in what you would consider a “proper home” and as a result of that he has a lack of education. Huck’s pap was the town drunk and for a short period of time, in paps absence, Huck was taken in by Widow Douglas as an attempt to civilize him. The Widow put Huck into school and shortly after his admission he was forced to leave school due to the returning of pap. Pap did not treat Huck in anyway like a father figure would treat his son, “I was all over welts.” (Twain 24) pap beat on Huck and locked him up whenever he went out just so that

The western movie I pick is John Ford’s movie Stagecoach (1939). The movie is about a group of people traveling together by stagecoach from the town Tonto to Lordsburg. The people traveling together are a diverse group of people. All of them have the specific motivation for going, but they all share the same goal reaching to Lordsburg. The characters are Dallas who’s a prostitute, Mrs. Lucy Mallory who is the wife of the Army Cavalry officer, Ellsworth Henry Gatewood who is a banker, Hatfield who is a gambler, Samuel Peacock who is whiskey salesman, Doc Josiah Boone who is a alcoholic doctor, Buck Rickabaugh who is a stage driver, Marshal Curley Wilcox who is a marshal riding shotgun, and Ringo Kid who is an escaped outlaw.

American western movies were a thing of the 1950’s but they were no longer captivating in the 1970’s. It was apparent that guns, cowboys, and American heroes were no longer seen as a point of interest for the viewing public. Mel Gibson’s film entitled, Blazing Saddles, debuted in 1974 and seemed to fit the bill of the post-1960’s western. Blazing Saddles is a film that is able to take on racism and utilize it as an important reflection of the time. The film goes where no film has gone before in terms of discussing race and Hollywood. Blazing Saddles was able to seemingly integrate elements of Blaxploitation and introduce the film industry’s first interracial buddy comedy.

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.

William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning” describes a typical relationship between wealthy people and poor people during the Civil War.

developing a mind and will of his own. He is no longer unperceptively loyal to his father.

The Day the Cowboy’s Quit takes place during the 1880’s and revolves around the character, Hugh Hitchcock. “Hitch” can only be described as a man of his word, perhaps even to a fault. He enjoys simple pleasures, and idealizes the cowboy lifestyle. Hitch works for the W Ranch, for a rancher named Charlie Waide, to whom he looks up to as a sort of father-figure. At Charlie’s ranch, Hitch and the other cowboys are free to own their own cattle and brand them as such, so long as they don’t steal from him or any of the other ranchers. However, not all ranchers see fit the hands-off approach Charlie takes with his men. Since the W Ranch is only expanding its horizons, the cowboys, and Hitch, although optimistic, and faithful in Charlie, see this free way of life coming to an end. Soon enough, big ranch owners try to force their ways upon the W Ranch, and Charlie resists, that is, until one of his own is found to have stolen cattle. Charlie’s trust in his men falters, and he conforms to the business oriented ways of the other ranchers. Upon word of this, the

actions to show that no one will own or control him. He has no regard

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 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and published in the United States in 1852. The novel depicted slavery as a moral evil and was the cause of much controversy at the time and long after. Uncle Tom's Cabin outraged the South and received praise in the North. The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin was a major turning point for the United States which helped bring about the Civil War.

Another example of a corrupt black cowboy was Cranford Goldsby. Known as Cherokee Bill, he was the black counterpart to Billy the Kid. He was born Cranford Goldsby into a law abiding family; his father was a Buffalo soldier in the West (Katz 155). One of the most famous cowgirls was Belle Starr, she was called the 'Bandit Queen'–a lovely lady who ruled outlaw gangs with her guns, her will and her personal favors. She has been credited with stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, cleaning out crooked poker games with her six-shooters, and galloping down city streets with pistols blazing (Arnott). These evidences tell us that there were really some famous black cowboys and cowgirls in the real West but they weren’t romanticized in western arts as much as the white cowboys. Comparing to the book Shane, homesteaders and ranchers were taking the lands of Native Americans, so there definitely was a conflict between these people. However, Schaefer never mentioned about Native, African, or Asian Americans in the book. It can be seen as a case of discrimination.

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.

Typically referred to as ‘Indians’ in popular culture, Native Americans were traditionally seen in Westerns as the antagonists. The Western genre typically tells the story of the colonisation and discovery of America, which saw the major Hollywood studios revive the interest in the Western. Westerns draw on “historical actuality, a romantic philosophy of nature, and the concept of the […] savage” (Saunders, 2001, p. 3). Westerns often split the “depiction of the Indian, with the cruel and treacherous [Indian] balanced by the faithful [Indian]” (Saunders, 2001, p. 3) which resulted in the portrayals of Native Americans witnessed in films today.