“Good satire comes from anger. It comes from a sense of injustice, that there are wrongs in the world that need to be fixed.” -Carl Hiaasen Many adolescents believe that the standards children are held to are unfair when compared to the standards adults are held to. This is their injustice. According to studystandard.com, when Samuel Clemens was asked to address youth in an instructive way he responded with the speech Advice to Youth (1882). This announcement was written in a Juvenalian satire format; the abrasiveness was directed towards the adult community in the format of six points. In an article by techdirt.com, studies show that satirical outlets are more effective in conveying arguments than other types of media. Clemens uses the …show more content…
Clemens exaggerates the vice of learned violence. He introduces the topic by giving the advice to “Be respectful to your superiors,” and then continues to explain that if they offend you “do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance and hit them with a brick.” He then goes on to explain that if the offense was unintentional to just “confess yourself in the wrong,” and everything will be okay. The essay also identifies the behavior of lying. Throughout this paragraph he exaggerates the learning process and consequences of lying. He points out that a young person can ruin themselves by a careless lie, and that it takes “practice and experience” to achieve the accomplishment of a good lie. He then continues to exaggerate the process used to achieve greatness in the learned vice of lying by using the ironic statement that, “Think what tedious years of study, thought, practice, experiences, went to the equipment of that peerless old master who was able to impose upon the whole world the lofty and sounding maxim that, ‘Truth is mighty and will prevail.’” He then concludes his discussion on lies by saying if “It is indestructible...but that is no merit of yours.” Closing his topic of firearms, and the care to take with them, he uses the imagery of “A youth who can’t hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three quarters of an hour, can take up an old …show more content…
In reference to an anecdotal account of a near miss firearm accident and the corresponding argument that a vice is the uncareful handling of firearms, a reference is made to the Battle of Waterloo. “Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations.” According to history.com, Waterloo was the battle that led to the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte. In this allusion, Clemens is furthering his comparison that firearms are not dangerous, that in fact if they were used in that manner in the Battle of Waterloo, they would not have caused the damage they did to the French army, and the French would have won. Allusions to novels, occur during the discussion that “...good ones are the sort for the young to read.” That reading choices “exclusively to Robertson’s Sermons, Baxter’s Saints' Rest, The Innocents Abroad, and works of that kind,” will improve the youth. While both Sermons and Saints’ Rest seriously speak on the topic of religion and the corresponding appropriate behavior, Clemens adds the title of The Innocents Abroad to negate the authenticity of that being actual advice. (ccel.org, fwrobetson.com) The Innocents Abroad is a novel