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How Is Twain Used In The Lowest Animal

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Mark Twain is a famous American author of the 19th century, best known for his works The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In his writing, Twain masterfully uses literary devices to convey his ideas to his readers, and he does this especially well in his work “The Lowest Animal”. In The Lowest Animal, Twain writes satirically about the state of Humankind as a species in comparison to the rest of the animal kingdom. Twain argues that humanity is not inherently better than the other animals, and that we are actually, in many ways, worse. Twain makes the argument that humanity is lower than the rest of the animal kingdom through various direct and indirect ways. His most common means of doing this is by drawing
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introduction As humans, we contain the ability to analyze, understand, remember and judge situations in ways that other species cannot. Societal constructs remain as ideas found only within human society, and they develop over time. The constructs often cause no adverse effects, yet in the form of objectification and discrimination these constructs possess the capability to degrade the quality of human lives. In the 19th century novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn author Mark Twain develops the relationship between Jim and Huck as they reject societal constructs and search for freedom, which defies cultural appropriations and beliefs at the time and encourages individuals to challenge rules society perpetuates. literary review Critics

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Man is the only living thing that has done evil acts for their own purpose of pleasure and to gain power over others. Man is the only one that commits acts of torture. He is the only one that uses pain as a method of punishment. Not only do men use pain as punishment but they also use it to gain an advantage over others. According to Mark Twain’s satirical essay, “The Lowest Animal”, he expresses “Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel.

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“Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity (these are strictly confined to man); he invented them” (Twain). In this satirical essay Mark Twain discusses his ideas about mankind’s useless morel sense. He observes that humans are the only species to possess a moral sense, yet they use it to perform evil. He states after comparing animals to humans he is humiliated to conclude that man is the least evolved of all species. Despite his use of satire, false authority and hasty generalizations, his piece was successful.

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Twain is trying to prove that overly powerful people like the Grangerfords or the Shepherdsons are either foolish or

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This piece of literature is merely depicting history as accurate as it can be. Although people regard this book as inappropriate for the younger audiences, this book just wasn’t meant for kids, but more towards the young adults who are more mature that can truly understand the messages and teachings given by Twain on humanity in the 1840s. The audience should strongly be against the republishing of this book and truly try to intake Twain’s teachings and lessons that are included within the development of the characters and

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198 Words | 1 Pages

Mark Twain’s essay, The Lowest Animal, explores the natural behavior of man compared to “higher animals”. He challenges Darwin’s theory, stating that rather than descending from “low”, primitive animals, humans are in fact the lowest animals. Twain uses satire as well as exaggeration and irony to illustrate humanity’s faults. His dense tone highlights humankind’s lack of morality.

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Racial prejudice and social stratification is an ongoing issue, which is often reinforced by many texts. These ideologies have again been represented throughout Harper Lee's entertaining and descriptive novel, To Kill a Mockingbird which published during the 60's. She addresses these factors by challenging the social expectations of the 1930's, in Alabama. Lee exposes these uprisings through the narrator's eyes, Jean Louise Finch (Scout), who is learning and rebelling against the unjust 1930's perspectives. Harper Lee also utilises Atticus as the protagonist in order to defend the ‘criminal', Tom Robinson, who was charged with the rape of a white American, Mayella Ewell and thus challenges social ideologies and ethics.

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The Killer Elite: Twain’s Argument against Elitism Throughout human history, a key question among philosophers has been whether or not elitism, or a sense of superiority over others, is good. Mark Twain attempts to answer this question in his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as he delves into the effects of elitism on society. Twain argues that elitism should not exist in society because it gives people a sense of superiority over others that they will abuse to gain power and control over people. Twain believes that elitism prevents society from advancing as oppressive “elites” lead to unnecessary deaths and discontent.

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Mark Twain wanted the reader to know just how bad humans were at the time. He also wants to show the difference between animals and humans. He believes that animals should have higher value than humans they have reason.

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The Lowest Animal by Mark Twain shatters the illusion that the human species is superior in every way to animals. The essay satirizes that animals are superior to the human species through the use of made up experiments. Twain utilizes these experiments to demonstrate the parallels between the behaviors of animals and man. These experiments showcase how animals are the “higher animals”. Even more, the experiments are attempting to prove how we, as man, have descended from these higher animals only to lose a few of their favorable traits.

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On The Lowest Animal by Mark Twain, he implies numerous times that human beings are the lowest animal, also implying that other animals or species are more comprehensive and cooperative with each other and to other animals unlike human beings. Mark Twain lists an abundance of reasons of why men are the lowest animal. A great amount of narcissistic people believes that human beings are the highest animal there is but in reality human beings are naturally very crucial to all classes of animals and their actions will never be prevented in the future. Men are the lowest animal because human beings are crucial. On The Lowest Animal, Mark Twain stated, “man is the only one that is cruel.

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In Mark Twain’s argument he’s saying that between man and animals man is the one with greed. After reading the “lowest Animal” i agree with what twain is saying and i believe that man has the most greed. When Mark said “men who accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more.” i highly agree with that statement because it’s true people who have huge vast amounts of money will want more than they already have even if they still have a lot of money they will still crave more.

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Man Vs Animal “Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel” (Twain). In Mark Twain’s “The Damned Human Race”, he uses satire to demonstrate the irony in man thinking they are above all. He criticizes themes that can both be seen in The Crucible by Arthur Miller and Walden by Henry David Thoreau. To begin, Twain’s story focuses on the evolution of man and animal.

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“These experiments convinced me that there is a difference between man and the higher animals: he is avaricious and miserly; they are not.” This quote by Mark Twain portrays his stance on the idea of mankind’s feeling of superiority over other species. Although some people believe mankind is superior on Earth, the reality is the human species is the lowest species due to the fact that we are the only species to experience greed and stinginess. Humans have the urge to always collect more, more of anything, even if it is more than necessary. “ I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown ribid hunger for more, and have not scruple to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially appease that appetite.

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In “The Lowest Animal”, Mark Twain explains man’s morals and ethics as they compare to the “higher” animals, while in the poem “Ethics” by Linda Pastan, a simple situation is given to show what a person believes is right and wrong; both works reveal the theme hope. Mark Twain takes an interesting approach to explain human nature in his work, “The Lowest Animal”. For example,“[h]e is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it” (Twain 538). People understand that hurting another human being is wrong, whether that be physical or mental abuse. However they sometimes do it anyways for the satisfaction that the action provides.

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