Satire in The Great French Duel by Mark Twain
Satire is defined as irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity. Twain spends most of his satirical energy attacking the French culture.
He starts with the French Duel. When the word "duel" comes to the mind of an American, we think of bloodshed and the definite casualty of at least one person. Twain tells us that the only danger in fighting a French duel is in the fact that they are held in the open air and "the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold." He goes on to talk about how M. Paul de Cassagnac, the most famous of French duelists, had been told by his physician that "if he goes on dueling for fifteen or twenty years more - unless he forms the habit of fighting in a comfortable room where the damps and drafts cannot intrude - he will eventually endanger his life." The idea that someone could duel for twenty years and never be threatened by anything else but a cold is absurd to us, but Twain uses this idea to poke fun at the French.
Next Twain speaks of the idea of a "French calm." In the story, a French calm is describe to be very different from an English calm. We think of calm as being very relaxed and tranquil. Twain describes Gambetta quite the contrary when he says, "He was moving swiftly back and forth among the debris of his furniture, now and then staving chance fragments of it across the room with his foot, grinding a constant grist of curses through his set teeth, and halting every little while to deposit another handful of his hair on the pile which he had been building of it on the table."
Later in the story, Twain is trying to negotiate the weapons and distance between combatants that will be involved in the duel. He makes the sarcastic suggestion or using brickbats at three quarters of a mile.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be read as a satire because the novel makes fun of Southern culture in the 19th-century with the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, and ridicule. By mocking the South Twain gives an alternative to improve humanity by people doing the opposite of what he is mocking. The alternative for the way that the Grangerfords act is for people to not be so focused on material things; this is shown through the exaggeration of what Huck and the Grangerfords see as fancy. Twain’s alternative to this feud is suggested through Sofia Grangerford when she runs away with a Shepardson. She chose love of killing, which is what Twain thinks everyone should do. Twain’s alternative to the ignorance expressed through satirizing the King, the Duke, and the people that they scam is to still be trusting, but not so trusting that you end up getting scammed because of it; and to be modest, because even if one thinks they are above everyone they might be below everyone. By satirizing the mob that is after Colonel Sherburn Twain’s alternative to “improve humanity” is for people to form their own opinions and not just follow the crowd. Twain uses satire to point out the foolishness of the United States in the mid-19th century. Twain satirizes certain parts of
Samuel Clemens, was the sixth child of John Marshalll and Jane Moffit Clemens, born two months prematurely and was in poor health for the first 10 years of his life. His mother tried different types of remedies during those younger years. Twain used his memories of his childhood and his illness to fill the pages of several of his books including Tom Sawyer and other writings. Clemens was often pampered, by his mother, and thus developed early in life the testing her indulgence through mischief, while offering his humor as bond for the crimes he would commit. When Twain’s mother was in her 80s, he asked her about his poor health in those early years: “I suppose that during that whole time you were uneasy about me?” “Yes, the whole time,” she answered. “Afraid I wouldn’t live?” “No,” she said, “afraid you would.” One can clearly see where Twain got his sense of humor and zest for life, (Morris, 1996)). Even though it seemed life started out rough Twain pushed his passed it all and went for what he wanted not allowing anyone to stand in his way.
Mark Twain in his essay “A Presidential Candidate” uses hyperbole, irony, and diction to accost politicians and show their faults to the well-read voters. Twain’s use of hyperbole, which is seen through his past stories such as the incident involving his grandfather, establishes an exaggerated sense of himself as a candidate which creates the image of a forthright yet malicious man running for office. He also uses reductio ad absurdum to show the ridiculousness of the politicians running for office and how they are deceitful about small things while he is willing to tell how he killed his grandfather for snoring. Twain’s diction as seen through such phrases as “prowl”, “heartless brutality”, and “Napoleonic” set up a sarcastic tone that was
... count as an injury at all. Then going on to say “Two years ago last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from newrleans on the old Lally rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man.” (Pg 212) This further illustrates the double standard; it did not matter unless the injury was that of a White man. Twain uses blatant ignorance to satirize the stupidity of this racial inequity that was so common at that time in the antebellum south.
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own”- Jonathan Swift. According to the 19th century, satire was a major weapon purposely to influence the society and improve humanity. A prominent character who utilized satire to portray such messages was Mark Twain. Mark Twain, an American humorist, established the essay “The Lowest Animal” to accentuate the harsh reality of human behavior through analogies, and satirical elements. Based on his writing, Twain utilizes satirical elements such as : hyperbole, and situational irony to convey an effectiveness for entertainment purposes.
