The use of Satire in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Essay

This is exactly the kind of behavior that twain didn’t like. However, the main theme in this book is breaking free. He urges his readers to do the right thing, not necessarily what everyone else is doing. He illustrates this ideal with Huck. Most everyone else thought of Jim, along with blacks in general, as something less than human. Huck knew this was wrong, and his actions followed this when he rescued Jim. Main characters Huckleberry Finn Huck is the narrator of the story and for the most part is honest to us, the readers. He dreads the rules and conformities of society such as religion, school, and everything else that will eventually make him civilized. A big debate surrounds Huck on whether he changes or not throughout the story. Huck, in the beginning, seems very set in the south’s anti-black ways, however, Huck states that he will go to hell to keep Jim out of slavery. At this point it seems like he does change, but at the end of the book, Huck plays yet another joke on Jim and seems as though any change was temporary. Huck has little sense of humor, which is ironical, considering the book is satirical. Twain has also been criticized about Huck’s character, in that it seems as though Huck knows too much for his age. In one of the movies Huck was about seventeen, in another he was about eight. I figure from the book that Huck is

Religion is one of the most constant targets of Twain's satirical pen. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain portrays contemporary religion as shallow and hypocritical. He criticizes the hypocrisy of conventional religion by comparing it with the true religion of Huck.

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.

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.

In chapters 1-4 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Twain's characters tend to get worked up over the silliest of superstitions. In the second chapter, when Huck accidentally flicks a spider into a flame, he, “Was so scared and most shook the clothes off [him]” (Twain 3). He counters the burden that the dead spider will bring by performing plenty of even more odd acts like turning around while crossing his breast and tying up a lock of his hair to ward off the witches. Huck is still anxious because he hadn't been told that any of those counter charms were good for removing the penance of killing a spider. Most superstitions throughout these chapters stem from one person telling another of an

Huck began to over exaggerate as he was expressing his feelings of wickedness for “stealing a poor old woman’s nigger”, which is an over exaggeration since he did not steal Jim, but instead was helping him escape a terrible lifestyle (Twain 318). Also ironically, if he went to Sunday-school he would have learned that helping a slave would lead him to “everlasting fire”, instead of to Paradise, although holding slaves is against Christian ideologies (318). By doing this Twain subtly emphasizes the foolishness and irony that religious women such as Miss Watson would even own a slave while parading herself as a devout Christian woman because of the fact that Christians do not believe in harming other beings, which slavery does by oppression. As Huck pondered on his ethical dilemma whether to save

Twain uses a boy and a runaway slave in, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to not only tell a story, but to express what he thinks are the problems of civilized society. Satire is the key tool in which he uses to demonstrate these problems. Through Twain's use of satire, we can not only poke fun at American society, but we can learn from its mistakes. Twain

'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.

Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took place during a tense period in U.S. history. Heated debate over the morality of slavery had sparked and deep divisions were emerging between the northern and southern states. Born in Missouri, a slave state, the novel’s protagonist Huckleberry Finn was raised on values of racism and prejudice. He adhered to these principles as they were all he knew. However, over the course of his journey, Huck’s formerly provincial morality was challenged by his real-world experiences, and he was forced to derive a new set of morals for himself. At the start of the novel, a blind acceptance of slavery was present in Huck’s mind. This was revealed when Huck thought, in reference to Jim’s plan to free his children, “Here was this nigger, which I had as good as helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would steal his children – children that belonged to a man I didn’t even know; a man that hadn’t ever done me no harm” (137). Although grateful for Jim’s companionship and reluctant to report him to the authorities, Huck still believed slavery to be a moral practice. As evidenced by this thought process, Huck held on to the values of the slave-owning states in the south, believing that Jim’s children, as slaves, were property. He even felt remorseful at the thought of a man’s slaves being stolen. Regardless of his budding friendship with Jim, Huck was still concretely in favor of slavery. This static view on

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.

So, Huck decides, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” (Twain 214). Huck decides in this moment that there is no turning back and that he

Twain created the characters of Widow Douglas and Miss Watson as devoted Christians but used satire and made them own slaves and act in unorthodox manners. Miss Watson is an example of a Christian that believes that anything that contradicts the Bible is incorrect and should never take place. “Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it.” (8). This quote shows how Miss Watson believed that following the Bible was the only way to live. Huck was more pessimistic in thinking. Miss Watson told him that if he prayed he could receive anything he asked for. When Huck did not receive the fish hooks he prayed for, he stopped believing in the teachings of the Bible but never forgot them. Widow Douglas had a different approach to religion. She believed that if she was kind to everyone and tried to refrain from sin, she would go to “the good place”. This use of satire directly affects religious readers. The religious audience can choose to interpret the meaning and change their old school ways or try and be open minded about religion. Religion affects Huck’s morals and decision making throughout his adventure with

The reason Twain uses satire in The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn, is to create casual dialogue ironically. Rather than emphasizing how people see white privilege at the time, Twain uses it as a way to underscore the terrific truth about the South: it was a place where slaveholders did not consider the death of a black person worth their notice, and where a "nigger" was not a human being. For example, in chapter fourteen, Huck exemplified “Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I’m a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of a human race.” (Twain, 123) By using satire, the author was intended to prove that black people should have the equivalent right as the superior white people. And there should be no discrimination, no misunderstanding and no racism. These undertones were hidden in between words in a setting of an adventure story. By choosing to write in such a form, Twain noticed that it would be less literate for children to confirm the underline

Twain was a trailblazer for American Literature in his time period. He showed the dark times of slavery in a new light. He didn’t hold anything back he showed America what was really going on and what was wrong with it. Twain used different versions of dialect throughout his novels. He actually states in the beginning of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that all his characters are purposefully talking differently. Twain also uses humor or also known as satire in his novels. Twain will make fun of little things in the book by making it seem very over the top and extraordinary. He gave America their literal identity by showing the rest of the world that you don’t need to follow any rule for writing you just follow your ideas.

A reason why novels such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain are considered some of the best pieces of American literature is because Twain’s writing style revolutionized literature. Twain, unlike many authors at the time, chose to write his books in a more realistic perspective of American culture. Shying away from the romantic and transcendentalist techniques is what allowed Twain to become an instant literary giant. Within Mark Twain’s works, he successfully captures and illustrates what American life was like in his lifetime. This realistic approach allows people to see the grim and gritty reality of his time period. Today Twain’s novels can be perceived as a portal into nineteenth-century life. Back then people were desensitized to derogatory slurs and lingos of their time just as we are to our own today. Modern people attempt to protect their children from the harshness and evils of reality, which in turn, leads to censorship. This crusade against political correctness has turned on to The