Humor, Satire and Irony in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

 

Mark Twain brilliantly utilizes satire, irony and humor to convey his views on the follies, hypocrisies and evils of the society by making fun at religion, education, and slavery. This satirical viewpoint of Twain is clear throughout the novel to keep the reader pleasant and make the story more interesting.

The opening events of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are related to the novel that preceded it, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are set on the Mississippi River. At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck, a thirteen- year- old poor son of a drunken father, and his childhood friend Tom, who is from a middle class family, found gold, which a robber hid in a hidden cave, and Huck gained a huge amount of money, they invested in on the basis of monthly interest.

 At the outset of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck is staying with the Widow Douglas, a woman who adopts Huck in an attempt to civilize him. Widow Douglas lives with her sister, Miss Watson, both of whom try to teach Huck proper manners, but he doesn’t like staying at the Widow’s house. Tom Sawyer convinces him to stay with the Widow Douglas and Miss Watson so he would be able to join Tom's gang daily at night.

 

Huck has been forced to go through many rituals, while living in the Widow Douglass’ home, like the meal time prayer, that seemed unimportant to him, which is one of the reasons he is unhappy in her home, and the Widow fails to make Huck civilized. Huck’s description of the widow as an overly-passionate Christian, ridicules the behavior of religious people, but in a light and humorous style to show the ridiculousness of their actions.

 The Widow attempts to civilize him by teaching him Christian values, but he is not interested in these lessons, for he found that they were completely far away to his life. Thus, Twain here satirizes the widow’s religious position.

 Then Twain shows through the novel that Huck is suspicious of religion and religious people for their double standards, as when the Widow prevents Huck from smoking, while she herself smokes. And she took snuff (smokeless tobacco, slightly intoxicating) too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself. This shows her double standard where she prevented Huck from a practice even though she already did it.

 

Irony is also used in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to show the hypocrisy of the widow, a symbol of religious whites, who is supposed to be an example for morality, yet ends up contradicting herself, saying something and doing another thing. Huck feels confused because while they try to improve his behavior, he sees that their own behavior is immoral, so when Miss Watson tells him about the “bad place”- hell - he says that he would like to go there.

 

In the initial part itself, it is clear the fact that Huck doesn’t approve of the widow’s thoughts. Twain utilizes Huck to show his idea that people put so much weight into the Bible that they reject other moral achievements of the present day. He shows that religious people don’t accept others, they are blind to the realities of modern civilization, and live their lives only according to the Bible. This is why Huck said that the widow does not see any good thing in his works, and she doesn’t care for what Huck feels. But her religious hypocrisy was shown by her owning of slaves and calling them niggers, even though she knows that the Bible says to treat others the way you want to be treated. Twain here wants to show that most Americans are religious hypocrites by owning slaves and pretending to be a devout Christian.

 

There is an obvious space for the satire in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Satire exists in the novel extensively such as the satire of slavery, satire upon the general attitudes of whites regarding religion and morality.  Twain shows the reader through Miss Watson, who is a racist, advocates slavery. Miss Watson as we noticed is a faithful Christian woman who ironically has a slave.

 

Twain uses the term Nigger, as he criticizes slavery and racism in that period. He says that the author intentionally uses the term Nigger as he is aware of the discourse of his time and he satirizes this discourse which prevailed in that period.

 

One night, Huck feels lonely and he hears movement outside. He scrambles to the window and sees Tom Sawyer waiting for him. As Huck and Tom toe out of the Widow’s garden, he slips on a root while passing by the kitchen and makes a noise. Jim,  Miss Watson’s slave, hears him from the kitchen, but he doesn’t see them, and Jim says he will stay until knowing the source of the sound, but then he falls asleep, and Tom tricks Jim by putting his hat on a tree branch over Jim. Though Huck objects to Tom’s actions most of the time to avoid getting caught. Twain employs humor to make the reader laugh and this is clear when Tom steals the candle, but puts money in its place as payment. “But Tom wanted to risk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay.”

 

Jim tells the other slaves that witches flew around him and put his hat over his head, and tells everyone that the five-cent piece that Tom put for the candles is a charm that can cure sickness. Twain here pokes fun at and mocks superstition and superstitious people for their fascination with the supernatural by pointing out how a confused Jim is trying to explain what happened, he says “Afterwards Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it”.