His writing reveals more depth about the mind and art of Twain than its clearly satirical, critical and anti-chauvinist theme it seems to indicate. Through the voice of his character, Twain echoes his own ideals and personality. This attack on the conformist attitude paints his desired utopia of a world in which he visualizes each individual with a unique identity driven by individual passions. Such distinctiveness can only emerge when each individual designs his or her own
"Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz HIM dat 'uz bein ' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'Go on en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f 'r to save dis one? ' Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You BET he wouldn 't! WELL, den, is JIM gywne to say it? No, sah—I doan ' budge a step out 'n dis place 'dout a DOCTOR, not if it 's forty year!" (Twain
Twain satirizes this concept about fearfulness that often leads to the inhumanity to man and hypocrisy. Huck shows confusion while describing his experience with the Grangerfords. He sees that they want to be good people; however, they would do anything to anyone if it is in their own interest. For instance, when Buck shoots and Harney from behind a bush, Col. Grangerford, Buck’s father, said, “‘I don’t like that shooting from behind a bush. Why, didn’t you step into the road, my boy?’” (Twain 111). This gives insight to what the characters really value, pride, but at the cost of one’s safety to bring harm to another due to fear and selfishness. Twain uses the Grangerford and Shepherdson feud to show that man, as a whole, tends to be inhumane to man due to selfishness and fear.
Twain describes local customs and the ways that the characters behave to create a more realistic setting for the story. In the story the characters engage in behavior or activities that would be unusual for a regular person to do. For example, the narrator says:
The parallelism that is introduced in the two long sentences that make up paragraph 14 emphasize Twain’s belief in people. He shows that people believe that they are putting time and effort into thinking about politics and deciding what party they belong to when in all actuality they are influenced by those around them. This can be seen when twain states “they read its literature, but not that of the other side” (720). This shows that many people are actually clueless of the whole picture. They only receive information about a single part and make their decision based off of that, without taking the time out to view both sides.
The chapters dealing with the Grangerford and Sheperdson feud allow Twain to satire aspects of civilized culture. The main aspect he satirizes is the feud itself. The Grangerfords being the representatives of civilization, Twain reveals the senseless brutality and needless slaughter involved in their arbitrary concept of honor. For Twain, such a feud goes against his common sense and anything that violated his common sense was crazy. The feud has gone on so long hat the people don’t even know why they are fighting; yet, embedded in the feud are artificial concepts of civilized behavior. For Example, Mr. Grangerford tells Buck that he shouldn’t shoot from behind the bush but he should step out into the road to kill a Sheperdson. Also there is a sense of irony because why would such a civilized family be in a feud that they can’t remember the origin of. Another aspect of it is the Grangeford’s use of hypocrisy. The Grangerfords were “church goers” and in one sermon given by Mr. Grangerford he speaks of brotherly love, this while feuding with a family for a reason they don’t even remember.
Twain displays his beliefs through his character, Sherburn, “But a mob without a man at the head of it is beneath pitifulness.” (Twain 167) Twain reveals his extreme distaste for Southern mobs and their cowardness. He eludes to their cowardness through their inability to mob and lynch people, except for when they attack at night and when the man is not expecting it. Twain must have been exposed to many mobs during his time on the river, and it's more than likely that he got to experience one up close. Mobs are controlled by one emotion, fear. The mob is afraid of their target, the target of the mob is afraid for their lives, and the mob’s men themselves are afraid of each other. They go storming through the swampy woods like a herd of elephants, no real leader, no sense of their direction. Simply stampeding through the swamps by fear. Twain expresses his distaste for Southern mobs through his character, Colonel
The southern way of speech had yet to have been captured skillfully until Twain’s writing. Twain went into detail in L...
In comparison to Twain's poetic river, he is able to grasp the hazards of the river through his work on the riverboats. Through his experiences "a day came when [he] began to cease from noting the glories and the charms ... [and] another day [came] when [he] ceased altogether to note them" (1). Unlike the poetic prose stated before, Twain uses harsh images and a common dialect to describe the conditions of the riverfront, "which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights" (1). These comparisons in mind-set allow the reader and Twain to wonder if there is any value to actually learning a trade. If beauty or adventure is taken out of the experience, then why surrender to the trade? In further assessment, Twain questions the medical field by asking, "Does [a doctor] ever see [the] beauty [of the body] at all, or [does] he simply view her professionally?" (1). Seeing that doctors could overlook the beauty of the human body, Twain has "pitied doctors from [his] heart" (1). In this particular excerpt Twain does not answer his questions, but through his images of beauty and peril of the river the reader can assume he prefers "the poetry.
Much of Twain’s writing identifies him as a humorist. However, he reveals his pessimistic side as a satirist in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which was published 20 years after the Civil War. Through the innocence of Huck’s narrative, Twain attacks slavery, racism, hypocrisy, and injustice during one of the most shameful and embarrassing periods in American history.