Satire in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Satire is a tool that is used throughout the novel The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, in order to critique religion, society, and its justification of slavery. During the time of slavery and quite a few years after that, black people were considered to not be “whole men” and were described as “immature, irresponsible, unintelligent, and physically strong.” (Race and Racism) What Twain did with his story was to comment on the duplicity of “the whole man”. The scene that will be focused on is found on page 51, when Huckleberry describes his life at the Widow Douglas's home, and it is said that in the evening Miss Watson would call their slaves into the house and pray before it was time retire for the evening. As this occurs within the first few pages it directly introduces us to the world of hypocrisy that this novel is set in. …show more content…
However in juxtaposition they also own slaves which can be considered to be very contradictory to basic Christian beliefs, proven by verses such as “do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12). There are several other characters who have the same religious belief and also own slaves, making the ownership of slaves to be very illogical to a true Christian that believes the bible is law. However something that must be mentioned is that not only do the Christians in the novel go against the bible, but the bible also contradicts itself, with verses like “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ”(Ephesians 6:5). Due to this, Twain is not only satirizing society’s ignorance of what it means to be a good Christian, but also religion itself as being hypocritical and