Huck Finn Satire Analysis

A good author 's purpose is to influence their audience with their writing. Whether it is to sway them to one side or to just inform, authors use satire. Satire is the calling of attention to fundamental flaws in humanity through literary elements. Satire is an author 's way of pointing out an issue and calling for it to be changed. Satire is used throughout out the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to express many different . The primary ideals Mark Twain wanted to change were some of the things that many people of the time thought were acceptable. Twain uses satire to show how the ideals of the southern whites were wrong and immoral. Particularly, he highlights the ideas of discrimination and slavery, civilization, and killing through

In Huck Finn there are many examples of satire about slavery, but one of the most apparent was the new judge 's decision to give custody of Huck to his father. The judge displays his hypocrisy when he states," courts mustn’t interfere and separate families if they could help it"(Twain 22). Slavery constantly separated families, many times children were taken away from their mothers and fathers. It is illustrates the hypocrisy of the good "civilized" people who claim to be holy and Christian. Another point where Twain shows how slavery is completely ridiculous is through the conversation between Huck and Jim. He illustrates that Huck had been corrupted into believing that Jim and other blacks are just property through Huck 's outrage at Jim 's suggestion of hiring an abolitionist to steal his family back from their "rightful owners" (Twain 92). Twain uses this particular example to show how deep seated the issue was in southern society. It shows the reader that even Huck, a character they are beginning to believe has a good heart, has guilty thoughts about a Jim trying to reunite with his family, even though he really cares for him. Another point where Twain uses slavery to represent all other race problems. Slaves can be used to represent any oppressed or mistreated group of people. He is trying to make the reader see the error in his or her ways and accept all