Satire is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s lack of intelligence, particularly in politics and other topical issues. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the author criticizes the South before the Civil War using satire through slavery/racism and religion/superstition. Mark Twain uses satire through slavery/racism in the South to expose and criticize human failings. The black professor who is smart, wealthy, owns white clothes, and has the right to vote, leads Pap to ridicule him out of jealousy. Twain uses irony because Pap does not know why the black professor is so much better than him and has freedom, even though Pap drinks and ridicules the government so much. Not only that but Pap does not have a good education, which also adds to why he is ironic, since he does not make an effort to acknowledge himself in the things he gets angry about. Along with that, Twain uses satire to criticize Huck in this case. After being reconnected with Jim, Huck lied about being lost, but Jim finds out that Huck is lying because of the wreckage that was left in front of the raft. Twain is criticizing whites because Huck does not think that Jim, who was a slave, has feelings; Huck only realized that Jim was scared that he had lost …show more content…
In the beginning Huck was being taught the correct way to do things because of Miss Watson’s certain beliefs and understandings of race. After spending months on a raft with Jim, Huck starts to mature and take responsibility, in order to stay alive. The most important concept of the story is that being away from normal racist society, Huck was able to get to know Jim as more than just a slave and treat him like anyone else, even though Huck was only fourteen years old. Mark Twain is able to ridicule the South using satire by trying to conclude that one is not born with racism, but is taught