Comment on how Twain uses irony and satire to engage and inspire the reader in "Huckleberry Finn"

Twain countlessly shows throughout the novel that Huckleberry is suspicious of religion and the double standards that he believes religious people  to have. An example of such is when the widow prevents Huckleberry from smoking, whilst she herself partakes in a similar bad habit. Huck asks her if he could smoke, to which she prevents him saying “it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean…And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself”. Once again, this shows her double standards where she prevented Huck from smoking, even though she used snuff. We see Twain use irony in this scene to show the hypocrisy of the widow, a symbol of religious whites, who is supposed to be an example, yet ends up contradicting herself. This not only engages the readers, but also further enlightens them to realise how flawed society was, and that they said one thing but did another.

A scene where we can see many targets for Twain’s satire, would be when Huckleberry ends up staying with the Grangerfords. When he arrives, he introduces himself as “George Jackson” but by the next morning he has forgotten his name and ‘tests’ the young boy Buck to see if he could spell his name correctly. Twain reapplies humour to make the reader laugh at how Huck uses his wit to get out of difficult situations. Huckleberry Finn is happy in his new home, but because of this ridiculous feud between families, the Gangerfords and Shepherdson’s, his friend Buck is killed. Twain here shows the senselessness of feuds, and the hypocrisy and irony that  both families go to the same church taking “their guns along” with them. He applies satire in the text to show the religious hypocrisy that exists in the families by them attending church with their guns. Church is meant to be a sacred and peaceful place, whereas here we have two feuding families going to the same church to preach kindness, compassion and forgiveness then walking out and shooting each other.  Even though both families did not have reason to kill “he never did nothing to me”, they still did. Twain points out that the feud has gone on so long neither family really know why or how it started and they still fought which led to the tragic death of Buck. He satirizes the role of religion. Though they visit church to pray, when they’re finished, they start to kill each other. This scene allows the readers to get another sense into the flaws of society, religion and how rules are broken and bent to fit around what they want and how it suits them.

Twain expertly uses irony and satire in his novel to entertain the readers and to lighten the dark and tragic events which are described to us. He uses irony to criticize enslavement and religious hypocrisy that was prevalent at the time and this is clearly demonstrated through the Gangerford and Shepherdson’s family feud and their hypocritical church attendance and so called ‘religious’ beliefs.