Huckleberry Finn Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, or exaggeration to reveal or ridicule human vices. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain uses a variety of satire to call out human ignorance. He uses his main character a 14-year boy from before the Civil War as his catalyst to show a child’s innocence in a twisted society. When Huckleberry Finn fakes his death and runs away from his alcoholic father to Jackson Island, where Finn finds Jim a previous slave to his adopters that tried to civilize Finn. In the book, the reader can see Finn is growing in his adventure as he helps Jim a runaway slave escape to the north. The satire is used to show all the vices of the civilized world like slavery, being civilized, and society itself.
Finn struggles …show more content…
Once the pair raft is split by a steam boat Finn is found on shore by the Grangerfords. The Grangerfords are as Finn sees them as “well born, as the saying is, and that’s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse” (104 ), which is ironic because horses are bred to be better at running and jump, but if one of their legs gets hurt most owners just kill the horse and name it useless. Comparing a horse to a man who was placed in wealth because of his family is saying that if this man is ever to stand up and say he doesn’t want this or choose a different route not approved of his family he would be disowned or ignored for the rest of his life. Afterward, when Finn asks Buck Grangerford about the feud, he discovers that the feud started so long ago and asked Buck Grangerfors if he knows which family started the feud he replys “laws, how do I know? It was so long ago”(108). Twain uses this to expose that the civilized world has idiotic fighting because the in the feud no one knows what they are fighting about, but are willing to continue meaninglessly. Furthermore, the fight started so long ago with no one knowing who started it so why continue to kill people for such dismal reasoning of pointing fingers. This juxtaposes the beginning of the story when Finn is adopted by Widow Douglas and she tried to “ sivilize me [Finn]; but it
Finn struggles …show more content…
Once the pair raft is split by a steam boat Finn is found on shore by the Grangerfords. The Grangerfords are as Finn sees them as “well born, as the saying is, and that’s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse” (104 ), which is ironic because horses are bred to be better at running and jump, but if one of their legs gets hurt most owners just kill the horse and name it useless. Comparing a horse to a man who was placed in wealth because of his family is saying that if this man is ever to stand up and say he doesn’t want this or choose a different route not approved of his family he would be disowned or ignored for the rest of his life. Afterward, when Finn asks Buck Grangerford about the feud, he discovers that the feud started so long ago and asked Buck Grangerfors if he knows which family started the feud he replys “laws, how do I know? It was so long ago”(108). Twain uses this to expose that the civilized world has idiotic fighting because the in the feud no one knows what they are fighting about, but are willing to continue meaninglessly. Furthermore, the fight started so long ago with no one knowing who started it so why continue to kill people for such dismal reasoning of pointing fingers. This juxtaposes the beginning of the story when Finn is adopted by Widow Douglas and she tried to “ sivilize me [Finn]; but it