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Huckleberry Finn Satire

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Recommended: Mark twain humor and satire

The Author Mark Twain is well known for his use of satire in his works to poke fun at current events in his time that can still relate to present day. In this particular book, Huckleberry Finn Twain uses the theme of gun and weapon violence in his satire. Huckleberry Finn uses satire of gun and weapon violence in many instances one of which is when Huck uses the gun against his father when he becomes drunken and crazed and was chasing Huck with a knife. (Twain 22). “By-and-by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wind, and he se me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place, with a clasp-knife." This shows how weapons pose a problem in an everyday scenario such as this when a parent is under the influence and may …show more content…

This is when both families are at church and the preacher gave a sermon about brotherly love and being good to one another while they all had gun-in-hand ready to shoot at one another and, afterwards everyone said it was a good sermon. "The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon." (Twain 83). This is satirized by the fact that it brings humor to the situation because the sermon was exactly the opposite of what was really thought by the families and how they acted. Another example relating to this satire of gun and weapon violence is in the movie Tropic Thunder when Ben Stiller's character in the movie in the movie being made in the movie gets his hands blown off, this is satirized because of how is hands are made to look and how the actors are performing. Both Ben Stiller's and Robert Downey Jr's. characters are supposed to look idiotic in this scene. They look so because they are crying, and drooling and the whole scene just pokes fun at all the violence in the movie especially due to the movie being about war. (Tropic

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Twain extends his satire to the moment surrounding the funeral service of Peter Wilks. The dark humor of the funeral scene is obvious with the actions of the undertaker and the interruption of the dog catching rat. When the service is interrupted by the noise of the dog, the undertaker tells the people at the funeral that "He had a rat!" Huck's says "there warn't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was" which is another example of satire directed at the subject of death. The scene in which Mary Jane is saddened by the unfortunate situation of the slave family, forces Huck to act based on both his instincts and his conscience.

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The scene that I relate to in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is when Huck is trying to get away from the Duke and the King. The quote that I found for this part in the book was when huck was talking to Mary Jane and he said “ It’s a rough gang, them two frauds, I’m fixed so I got to travel with them a while longer...”(187). This quote shows that Huck has figured out that the Duke and King are not good people and that he knows that he will still be with them for a little while longer.

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715 Words | 3 Pages

it warn’t any good to me without hooks”(10-11) It is a well known fact that prayer is a part of the Christian religion. Twain uses this situation to convey a parody of Christian prayer and prayer antics. Christianity stresses that it is important to pray so you can communicate and connect with God on a deeper level. Twain is satirizing how Christians can sometimes pray for things so superficial, yet they claim they are connecting with

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847 Words | 4 Pages

Before the Civil War, slavery was a very popular practice in the southern United States. Though not many people actually had slaves, most southerners defended it because one day owning a slave was the “American Dream.” In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses satire to reveal the greed, religious hypocrisy, and gullibility among the pre-Civil War south. Twain uses satire to demonstrate how greed can leave a person with less than what they began with.

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In the story “In Cold Blood” the author Truman Capote uses a tone of scathing and tragic. “Those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare oh which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers.” That shows how everything was so different around the neighborhood after they were brutally killed. “At the time not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard them- four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.” After the accident, “Towns people, therefore sufficiently unfearful of each other.”

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In Copper Sun it shows how slave owners have guns and are not afraid to use them. “Then with one hand, he cocked the musket and aimed it at Noah’s broad chest.” (183) (Mr. Derby, about to slay a slave named Noah). Slaves also had trouble using and understanding guns, as there was never a need for them in their homeland. This sentence shows how slaves didn’t even know what a gun was, let alone how it worked.

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Parody is when a work apes another work in an absurd tone so as to mock the original. Parody’s use to mock government in Huckleberry Finn is best exemplified by Colonel Sherburn’s rant to the lynch mob that formed against him after he shot and killed Boggs: “‘You [The members of a lynch mob] didn’t want to come. The average man don’t like trouble and danger. You don’t like trouble and danger. But if only half a man -- like Buck Harkness, there - shouts ‘Lynch him!

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Satire is the technique of using a variety of methods to make something look foolish or silly in order to point out faults. The novel The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain is about a boy who has a alcoholic father, Huck makes a decision to run away and seeks a runaway slave, Jim. Throughout his journey he learns more about the stereotypical judgement on blacks. Huck finds no difference between Jim and himself and risks his life to free Jim. Mark Twain satirizes institutions using Horatian because he wants to seek social change.

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552 Words | 3 Pages

It has been brought to my attention by your organization, that you wish to have the classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, banned from our school systems. Now, I can understand your views and claims against this book, but in order to stay with a clean conscience, I must not let you and your organization bring forth this motion. As the head of both the city council and the local school board, I hold some sway with the other councillors and board members as well. I shall do everything in my power to convince them to vote against this outrageous demand. That is if, I cannot convince you, or the majority of your organization to not move forward with this motion.

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Economics focuses on scarcity and the implications of the use of resources, production, and transfer of wealth. The book Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, written in 1993, shows a dystopian future where economic collapse and society falling apart have reshaped their world. In this sad place where they live, economics is something that shapes the lives of the characters, it goes on to highlight the impact of corporations and politics on society. They have economic instability and political corruption. Economic instability is when there are many factors in the economy that are out of balance.

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In Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain uses satire to bring attention to the problems in the society of that time period. These ideas include hypocrisy, government, and racism. All of these items were presented in the time period of which Huck Finn lived in, and Twain despised how people engaged in these acts on a daily basis. He used his satire to criticize society and its flaws for the greater good of human nature. First and foremost, Twain wrote these satirical scenes to bring attention to the problems of society in hopes they would try to correct them.

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2101 Words | 9 Pages

A prominent example of this is shown when Huck visits the Grangerford family. The Grangerfords have been locked in a decades long “feud” with a nearby family, the Shepherdsons. The two families are willing to kill each other on sight and don’t even know how the feud started. However, the families attend church together with their guns between their knees. On page 171 the text states; “Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody ahorseback.

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544 Words | 3 Pages

Mark Twain uses satire to portray different issues that were going on during the time period. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, author Mark Twain uses Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer to represent romanticism and realism. Doing so formed the characters into two drastically different persons. Mark Twain uses satirical elements to contrast the two main characters in their personalities and views. Tom Sawyer is a child who is blinded with fictional literature and the worlds view on slaves.

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448 Words | 2 Pages

Twain uses satire in this paragraph because the battalions were out in the streets minutes before ready to kill the foe and now they are reciting a “long” prayer for safety and comfort during war. In the “long” prayer,

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1499 Words | 6 Pages

In Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the subject of gun violence plays a prominent role. Twain satirizes the subject pointing out its futility through the point of view of the novel’s central character. Huck was raised around guns all of his life. He explains that he was taken away from his abusive father and forced to live with the Widow Douglass who had plans to “sivilize” him. His father, however, kidnaps him and threatens his life during a drunken rage forcing Huck to take up arms to escape his father’s wrath.

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