Analyzing Mark Twain's Essay 'Advice To Youth'

Kshitij Jain
American Lit. Block 6
Mr. Netzler
22nd March 2018
Literary Analysis Essay

Advice to Youth ??? “They said it should be something suitable to youth-something didactic, instructive, or something in the nature of good advice.” states Mark Twain in his satirical essay “Advice to Youth” when he is asked to give a talk to a young audience at an event. All my life, I have been told to be good. It amuses me how simultaneously vague and complex it is to be “good”. What does it mean to be “good” ?. Humans have been trying to answer this question since time eternal. There isn’t a set of instructions that can be followed in order to be a good person. The author denounces this behavior, which is identified as “acceptable” in a subtle manner

One might expect Twain to give a serious speech which addresses the aspects of adult life but instead, Twain uses irony in order to convey contradiction in his text. “Always obey your parents, when they are present.”, this line tells the reader to be the person their parents expect them to be when they are around. This is contradictory since it is important to be the best version of yourself at all times rather than to just meet someone's expectations. Other instances when Twain uses irony is while talking about honesty, “You want to be very careful about lying; otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught.”. The reader expects to Twain to enlighten them about the virtues of honesty, but instead, he uses sarcasm and goes on to teach them how to lie so they don’t get caught. Twain goes on to say, “A final word: begin your practice of this gracious and beautiful art early -- begin now. If I had begun earlier, I could have learned how.”, this statement is interesting since the whole text is full of irony, humor, and sarcasm but this statement implies that Twain is a bad liar which is ironic and

“Some authorities say get up with the sun; some say get up with one thing, others with another. But a lark is really the best thing to get up with.”, says Twain when he talks about daily routines. Waking up in the morning is an insignificant task and there is not much advice to be given about the task. Twain bringing up this non-essential topic is a way to satirize some of the obvious and petty advice that authoritative figures have been giving kids in the past. The text gets more ludicrous as it progresses, “A youth who can’t hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his grandmother every time, at a hundred.”, here Twain totally goes off topic and starts informing the audience about gun handling. This is laughable since the audience Twain is addressing is underage and do not have legal permits to carry guns. After taking a closer look, Twain is addressing the damage and sorrow guns cause if handled carelessly by young teens. This progression in the level of absurdity in the text helps Twain’s incentive to satirize the way teenagers are supposed to act and