Huck Finn and Satire

A detailed Summary of Huck Finn and Satire

One name from American Literature that probably all school children know is Mark Twain. Along with that, one book from American Literature that probably all school children have heard about is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Truly, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a marvel of its own time and is still a great classic today as it illustrates for its reader the pre-civil war South far beyond anything one could imagine. The book itself makes such great use of satire and humor and criticism to make Mark Twain's opinions known and paint a surprisingly accurate picture of the South. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain satirizes and criticizes societies and customs of the southern pre-civil war towns lining the banks of the great Mississippi River.

Mark Twain uses his masterful ways of satire to voice his opinions upon the societies especially in satirizing the judicial system, which he does so passionately in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain humorously shows how lenient and sometimes ignorant the court systems can be and how the law enforcement cannot deal with actual crimes. Law enforcement does nothing about drunkards like Huck's father and the court system hardly punishes him for his crimes. Judge

Twain also does a fantastic job of satirizing religion. Not only does he make fun of African American religion, he also makes fun of white religion. He satirizes mainly the hypocrisy that is ever present in the Christian churches of the Mississippi towns. Twain often refers to how much slavery is against the Christian beliefs (Emerson, pg. 631-632).

Although The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a story based on a folk tale in the way that, for example, Harris' Uncle Remus stories are, folklore does play an important role in the narrative and in our understanding of Huck.

to talk, Twain only applied the argot to Blacks and not to Whites throughout the novel (Berkove, 687-689). There is not one sentence in the entire novel spoken by an African American that is not comprised of broken English. But in spite of that, the broken English does add an entraining piece of culture to the book.

In summary, the whole of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a book of satire and criticism, some amusing some not so amusing. With the closing of each chapter, one can go back and find more and more amounts of criticism and satire. There are points where the humor is so thick, it's almost absurd but there are also points in the novel where the criticism is so harsh, it almost makes one want to take a break from reading it and go find something ch

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Approximate Word count = 908
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous