Satire in Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain is well known for his technique of using satire to poke fun at as well as criticize society, certain people and even religion. In some cases his use of satire has helped people see the wrong in certain aspects of their way of life. This approach to writing is definitely seen in his novel Huckleberry Finn.

One of the most obvious use of satire in Huckleberry Finn, is Twain poking fun at the hypocrisy of religious people. Many families, even ones who were devout Christians and believed in treating other people right, owned slaves. An example of this, seen very early on in the book, is the Widow Douglas. She, along with Miss Watson, tries to teach Huck how important it is to be kind to others and to pray and believe in God. However, she also owns Jim as a slave at the same time and doesn‘t give him the same special treatment as she allows Huck to have. Twain uses these types of people to criticize those who thought they were perfect in God’s eyes despite treating African Americans as if they were less than human.

Another example of criticism about those who believe themselves to be perfect yet are quite the opposite is the feud going on between the Grangerford and Shepherdson families. According to Buck Grangerford, none of the men in their family are cowards and they even go so far as to take weapons with them to church in case they need to defend themselves against the Shepherdsons. Ironically when they are at church, the sermon is all about “brotherly love”. This is yet another perfect way to show how people back in those times thought that simply being religious made them perfect and above committing sins against their fellow man.

Superstitions, especially all of the ones believed by Jim, are really made fun of in the novel not because they are wrong but more because they’re amusing to read about. When Tom and Huck steal Jim’s hat and hang it up in a tree to convince him witches had visited while he slept, Jim blows the entire situation far out of proportion. It even gets to the point where other slaves come from all around to hear the tale, and Jim goes so far as to say that witches possessed him and took him all over the place during the night. Other examples are the hairball that’s supposed to be some sort of an oracle and Jim wanting to interpret the “dream” he had when he is reunited with Huck after the fog on the river.

I think that Mark Twain had a couple of different reasons for using satire so much in his writing. First, he wanted to make readers laugh and enjoy the story with how he portrayed some things in a more comical light. However the other reason, and perhaps the more important one, is how he used it to show his displeasure with certain aspect of society back in that time period. I believe that he wanted to show people what was wrong with their actions and hopefully would convince some of them to change how they acted as well as treated others.