Critics in general argued that Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn represents an American entertainment, which is a type of entertainment where humorous acts are performed by white persons with a black face. Jim is a funny, gullible slave and the author uses Jim to show the humor of superstitious people when hanging his hat.

Tom and Huck meet the other boys who all go to a large cave together to make a band of robbers, and Tom names it “Tom Sawyer’s Gang.” Tom told them that everyone in the band must sign an oath in blood and if anyone of their band reveals their secrets, they will kill him and their family. Since Huck doesn’t have a family, only a drunken non present father, he offers Miss Watson as a member of his family.

 

Meanwhile, a rumor passes around that Huck’s drunken father Pap, who has not been found in a year, was drowned in a river and died. At first, Huck is glad because his father had been a drunk who beat him, but then he discovers that the body is another person’s, so he worries that Pap will appear soon.

Over three or four months, Huck adjusts to his new life and improves in his school. One winter morning, Huck sees footprints in the snow near the house, and as a precaution he gives his wealth, the money that he and Tom had from the cave, to the Judge. That night, Huck goes to Jim and tells him he saw his father’s tracks in the snow and he wants to see what he wants. Jim tells him that he has a magical hairball from an ox’s stomach, and it needs money to talk, so he gives him the money then the hairball tells Jim that Huck is safe for now, but on the same night, Pap waits for Huck in his bedroom.

 

Through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain uses Jim to describe many superstitions that are a recurrent theme in these chapters. Jim talks about a lot of superstitions. At the beginning, Huck rejects Jim’s superstitions as silly, but at last he asked him for help when he sees his father’s footprints in the snow. The hairball tells Jim that his father may either stay or go.

“Jim had a hair ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it that knew everything. So i went to him that night.”

 

Huck introduces his father not as a loving father, but as someone who always intimidates him, when he says: “Then I turned around. And there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I was scared now, too." Here Twain uses satire because Pap comes back only for the wealth, for that Huck asks Judge Thatcher to take his six thousand dollars because he knows that his father has come for his money and if he gets rid of the money he will leave him. When Pap sees Huck’s “starchy”(clean and stiff) clothes he attacks Huck and promises to take him down,  he feels angry because his son can read and write, and he will be better than him. Here the author pokes fun at the uneducated people by presenting Pap, who is aggressive towards more intelligent people, as he uses irony when Huck’s father is angry because Huck is going to school.

 The next day, Pap is drunk and wants Huck’s money from Judge Thatcher. The Judge and Widow Douglas want to get custody of Huck from his father, but the new judge refuses to separate them as a father and son. At the end he decides to escape from both his drunken father and the Widow Douglas, but his father comes back while Huck is trying to run away.

One morning Huck thinks of running away and gets his chance when Huck sees a canoe in the river. Here Twain shows that when Huck's father took him to his own home people were not worried about him. He escapes from the clutches of his father by faking his death.

Huck feels peaceful on his first three days at Jackson Island, but on the fourth day Huck finds Jim on the Island. Here their friendship begins and Jim tells Huck that he has run away from Miss Watson because she wants to sell him to a slave trader. Huck and Jim try to emancipate themselves; Huck wants to be free from the constraints of society, while Jim attempts to escape from slavery.

 

They hide the canoe in order to prevent anyone from coming to the Island, but then they find a dead body and Jim warns him that talking about it means bad luck. Twain uses Jim to describe many superstitions, and satirize them. Jim’s character talks a lot about superstitions from the time Huck meets him on Jackson Island until the end of the novel.

 

Huck leaves the island with Jim and from this moment their adventures on the river begin. They see a wrecked steamboat, where two robbers want to kill the third and drown him with the steamboat. Huck tells Jim that they have to prevent the robbers and Jim accepts because their raft had floated away. Huck and Jim take the thieves’ boat and they find clothes, books, and a lot of things in the boat. Huck and Jim spend a lot of time reading and discussing a book about stories of kings and dukes. Huck tells Jim about King Louis, who had cut off his son’s head. Twain here not only satirizes royalty but also shows to the reader the innocence of Jim.

 

when Huck and Jim are separated on the river because of the fog, Jim worries about Huck and if he is alive or not, but when Huck comes back while Jim is sleeping, he decides to play a trick on Jim by telling him that nothing happened, and that it was a dream. After knowing the truth Jim’s feeling is hurt for being made a fool of and even though he is a simple man, yet he has feelings.

