Satire in Huck Finn
Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel of great acclaim, and great controversy. The work embodies ideologies of the day, utilizing satire to demonstrate the long and short of the institutions and ideas of the context, which Twain so colorfully creates and embellishes. Some argue that the satire is a poor guise for the demonstratively racist ideas that Twain does not counter in his statements about the world as he sees it.
Critics vilify Twain most often and most vehemently for his aggressive use of the pejorative term "nigger." Detractors, refusing to accept the good intentions of a text that places the insulting epithet so often in the mouths of characters, black and white, argue that no amount of intended irony or satire can erase the humiliation experienced by black children. Reading Huck Finn aloud adds deliberate insult to insensitive injury, complain some.
Henry 28)
Yet, there is a clear sense of satire, no matter how tamed it is by propriety and colloquialism. Though the novel's satire is not subtle, it is not risky either. It is spoken by a narrator who shares the authoritative word with his audience; in a sense, his readers have granted him the authority."
Lynch 172)
The satire most often addressed, with the regard tot the work is the attachment of the most comical and literarily powerless of individuals with the words that demonstrate a desire for redress of social construct. The language of the novel demonstrates a call to question the authority of the ideas that are being issues through pejorative terms like "nigger," the most complicated and controversial of all of Twain's term tactics appearing at least ninety times (in singular only) within the text, in both positive and negative connotations. When describing Jim as an admirable character to both the adolescents and his peers the word is simply a moniker, to Jim's name as it is so frequently used almost to a point of notoriety, a question of itself, "Jim was monstrous proud about it,...Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country."
Twain 8) While like in the ranting of Pap the whole gambit of social ills afforded to the black man, free and enslaved are embodied in the manner in which this character speaks of the situation at hand. Pap, waxes on and on about black success and white failures, as if the whole of the nation was in a state of flux because the black man had rights and the white man was denied them.
Twain 37)
It was 'lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a state in this country where they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote ag'in. Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me -- I'll never vote ag'in as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that nigger -- why, he wouldn't 'a' give me the road if I hadn't shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger put up at auction and sold? -- that's what I want to know.
Twain 38)
Pap is a caricature of the angry poor white trash, the anomalous character who has been denied his rightful piece of the American dream and does the best thing he can to respond he further disenfranchises his abilities by becoming the town drunk, falling over himself in his vehement effort to let his opinion be known, in a culmination of what can only be called a list of excuses for his own failings. "Pap was a-going on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and barked both shins..."
Twain 38)
Twain uses the literary forms of irony and satire to convey his message about the hypocrisy of American society. One example is the feud of the two families who are portrayed as pillars of the community and who go to church regularly, carrying their guns with them. They see no connection between their church-going and Christian beliefs and the killing of each other for reasons no one can remember. The conscience of the nation is symbolized by the journey of a runaway slave and a rebellious white teenager. Loyalty, friendship, respect for others who are different -- especially different because of race -- are all explored for their moral...
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