How Does Mark Twain Use Satire

Mark Twain in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, uses satire to mimic many of the characteristics of the modern world. Throughout the novel, Twain’s main characters, Huck and his black friend Jim, encounter many different situations and people throughout the entirety of the novel. Mark Twain designs and uses all of these hilarious situations to mock the American people and American lifestyle during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, these primary plot stories contribute to what he thinks are the three most egregious and irrational human behaviors practiced by the American people at this time. Twain satirizes the practice of slavery, the core nature of a human being to “go with the crowd” instead of thinking for itself, and lastly how desperate

This book was written shortly after the Civil War had concluded and obviously Twain did not support slavery at all. Through Huck and Jim, Twain mocks slavery in two important circumstances and despises the way that people treated slaves. In the first circumstance, one of the first people met in the novel, Miss Watson, is displayed as a dedicated Christian woman with high values, but Twain also emphasizes her as a slave owner. Twain criticizes her through the use of Huck who says about Miss Watson, “ “…she fetched the [blacks] in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed”(Twain 3). Miss Watson, being a dedicated Christian, believes that she can remain a good Christian if she has her “property” pray at the end of the day. This is Twain using satire to show that Miss Watson’s thinking is hypocritical because even though she is forcing her slaves to pray, she is not being a good Christian if she owns

Twain uses satire in order to relay his opinions of certain aspects of human life that he felt was ridiculous. Twain regarding slavery, attacks it through Miss Watson by showing us how Christians justified having slaves by making them pray. Secondly, the cowardness of human individuals who don’t stand up for what they believe if they aren’t supported by a group of people. Lastly, human individuals unjustifiable need and desire for money that they would humiliate themselves in order to obtain it. Overall, Twain used a number of satirical stories in order to relate his opinions on the deficiencies in human society in order to spark social commentary. Through this, Twain is telling the rest of the world that man can still and needs to continue to perfect