Satire in Huckleberry Finn

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The Widow and Hypocrisy“ Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it any more… And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself” (2). | Mark Twain is commenting on how people can be hypocritical when it comes to morals. The Widow is criticizing Huck on smoking tobacco and Huck is calling her a hypocrite because the Widow herself takes snuff. Snuff is when tobacco is sniffed up the nose. This is just as “mean” of a practice and just as “unclean.” | The Widow and Religion“Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it” (2). | The widow is a godly lady who is trying to teach Huck about religion. Here Twain is showing how many people follow religions with blind faith and how it can be misguiding. This passage also shows how the Widow follows and recalls stories of Moses while Huck doesn’t see the point because the Widow has no relation to him and Moses is dead. | Pap’s Drunkenness“Pap he hadn’t been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; I didn’t want to see him no more. He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around” (11). | Huck is talking about his drunken father and how he does not like being around him when he is drunk. Here Twain is commenting about how parents who waste their lives on alcohol are abandoning their children. It also shows how the children of these types of parents pay a huge toll. No child should feel like they don’t want to be around their own parents. Twain is trying to show people how ridiculous it is that a boy would not want to be around

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