Advice to the Youth: An Analysis of Mark Twain's Satirical Essay
Advice to the youth is a Mark Twain essay that aims to offer advice to young people or young readers on various topics of life. The reading, as the title implies, is supposed to be a constructive impact on the youth in order to improve and transform their attitudes. The author's aim is to provide a framework about how young people can act in various contexts. The author offers guidance on a variety of subjects, including obedience and the basic human standards that young people are supposed to follow in their lives. The author, however, takes a contradictory approach by applying satire to the advice in seeking to entice the teenage audience, for whom he is writing the article. The advice is presented in a comedic manner where the author makes fun of the things that people are expected to do.
An Entertaining Presentation
His opening statement of the advice is for the youth to "always obey the parents when they are present." There are many other such contradictory statements throughout the article. This essay makes an analysis of advice to the youth by Mark Twain with a specific focus on the satirical aspects of the writing. The main purpose of the article is to provide advice to the young people and ensure that the writing is presented in an entertaining and interesting manner, thus the presentation of the article in a comedic way.
A Targeted Audience
From the beginning of the article, the author makes it clear that he has been requested to write something suitable for the readers and the intended audience. While the target is a young audience, the reading is presented as a form of advice specifically targeting the young people. The requirement of presenting something suitable gives the author the opportunity to pass down valuable information from lessons that he has learnt in life. While seeking to inform the target audience of the expected behaviors in adulthood, the author presents an informative and entertaining article through the inclusion of comical and contrasting statement in the writing. The author is satirical of the adult behavior expected of the young individuals which he presents as something learnt from experience. While presenting advice to the youth, the author goes further to insert words that contradict the previously stated advice. These words are inserted to introduce an aspect of satire in the advice. The author states that "respect your elders, if you have any". The statement "if you have any" adds irony to the provided information. The general purpose of the writing is informing the youth to be content with adult life in which lying, disrespect, and disobedience are part of the skills required to survive as an adult. The secondary purpose of the writing is to entertain the reader since some of the readers will not be the youth.
An Organized Approach
Although the young people are the target audience for the reading, many other readers can also get access to the article and hence the author writes in a satirical manner to ensure that the reader is entertained. Comical elements in the reading seek to create entertainment to the reader. In writing about lying, the author advises the youth to begin practicing the art early so that they can perfect it by adulthood. Although this forms part of the advice, the author clearly understands that this would not be appropriate advice, though the statement is included to lighten the message being relayed. Each statement that can be considered to be providing advice as intended is accompanied by another statement that is rhetorical in nature and seeks to meet the secondary purpose of entertaining the readers. Conveying the message in an amusing way makes it possible for a broad range of people to enjoy reading the article. Despite having an intention of communicating to the youth, introduction of an entertaining aspect into the writing seeks to attract a wide range of audience.
Sarcasm and Contrast
The article is organized in different topics that the author might consider as necessary and important in the lives of the youth. The author begins his advice with a statement of the basic advice that many people understand about obeying their parents. The author continues to talk about a broad range of topics including respect, obedience, lying, and others. The issues are placed in a manner that would seem to depict the importance of each advice to the reader. Each of the information provided has a comical element added to it to create the kind of entertainment which the author desires. There are elements of contrast to the advice provided, through addition of satire. Although the author states that he wants to write something suitable, the addition of satire to the content creates an element of contrast to the intention of the author at the beginning of the article. Contrast is created by the statement which the author makes to create entertainment as they seem to differ from what could be considered as proper advice to the youth. Many contrasts are created when the author advises the audience of different aspects of life as he provides differing information to create entertainment. Contrast in the article is utilized in the process of introducing sarcasm which has been applied in seeking to ensure that the article is entertaining and informing in similar manner.
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The author of this article has successfully integrated sarcasm into the essay and achieved the objective of advising the youth as well as entertaining the readers. The main purpose of the reader was encouraging the young people through providing information that could help them in their lives. The author has been able to achieve the primary objective as well as the secondary purpose defined in the essay. The flow of the writing is consistent with the ideas being arranged based on the topic under discussion. A different topic has been presented in completeness including the information and the sarcasm, for advice and entertainment purposes respectively. This arrangement makes the essay easy to comprehend and understand. The author has applied a language which is simple and clear to make the information very comprehensible. Since the article is intended for the youth, the language can be considered suitable for the age groups as well as the entertainment of the other individuals who might read the article. The simplicity of the language and the clarity of the ideas which the author presents, make the essay a perfect reading for any individual. Although presenting advice to the youth, the author makes significant effort in the essay to ensure that it meets the desired purpose of being informative and entertaining.
