Huckleberry Finn Satire

America’s tumultuous history resulted in an unprecedented and vast compilation of controversy. Such disputes, now generally resolved, prove to be valuable topics in the chronicles of literature. Accordingly, author Mark Twain, makes various attempts at satire in his novels, with the purpose to advocate his perspective of the aggressive, unrelenting discourse during pre-Civil War America. In his novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain exemplifies the critical use of satire to expose the contradictions of human nature and society, and proves his novel to be an indispensable article of history.
With the values of pre-Civil War Americans in consideration, Twain’s character Miss Watson was often referred to as a moral woman. The perceived

The feuding families incident is an often misunderstood event in the novel. The most common perception is that the focal point is the two lovers running away together, and although it may appear so, it was solely a reference to Romeo And Juliet by William Shakespeare. Twain’s inclusion of this circumstance was fueled by his cognizance of humanity’s perplexing tendencies. Huck converses with Buck Grangerford about his family’s dispute with the Shepherdsons, and asks how it began. Buck simply answers, “... I don’t know… It was so long ago,” (109). This conflict has gone so far to end lives, yet no one is able to recall why it's of any value, which questions the customary family ‘code’ and honor that was blindly and sometimes arbitrarily followed. Twain is challenging traditional values of Americans, characterizing fervent pride as illogical. Twain again challenges incongruities in culture when writing about the Boggs and Sherburn altercation. In this development, the mob of townspeople confront the colonel, ready to lynch him for murder. The harsh irony of this situation is that not minutes before, the group was reenacting the homicide, as if for entertainment, “... everyone was excited. Everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened,” (146). This occurrence illustrates human idiocy, and in a way that people believe that they are being just. Twain