The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
what instances of satire can you find in chapters 17 and 18? what could be the authors intention in satirizing fueding families or the poetic Emmeline?
Chapters 17 and 18..
Chapters 17 and 18..
'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.
'Well,' says I, 'you done it, but I didn't think you could.
It ain't no slouch of a name to spell-right off without studying.'
I set down, private, because somebody might want me to spell it next, and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to it." -Pg. 103
Ironically, Buck misspells Huck's pseudonym, and Huck memorizes the misspelling in case someone asks him about it.
gradesaver
Chapter 18
"Each person had their own nigger to wait on them-Buck too. My nigger had a monstrous easy time, because I warn't used to having anybody do anything for me, but Buck's was on the jump most of the time." -Pg. 109
Most people in Huck's place would have loved having a personal servant, but Huck is uncomfortable, and refuses to take advantage of the man assigned to him. Although he does adhere to aspects of racism ingrained in him due to his upbringing, he has more respect for blacks than most Southerners of the time.
http://www.gradesaver.com/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn/study-guide/section10/
Twain uses satire in the scene in which both families go to chruch and enjoy the sermon.
"Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a- horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching- all about brotherly love, and such- like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet" (109).
We see the Grangerfords discussing how they enjoyed the sermon on brotherly love yet they continue to murder people from a family that they have no sound reason to be rivals with.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain