How Does Mark Twain Use Satire In Huck Finn

As intriguing and entertaining as this book is, the fiction novel, the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, should be taught towards high school students, but with some limitations. This book has brought the attention and controversy due to the portrayals and racial stereotypes, shown throughout the novel of African Americans and Caucasians through satire that Mark Twain has expressed. As well as the separation between whites and blacks and the social view at that time, which at some points in this novel were similar and others were different. Huck’s morality changes throughout the novel, from being someone who doesn’t want to get in trouble to someone who will defend his promises even with his circumstances of that period of time. Although I do agree …show more content…
I believe that although the people of Mark twain’s period had seen satire as something funny due to the fact that it was making fun of other races, Mark twain had a deeper meaning through his literature. In the passage where the King preaches at the camp meeting (p.131-132) Mark Twain is making fun of evangelism, sentimentality, as well as chicanery by creating this setting, being in the camp meeting where the king receives the opportunity to begin to say that he was a pirate from the Indian Ocean and that, he doesn’t have any money to go back to sea, but once he does he will evangelize what he has learned since he is a “changed” man. This ends up making the people sentimental as well as caught up in the moment and the king takes up this opportunity to take advantage of the people at the camp meeting. I believe Mark Twain displays satire throughout this scene because he wants to show how not only the black race can be deceived but white people as well. This would be something positive to teach students because it shows the equality of a human being, anyone could be