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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 4 page paper which examines if Mark Twain’s work was truly simple comedy or pointed social satire. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Page Count:
4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: JR7_RAtwncom.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
Huckleberry Finn are surely classics and have served to influence many writers since. However, when people think or speak of Mark Twain a controversy often arises. That controversy is whether
Mark Twain was merely a simple comic author or a pointed satirist. The following paper examines this and argues that though he wrote comedy, he was truly a satirist.
Mark Twain Mark Twain is often considered a humorous writer and he himself even stated such but yet noted that he also preached. "Twain argued that humor must not professedly
teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever" (Crisler). If we look at this simple statement and think about comedy we
do not necessarily envision comedy as something that preaches. And, when we consider the following line, which follows Twains statement, we see a powerful sense of preaching and satire: "By
forever, I mean thirty years" (Crisler). In this final line we see a sense of satire that speaks of peoples inability to truly keep anything of value around for
any length of time. Americans are people who are not necessarily concerned with history or the importance or power of a anything that was written or said many years ago.
So, while Twains comments are funny, as seen thus far, and while he himself claimed that humor was the key, we also note that he preached. Preaching through the use
of comedy or humor is not simple comedy but satire because it is aimed at making a statement, not just a joke. Such a perspective is further seen when we
look at the words of Crisler, who is supporting the argument that simple humor will not survive the ages, as Twain has done: "Humor must be directed at a target,
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