Satire in Huck Finn
To understand Mark Twain's cynicism in The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn one must understand what satire is. It can be defined as a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn and to expose and discredit vice or folly. Satire is the tool that Twain employs in his novel to exaggerate and make fun of the many problems facing American society. Some of the major aspects of society that Twain attacks are religion, slavery, and human nature itself.Religion is one of the main victims of Twain's satire. The satire is visible when the Widow Douglas tells Huck about Moses. When the widow starts "a-bothering about Moses," Huck doesn't understand why she cares about him so much since he was of "no kin to her." Later in the novel Huck realizes that prayer has never done anything good for him, and he cannot see that it has done anything for many others either. Huck concludes that "[he'll] go to hell," because he doesn't want to pray and "[do] the wrong thing." Through Huck, Twain is able to attack the blind faith that civilized society places toward religion.The King and the Duke are perfect people for Twain to express his satire. They are frauds that make their money by deceiving peopl
All that effort wasted just to make it seems as if they care. Twain is once again satirizing the idiocy and cruelty of society. Even though Huck knew the King and Duke were frauds, he still felt sympathy for them because "it was a dreadful thing to see. Instead of running the frauds out of town as soon as they realize that they were being robbed, the town's people let them stay and encouraged others to go see the show as well so that they would not be the only ones taken in by fraud. Overall satire is the key tool that Twain utilizes to demonstrate the problems that society faced. When Huck sneaks away to play with Tom Sawyer and his friends, the boys start a gang and decide that one of the "crimes" they will do is kidnap people and hold them for ransom. They believed that the King and Duke were actually their uncles, even after Dr Robinson told them otherwise and even tried to prove it to them. Twain makes good use of satire to make fun of and exaggerate American society. When, however, the King and Duke are finally captured, they pay for their sins by being tarred and feathered. Through his use of satire Twain turned an adventure down a river into an exploration of the problems society faced (especially civilized society). Twain is satirizing the fact that some people fail to listen and they are fooled because they do fail to pay attention when someone is trying to help them. " Through the actions taken by the town's people, Twain shows that criminals and crooks are not the only ones that can be cruel. Since the boys do not know what the word ransom means they discover that they cannot do that. Twain could have been hinting towards the way people feel about slavery in this instance of satire. The town's people who consider themselves to be civilized and opposed to any type of cruelty commit a cruel act themselves.
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