Examples Of Satire In Huckleberry Finn

Edilson Roy

Mrs. Daniels

English III Pre-AP

1 August 2016

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Interestingly enough, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (book) was indeed an excellent novel to read. It had tons of satirical elements being used that came upon in my reading. For instance, the tone of the story caught me as humorous at first, there were plenty of parts where the characters exaggerated way too much that made me chuckle some bits. The king and duke, two criminals that Huck invited to his raft when they were escaping the law, were talking about a play. They both excitedly discussed about Romeo and Juliet, and so they dispersed the parts between them, duke knowing more about the play decided to be Romeo because “…he was used

When something is taken in the opposite way of what is really stated. One point in the novel Huck wants to give his money to Judge Thatcher because he’s afraid that his old drunk father would take it all away. However, Judge Thatcher thinks differently in what Huck says, he believes that “You want to SELL all your property to me-not give it.” (Twain 18). In this situation, Judge Thatcher wouldn’t have expected a young boy like Huck would just give six-thousand dollars to him out of random. It’s expected of him to think that Huck really meant that he wanted to sell his property instead because no one ever gets that kind of money like that. Other than verbal irony as a satirical element, there was also situational and Socratic irony. Situation irony is similar to verbal irony but in this case it’s not what is said is reversed. What is anticipated actually doesn’t happen, an event of some kind. In this case, Huck throughout the story lies to every person he encounters about his life and name, and he pretty much goes without a question from any of them. Everything goes well for him on his adventure, except when he comes across the Grangerfords, and has a chat with Susan about where Huck came from and his life in general. As usual Huck came to his lies again but Susan caught that none of what Huck was saying matched up or made any sense. Huck was at a “…stump. I had to let on to get choked with a chicken bone…” (Twain 175). His plan wasn’t going as according to as he thought it was going to turn out. Which was a situational irony because he expected for Susan to take his lie seriously like everybody before her did. Nevertheless, that didn’t go according to plan so instead of what was anticipated, the opposite happened. Another type of irony as a satirical element would be Socratic irony, which I’ve only caught once during my reading. Socratic irony is when a character spots another