¶ … Mark Twain's use of satire in his novel "Huckleberry Finn."
SATIRE IN HUCKLEBERRY FINN
Satire is defined as literature in which vice and folly or certain human weaknesses are held up to ridicule, often with the purpose of instigating reform"
Johnson 223).
Mark Twain's uses satire and humor often in his novels, and "Huckleberry Finn" is no exception. His rich characters use their dialects and intellects to ridicule just about anything that Twain had strong feelings about. Early on, Huck is adamant in "refusing to learn about Moses because he 'don't take no stock in dead people' (Chapter I). Yet in this instance he argues for the usual meaning of the story and will not listen to a more down-to-earth interpretation"
Lewis 115).
That is just the beginning of what promises to be an enjoyable look at the world of the 1800s through Twain's twinkling eye. Indeed, we are warned as soon as we open the book not to take anything inside too seriously. "Notice to Readers' (p. iv): Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot"
Bercovitch 12).
One scene, later on in the story, satirizes how people looked at blacks at the time. "I struck an idea, and fetched it out: "It warn't the grounding -- that didn't keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder head." "Good gracious! anybody hurt?" "No'm. Killed a nigger" (Twain 306). Blacks are "nobody." Jim is an important part...
Mark Twain The two institutions that Mark Twain attacks and ridicules in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- that will be critiqued in this paper -- are religion and government. There are multiple examples of Twain's brilliant use of his narrative and dialogue to illustrate how he really feels about religion and about government. The novel that Twain produced has been used in schools all over the United States because of
Huck even sounds more like Jim than the other characters in the work in terms of his dialect, and the fact that he pretends Jim is his father underlines the degree to which the two of them are bound in a relationship. The NAACP national headquarters' current position endorses the book: "You don't ban Mark Twain-you explain Mark Twain! To study an idea is not necessarily to endorse the
Mark Twain's realism in fully discovered in the novel The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, book which is known to most of readers since high school, but which has a deeper moral and educational meaning than a simple teenage adventure story. The simplicity of plot and the events that are described in the book look to be routine for provincial life of Southerners in the middle of the 19th century. But
Conclusion The research showed that the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn stands out as one of Mark Twain's best works, and it is not surprising that so much has been written about the book over the years. In many ways, Twain is like Benjamin Franklin among major American historical figures. Both of these individuals stand out as being geniuses of their respective eras, for example, and both of them contributed much to
Twain Humor Mark Twain's short but entertaining story entitled The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is an interesting tale that presents many useful arguments for dialogue. The purpose of this essay is to explore this short story and discuss the realistic and humorous aspects of this literature. This essay will present an argument that suggests that Twain's story is mostly symbolical and the literary techniques used in the writing of
She was 24 when she died and Twain never lived in the house again (Literature 1835-1910, n.d). Like many authors that lived in his day, Twain had very little formal education. His education was obtained in the print shops and newspaper offices where he worked as a boy. By the time he was 18, he had served an apprenticeship as a printer at his brother Orion's paper and written a
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