Define satire and provide four examples from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Huck's education is satired, to some extent, in the novel.

Huck informs Jim of a number of ideas he has come across in school, most of which are erroneous. His sense of history is way, way off, yet he is identified early on in the novel as being "educated". 

Satire can be very persuasive.  One of the things that makes Huck Finn so endearing is that it is funny while covering a very serious topic.  The funniest parts involve the feud, the king and the duke, and Tom Sawyer's escape plan that never was.  Yet all are also serious topics.

Mark Twain clearly satirizes the hypocrisy of the "good adults" with whom Huck comes into contact.  For instance, Miss Watson preaches honesty to Huck,  but her promise to Jim to never sell him South is broken.  Apparently a good, kindly man, the Reverend Phelps purchases Jim in the hope of receiving a monetary reward.  Others in Twain's "Mississippi society" are hypocritical.  When two slave-hunters approach Huck's raft, he keeps them at bay by telling them that he and his family have smallpox.  Rather than being charitable and offer help to the family, the men try to buy them off and send them elsewhere. 

Twain continues his attack upon hypocrisy as he relates the encounter of Huck with the feuding family of Shepherdson, a murdering family who stop break from feuding and attend church on Sunday, but still carry their guns.  With the tale of this family, Twain also satirizes the foolishness of so-called educated people in the episode of the feud of the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons. A modern "Romeo and Juliet" family-feud, Twain puts his ironic twist on this feud by having the lovers be the only ones who survive.  Thus, the families have destroyed themselves because of foolish pride and absolutely ridiculous behavior since no one in the Shepherdsons "can recall why the family is at war."

Another escapade occurs when the King cheats a congregation out of money, but when caught, his alibi about having been a pirate and wishing to convert his bretheren is ludicrous; however, at the revival meeting the people are so overcome by the emotionalism of the meeting.  They feel the "love of God" and become so guillible that they donate the money to the King.  Here Twain ridicules the religious zealots, a reiteration of his attack on religion is the first part of the novel when Huck says that praying is fun.

Satire is defined as "the use of humor and wit with a critical attitude, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule for exposing or denouncing the frailties and faults of mankind’s activities and institutions, such as folly, stupidity, or vice." Twain's uses satire to ridicule many things in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". One of his favorite targets is the idea of Romanticism, The character of Tom Sawyer is used to represent many of the weaknesses Twain saw in the Romantic view of life. For instance, at the beginning of the novel, Twain satirizes the hypocrisy of some romantic using Tom's gang, The boys will supposedly rob, steal, and murder each day but Sunday, because that's the day they go to church.

At the beginning of their journey down the Mississippi, Huck and Jim come across a wrecked steamboat named the 'Walter Scott". Scott was a very popular romantic author, notes especially for his novel "Ivanhoe". By describing the Walter Scott as "wrecked", Twain is implying that romantic ideals are also "wrecked" and dysfunctional. During the Grangerford episode, Twain sharply criticizes romantic ideals using the feud between the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons. He shows the danger inherent in Romantic chivalry when Huck's new friend, Buck, is savagely killed because of a feud whose cause no one can remember . Finally, the adventurous ideals of Romanticism are satirized at the end of the novel when Tom Sawyer returns and wants to make a adventurous game of setting Jim free. Tom is almost killed and Jim is almost lynched as a result of Tom's actions. In addition, we find that Tom has been extremely selfish because he has known all the time that Jim is already free. Tom just wants adventure and doesn't seem to care he is interfering with a man's life.

What are examples of romanticism satire in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?

One of the more humorous satirical elements of Romanticism in the novel is the sinking of the Walter Scott, a Mississippi River steamboat. Sir Walter Scott was a famed Scottish Romantic writer, and by sending his namesake to the bottom of the Mississippi, Twain sends a clear message about where Scott's work belongs.

Another way that Twain satirizes Romanticism in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is through the poetry of Emmeline Grangerford. Her poem, "Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd" laments a boy who dies from falling down a well. It is written in a comically overwrought style that could arguably be considered a burlesque, or parody, of the work of noted Romantic Edgar Allan Poe. Emmeline Grangerford's poem is not unlike "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven"

And finally, the convoluted and unnecessary torture that Tom Sawyer forces Jim to endure at the Phelps farm calls to mind the work of Alexandre Dumas. Tom Sawyer's ideas about how Jim needs to be imprisoned call to mind The Man in the Iron Mask.

Romanticism in literature assumed many forms.

Twain sets the stage for the entire novel with the "Notice" at the very beginning of the book. In announcing that readers "attempting to find a motive...moral...plot" in the book will be dealt with severely, Twain is mocking those who worked very hard to find or create such personally based factors in every piece of literature.

