Satire In The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

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The primary purpose of satire is to criticise the flaws of society through satirical techniques. Locating the reasons for malicious conditions in a society is an essential characteristic in most satirical texts. Writers exaggerate certain negative aspects of society to employ realisation. Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and the satire show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Immigration and Refugees” criticise society by exposing the idiocy of racism and religious hypocrisy. Oliver and Twain uncover the disguised racism rampant in their respective era. They employ social criticism as an important element to unmask the cloaked flaws of society.
Twain explores the hidden issue of racism in the pre-civil war era through the …show more content…
Most characters in the novel are religious, but society has deceived their practice into the belief that slavery is perfectly acceptable. In the novel, society has formed a foolish concept of hell and heaven the complete opposite of the one described in the Bible “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”. Twain is employing reversal, as Huck believes that he will end up in hell for assisting a poor man(Jim) to achieve his human rights. Furthermore, Christian sisters, Miss Watson and the Widow Douglas constantly encourage Huck to “help other people”, and always assist “for other people” in the form of religious belief, but this is ironic as she never mentions anything about owning people. Evidentially, pre-civil war Christians had a different set of “commandments” for the black community. Miss Watson’s religion is further satirised when she “fetched the niggers in” for an evening prayer. Society realise and know the customs of the Christian religion, but refuse to understand it thoroughly. This is further exemplified by the feud between the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons. Both families respectively attend Church “the men took their guns along” on Sunday to be taught on “brotherly love”. The two families embrace the sermon, but correspondingly embrace the full-blooded rivalry ignoring the sixth commandment “You shall not murder”. As the novel progresses further readers understand …show more content…
They discovered and satirised the misconduct features of society in their respective texts, with the goal of drawing attention to the negative aspects of humanity. In Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the satire show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Immigration and Refugees they expose the hidden follies of issues racism and religious hypocrisy in their contemporary era in their respective works. Both satirical texts draw¬¬¬¬ attention to the flaws of society with social criticism as its primary
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