Use Of Satire In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a valuable novel and should be included in high school curriculum because it questions human morals, it shows an important part of American history, and Twain creatively uses satire to find humor in controversial situations. The author of this novel Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens, grew up along the Mississippi Riverfront and had many occupations through his life. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the continuation of his other novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, although one does not need to read that novel to understand this one. This novel alone averages 200,000 copies sold per year. This essay is to defend why this novel should stay in the high school curriculum. The first reason this novel should…show more content…
Twain made joke of many controversial topics of that time. His most popular remarks were noted by History.com saying, “The most striking part of the book is its satirical look at racism, religion and other social attitudes of the time.” Twain’s comments were mainly based on these topics. He really opened the eyes of many Americans to different perspectives of the problem being questioned. He used this novel to voice his opinion on the way the nation carried themselves. Cliffnotes.com dteteced his motive saying,“Twain used his realistic fiction to address America's most painful "sacred cow": the contradiction of racism and segregation in a "free" and "equal" society.” The way Twain uses this novel to comment on these topics is one of the reasons why this novel is one of the best in literature history. It is what makes it so controversial that people want to read it to see what all the talk is about. Twain always knew that this book would cause commotion but not for the reasons that many have found as reasons not to read it. Cliffnotes.com states that, “Twain's original fears were also of censorship, yet his concern was that the novel would be denounced because of its positive portrayal of Jim and its realistic depiction of the South. To mask his content, Twain infused satire and dark humor throughout the novel. Thus Huck's tale is filled with both moments of childish adventure and instances of biting satire.” Twain was clever to use satire, making this novel one that should be read in high school curriculum. For these three reasons, schools should keep the novel in their curriculum, but others disagree for the fact that the book uses the inappropriately deemed
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