How Does Mark Twain Use Satire In On The Damned Human Race

Mark Twain manipulated the satirical style of writing in his essay, On the Damned Human Race, to pinpoint Man’s flaws, or Defects, and mock the Darwinians theory of the Ascent of Man. He hoped that exposing this error would cause a closer evaluation upon an individual's morals. Despite his false authority and hasty generalizations, Twain managed to pull together an overall effective piece with his cold, calculated method of analyzation and rationalization.

Although Twain was quick to group together people into one category in a hasty generalization, his overall message was indeed effective. He intended for this piece to be interpreted as a call to people to analyze their morals. Because Man is intentionally cruel to one another and uses their

morals, beliefs, and ideals of good and evil as an excuse for any harsh act committed upon each other.

Animals, on the other hand, have no such predisposition. They are not cruel to their kind because of any supposed right or wrong imposed by society, nor are they unnecessarily greedy, unlike their human counterpart. They take only what they need and only are cruel to protect one another, a contrast Twain remarks upon. In Twain’s contemplation and condemnation, he is utterly correct, especially for his time period. People were deliberately cruel to their race, solely based upon social status and skin color, whereas the animals he saw every day never seemed to have this compunction as their actions only reflected upon protection, not intentional injury. Twain experienced this in his lifetime and couldn’t help but scald society with the opinion he had formed, nor could many blame him. He called into

question how Man could be considered the higher animal when every day they seemed to denigrate themselves by their selfish acts and the lower animals, who do no harm for the sake of appetency, continue to be the lesser of the two. From the revelation Twain made in the acts of man to his satirical piece criticizing their apparent constitutional Defect, he implores his audience to make a change in their acts and views and to evaluate Man’s instinctively bred morals.
On the piece as a whole, one area I do partially disagree with Twain on would be his grouping of all of society into one.

He should have introduced a counterclaim somewhere into his paper where he would allot that not all of Mankind act in this manner, that it may be influenced by location and time period, or at least some acknowledgement that this is a generalization would strengthen his overall argument on the atrocities of Man. Although one specific example I disagree with his views on would be the reasonableness of Man. Twain claims that Man is the Unreasoning Animal and cites his previous examples of Religion and Patriotism as his evidence, but using these very same examples, Man can be found to remain the Reasoning Animal. The violent acts Man commits in the name of his nation cannot be found to lack reason as he does it for the sake of protecting those he loves and the values that nation has instituted to remain unchanged. As for Religious reasonability, Man believes so strongly in his theology that any act violating the moral code instilled as such qualifies for a severe reprimand. For them, it is a simple cause and effect, a violation leads to a punishment, type of logic, a harsh and times complexing logic granted but a type of reasoning nonetheless. If anything, Man is the gullible animal, often easily manipulated by the wishes and aspirations of others, more so than he is the Unreasonable Animal as Twain claims from his examples. Whereas I agree with him on Man

being a cruel animal, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, because of their selfishness and, as Twain specified, man’s incurable foolishness.
Twain created an effective essay that was meant to change the cruelty of mankind caused by their natural predisposition to a faulty moral sense, their ultimate defect. Despite his hasty grouping of Man into Unreasonableness and generalization of humans as a whole, Twain was right in his observations. From Man’s behaviors it does appear as if we have degenerated far from our ancestors in our attitudes towards each others and animals are far appearing as our superior in that matter. In a call for change, he was satirically exposed one of Man’s greatest weakness in the hopes for a betterment in society.