Satirizing Humanity In Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

Satirizing Humanity Mark Twain is often known as the man who changed literature like nobody had before. Twain used his voice in literature as a way to show just how horrible institutionalized racism is. He realized that although slavery had ended, racism was at its peak with whites still feeling as if they were superior to blacks and not allowing blacks to show their great potentials. Twain found this to be especially true in Hannibal, Missouri, where he had spent most of his childhood life, when he had traveled back and saw blacks still being put down by their peers. Seeing this in his hometown sparked the idea to write his best known novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Throughout the novel, the story of a young Huck Finn unravels his journey through helping a slave escape and all he learns through his adventures. One of Twain’s main focus was to show the satire in the way Americans view themselves, and the way they view characters throughout Huck’s adventures. Mark Twain uses the journey of Huck Finn to satirize human weaknesses of greed and racism that are shown through ironic measures of human nature. While he makes a large amount of his novel based on the negativity of racism, Mark Twain uses Huck Finn’s adventures to show the greediness of human intentions and how that can quickly turn from taking a small amount of money to affecting someone’s …show more content…
As Twain shows how awful people can be with what they want and how they treat others, he proves there can be so much more to people than just what is on the outside. Twain uses irony and satire to show the horrible side of racism that many may miss. Satire can often show a new perspective on actions people make and how they affect others. Even today, satire helps people prove issues, and it all started with Mark Twain changing literature to show a new side of people that had never been shown