 

The next night their raft breaks down and they separate again. Huck swims to ashore where he meets the Grangerfords, a large family who has a dispute with another family. Huck introduces himself with a fake name and once they know he is not from the Shepherdson family, with whom they have the quarrel, they invite him to their house for a while. Huck forgot his fake name, then he tricks Buck into spelling out the name, but Buck didn’t understand him. He thought that he was being tested, even though he spelled it incorrectly. Twain here applies humor to make the reader laugh at how Huck uses his wit to get out of a difficult situation.

I had forgot what my name was. So I laid there about an
hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up I says:
"Can you spell, Buck?"
"Yes," he says.
"I bet you can't spell my name," says I.
"I bet you what you dare I can," says he.
"All right," says I, "go ahead."
"G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n--there now," he says.

 

Huck is happy with the Grangerfords, but because of the dispute, his friend Buck is killed. Twain here shows the senselessness of quarrel, for while both families go to the same Church, they take guns with them. Then, Twain applies satire in this text to show the religious hypocrisy that exists in the families by going to the church with guns, whereas the church is meant to be a sacred and peaceful place, but in reality their lives are very different.

Twain focuses on the idea of dispute at that time, through the quarrel between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons. Even though both families did not have a clear reason to kill, yet they still did, because of the history between the families. Twain here points out that the dispute has gone on so long they don’t know why or how it started and even though it was long over, they still fought, which led to the tragic death of Huck’s friend, Buck. He also satirizes the role of religion, for though they visit the church to pray yet when they’re
finished, they start to kill each other.

After the death of his friend Buck in the dispute, Huck wants to go back to the raft where there is peace. Twain uses irony because the raft is small, but Huck finds comfort on it.

Huck and Jim take a look at nature on the raft so far from civilization, and they like to stay on the raft because they feel at home and free on it. As the studies show, Huck and Jim run away from society represented by Miss Watson, the Widow and Pap and their hypocrisy, to nature where they feel free there. The River, shore and raft have different concepts in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where raft means escape from society, while river means freedom and rebirth.

Mark Twain shows nature as a main factor in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for most of the events take place on the river and the raft. Huck and Jim feel comfortable on the river, for it represents the grace of nature in contrast to the hypocritical and evil society.

When they move further down the river, they take two men with them. They look tired and their cloths are shabby. One of them claims that he is the King and the other one says he is the Dauphin. When they ask about whether Jim is a runway salve, Huck produces a story about him and how he became orphaned. His stories are ironically important to protect a slave in a hypocritical society to protect Jim.

In the next town, the Duke and Dauphin, take advantage of the religious meeting to make money. Here the writer satirizes the stupidity of some people when the dauphin fools them in the church, telling them that he is a former pirate, and he wants to recreate his ship and crew so he wants money. He starts to cry and all believed him and give him more than eighty dollars. Twain here focuses on how people fall for such a trick. This shows that white characters represent not only the criminal and guilty persons because they have taken money from people by making scams, but they also show the innocence of most townsfolk for believing them. On the last day the Dauphin and the Duke escape back to the raft having taken four hundred and sixty-five hundred dollars from the people of the town.

Huck was searching for his friend, Jim, because the Duke sold him to Tom Sawyer’s aunt and uncle. Then Tom joins Huck in helping Jim.

Tom and Huck succeed in helping Jim, Tom discovers that before her death, Miss Watson has freed Jim. Tom gives Jim money that helps Jim to take his family and live in freedom. At the end Huck also goes west before anyone civilized him.

 

The writer focuses on three main elements in Huckleberry Finn: The first element is Huck and his development .The next elements are: the adventures of Huck and Jim toward freedom, for while Jim is escaping from true slavery, Huck is escaping from the harshness of his father. The other element is the social satire, where Twain has shown man's harshness to man, as it is in the novel how whites treat blacks.

“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another ”

The overall atmosphere of the novel is humorous where Twain uses comedy to expose the shortcomings of society. And though he satirizes religion and religious people.Thus we can say that corruption, moral decay and religious hypocrisy are all satirized by Twain to show that religion was merely a theory of prayer, but it was not carried out in practice.