Question

"It wasn't the grounding—that didn't keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head." "Good gracious! anybody hurt?" "No'm. Killed a n****r." "Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt." This excerpt provides an example of a(n) _____.

Answer 1

This excerpt from Huckleberry Finn provides an example of hypocrisy. The characters in this dialogue are caring for each other, hoping nobody is hurt. The fact that they do not care that a Black slave died, and that they do not even consider him or her as people is what reveals their hypocrisy.

Answer 2

The correct answer is: a satire. Taken from the novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain (1884), the passage presented above is an example of a satire. In fact, there are several elements of society which Twain satirizes in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. One of those elements is the racism in the antebellum South. In the case of this excerpt, Twain ironically handles Aunt Sally’s exclusion of black people from humanity. Here, Huck explains to Aunt Sally that a cylinder head on the steamboat blew out and then she asks him if anyone was hurt in the explosion. When Huck replies that a “n****r” was killed, Sally expresses relief that the explosion was “lucky”.