Satire In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

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Literary Analysis of Satire Throughout the story of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain utilizes satirical flaws to teach readers about society back then and society today. Twain wants to reveal his feelings towards society, positive or negative, in order for us readers to understand his purpose for the novel. Twain’s satire of mob mentality and gullibility is evident through the satirical techniques of parody,situational irony, and exaggeration. Twain exposes the satirical flaw of mob mentality throughout the plot of the story. In the story, there are specific occurrences of this flaw. One of those specific occurrences happened in the scene where Sherburn was ran out of town by the mob for shooting innocent Boggs. With that, the mob felt bad for Boggs’ death and they weren’t going to oblige to Sherburn killing innocent people in the town. Twain …show more content…

Tawin used this evidence to imply that the townspeople were afraid of the mob. Through parody, a reader could tell that Twain used this technique to imitate the people running out of the way in order for them to not get run over by the mob. Twain’s message is that society tends to be followers of other people (in this case the mob) and society tends to disregard their own individuality to be apart of a group in which they agree with their values. Even though the mob runs Sherburn out of town, there is another occurrence of mob mentality existent in the story which is when the mob digs up Peter Wilks’ grave for the hidden money. When this happens, it reveals that the mob wishes to discover the money because they dislike the duke and the king; In addition, they think the duke and the king are frauds. A clear view of this event occurring is “When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and