Examples Of Satire In Huckleberry Finn

An eighteenth century English poet by the name of Alexander Pope once said, “Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.” Pope’s quote relates to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain because Twain creates a satire on human weaknesses throughout the book, yet they most frequently hide in disguise. In the novel, the main characters, Huckleberry Finn and Jim the slave, attempt to go on an adventure from the South to the North up the Mississippi River. On this journey, the characters encounter many different people and somehow end up in unique situations. Among these uprisings, Twain introduces a number of characters to reveal different examples of satire. Twain’s portrayal of American society in early nineteenth century illuminates

Upon the death of the well-off Peter Wilks, the con men riding along with Huck and Jim, the King and the Duke, spot a chance to delude the townspeople and steal their money. They stop in town and pretend to be the brothers of the newly deceased Wilks. After faking this brotherhood for a couple of days, the King and the Duke attend the somber wake of Mr. Wilks. Throughout the ceremony, a dog and a rat in the basement of the Funeral Home create noise, so a mysterious undertaker character dramatically deals with the ruckus by stealing the guest’s attention once he makes his way down the stairs, where, “in about two seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or two, and then everything was dead still … ‘He had a rat!’ ”(308). Twain satirizes the fascination for somber ceremonies in the form of an innuendo throughout the somber ceremony of the wake. This satire is revealed when the desperately depressed guests suddenly find themselves easily distracted by the dramatic rat incident, rather than focusing on the dead body of their loved one in the casket. Likewise, the Sir Walter Scott episodic plot also exemplifies Twain’s satirization of human

The first episodic plot in the novel, “The Sir Walter Scott” episode, tells the story about a sinking ship in which the main characters, Huck and Jim, come across while drifting down the Mississippi River. By using the name of a real author, Walter Scott, of the romantic literature era, Twain satirizes the romantic genre as a whole by conveying the message that if an author follows romantic trends and focuses primarily on emotions, readers will fail to show interest in the author. To add, as an example of an innuendo, Twain indirectly portrays that if the author does not attract readers, then his career, or boat, will sink. Once Huck and Jim escape the sinking boat, they watch from “a hundred yards [away from] the wreck,”(124), as “the darkness soaked her up, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it.”(124). In brief, by directly dictating that the main characters end up safe from the sinking ship, Twain indirectly indicates that he does not write in a romantic style and proves himself as safe from the drama and foolishness of the romantic genre as a