Examples Of Satire In Huckleberry Finn

An example of religious satire in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would be the character of the Widow Douglas. In Chapter 1 of this work of literature, Huckleberry Finn, the thirteen/fourteen-year-old neglected son of the town drunk describes her as a deeply religious woman who has tasked herself with the job of “civilizing” him because she believes taking him under her wing is a responsibility she has to fulfill as a follower of Christ. However, as he continues to discuss her, Huckleberry reveals the Widow Douglas engages in practices which are not exactly becoming of a woman as pious as she. For example, she likes to use smokeless tobacco or snuff even though she expresses he should stop smoking because “…it [smoking] is a mean practice and isn’t clean” (Twain 2). This irony exposes how much of a hypocrite the Widow Douglas truly is as she ends up contradicting herself in an attempt to set an example of morality for Huckleberry to follow. …show more content…
These two wealthy, aristocratic Kentuckian families, like the Capulets and the Montagues from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, are embroiled in a bloody feud which is so old nobody from either family really knows much about how this long-standing conflict started. Despite hating each other extremely, the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons live in peaceful coexistence every Sunday because the two clans are forced to share the same church. On a particular Sunday, the Grangerford family has a conversation about how great they thought their preacher’s sermon on brotherly love was on their way home from service (Twain 109). This discussion proves to be ironic considering the following day the Grangerfords partake in a rather deadly shootout with the Shepherdsons merely over an elopement which results in the extinction of the former