How Does Mark Twain Use Satire In Cannibalism In The Cars

Satire often finds its place in literature as a tool to criticize and mock a person or group of people. Satire is most commonly used in the context of politics. Mark Twain’s short story, “Cannibalism in the Cars”, is no exception. Twain’s short story takes various forms of satire and complies them into a comedic onslaught of what he truly thinks of politics and politicians. Twain ridicules American politics and congressional proceedings through the use of the satirical devices reversal, irony, and exaggeration. Reversal is a technique where the author gives normal qualities to a completely abnormal situation. In Twain’s novel, after six days without food, Gaston erupts screaming, “Gentlemen: It cannot be delayed longer! The time is at hand! We must determine which of us shall die to furnish food for the rest” (299). Gaston uses sophisticated and unique language to describe the barbaric action of

When the stranger is telling his story, he describes the setting as, “The winds, unobstructed by trees or hills, or even vagrant rocks, whistled fiercely across the level desert, driving the falling snow before it like spray from the crested waves of a stormy sea” (Twain 298). Twain goes into more detail than any one person could remember. At the end of the short story the conductor tells the narrator about the stranger saying, “He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has eat up that whole carload of people he talks about. When he gets them all eat up but himself, he always says: ‘Then the hour for the unusual election for breakfast having arrived… I was duly elected, after which, there being no objections offered, I resigned. Thus I am here’” (Twain 303). Throughout the short story, Twain exaggerates over and over again. The use of exaggeration parallels the American tendency to over exaggerate, especially in