Romanticism featured the impressions of the world gained through a particular character's perceptions and experiences, frequently with the help of magic, visions, or dreams. Twain offers a satirical view of this type of approach when Huck asks Jim to use his hairball to learn of Pap's plans. "Jim had a hair-ball as big as your fist...and he used to do magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything."

Writings influenced by romanticism often reflected "growing suspicion of the established church." Jim's response to Huck's attempts to explain Old Testament stories such as the story of King Solomon and his wisdom were shaped by Twain's desire to satirize the church's teachings.

Blame de pint! I reck'n I knows what I knows. En mine you, de real pint is down furder-it's down deeper. It lays in de way Sollermun was raised. You take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen; is dat man gwyne to be waseful o' chillen? No, he ain't; he can't 'ford it. He know how to value 'em. But you take a man dat's got 'bout five million chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt. He as soon chop a chile in two as a cat. Dey's plenty mo'.

A particularly dark example of satire comes when Huck comes to at the Grangerfords's place. The Grangerfords are a fantastically wealthy family who live in an enormous house. They're the very epitome of social respectability in Huck's part of the world. And yet, in addition to owning a large number of slaves, they're also engaged in a bloody, long-standing feud with a neighboring family called the Shepherdsons.

What Twain is satirizing here is the huge gap between how so-called civilized people see themselves and how they actually are. Not too many people today would find feuding and slave-owning to be particularly civilized, and nor does Twain. The scene in which the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons turn up for church one morning, fully-armed, is an especially brutal dissection of the hypocrisies of the world in which these families live, with its warped code of honor.

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a brilliant satirical piece, and there are many ways in which Twain lampoons his targets. One of the best examples of satire in the novel occurs toward the end, when Tom Sawyer hatches a ridiculously elaborate plan to free Jim. 

While Huck wants to free Jim from his prison on the Phelps' property using the easiest and most efficient method, Tom concocts a needlessly elaborate scheme. Rather than simply freeing Jim by means of a poorly blocked window in his prison, Tom proposes that he and Huck dig Jim out (229), saying that this scheme is better because it's more complicated. Additionally, Tom refuses to use picks and shovels to dig out Jim, but rather insists on using much less effective case knives (237). Finally, after doing many more foolish things, Tom insists on actually writing letters to the Phelps advising them that an escape is imminent, as he believes that doing so will heighten the excitement of the escape (261-2).

Tom follows this absurd plan in order to emulate the romantic adventure novels he is infatuated with. For instance, when Huck asks him why he wants to use case knives, Tom insists "it's the regular way. And there ain't no other way, that ever I heard of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these things" (237). Here, and later on in the passage, Tom alludes to reading and drawing inspiration from historical romances and adventure novels, and so he bases his plan on an absurd, irrational, and fictional portrayal of chivalric adventures. By presenting the themes in historical romances as the games of mere boys, Twain brilliantly satirizes them.  

The humorist Mark Twain's "great American novel" stands as a prototype for many other American works in its use of dialect, powerful point of view, and exposure of American issues. And, in the use of these literary tools, Twain's satire is profuse. Here are examples of Twain's satire of the workings of government:

• Custody of children and the judicial system

When Pap hears of the six thousand dollars that Huck has from his and Tom Sawyer's discovery of money in a cave, he insists that Judge Tatcher relinquish it, even though Huck has "sold" it to the judge.  And, while Judge Thatcher and the Widow Douglas try to have Huck remain in the widow's custody, another judge is over the hearing, a judge who does not know Pap, "said he'd druther not take a child away from its father." After this faulty and devastating decision, Huck suffers at the hands of his bacward and insolent and cruel father, who invokes the courts to extract the money from Judge Tatcher. Twain also satirizes the dilatory nature of the civil courts in the U.S.:

That law trial was a slow business; appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on it; so every now and then I'd borrow two orthree dollars off of the judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding.

• The Government's policies on Slavery

Twain satirizes a society which holds that God's law mandates slavery as the religious Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson profess Christian love and charity, yet Miss Watson has no qualms about selling her slave Jim down the river where slaves are treated very badly. Further, Twain satirizes laws such as the 1847 law which made it illegal to teach slaves to read in the hopes that their ignorance would prevent them from wishing to escape their slavery. For, even though Jim is ignorant, he is superior to all the other characters in moral uprightness and affection.

• He also satirizes the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law

The Fugitive Slave Law forced even those against slavery to report escaped slaves and assist in their recapture. It is this law which causes Huck much angst as he reaches his decision to "go to hell" for helping Jim escape from his captors and since he believes that his quandary must be God's punishment for the sin of helping Jim.