Satire, satire, satire. It's used everywhere in our daily lives. And it's not only in the books that we read, it's in movies and other entertainment sources, too! I know its crazy right?! Satire, something we think we only need to know for school is on the television we watch, when we aren't in school!

Often times, satire is used in the form of parody, sarcasm, and is meant to be humorous. For example, Shrek (a movie that everyone knows) is a satire of fairytale stories. Usually, fairytales end in in happily ever after with a beautiful princess and prince. But, Shrek ends with two ogres (ugly, right?!). Also, present day satire is found in parody videos, which make fun of TV commercials/products or even TV shows. Here is one example of a YouTube video that makes fun of Jersey Shore's Snooki, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrfUXuBaJ1E.

Although we can find parodies and satire by simply going on YouTube, people hundreds of years ago couldn't do that. So, they used books as a way to make "parodies" or make fun of real events and people. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is one novel which takes a real life story of the Hatfield and McCoy families and satirizes it.

In the mid to late 1800's, a family feud started between two families, the Hatfields and the McCoys. These two families lived around the same area in West Virginia. The Hatfields owned a prosperous lumber business. The McCoys were not as prosperous as the Hatfields, but they were not far behind. The first incident that could have started this feud was when one McCoy brother was murdered by a local militia. "Devil Anse" of the Hatfields and some of the other Hatfields were a part of this militia, so the Mccoys blamed them to be traitors, since Devil Anse served in the Army. Another fight began between the two families over the ownership of a pig. The pig was on the Hatfield's land, so they claimed that the pig was theirs. But, the McCoys thought the pig was their own, so a fight broke out. The biggest feud broke out at an election where some brothers from each family started to argue. The dispute ended in a couple of murders for both families. There was one big twist in the feud. A romance had struck up between Roseanna McCoy and Johnse Hatfield. Loyalty to the family was important, especially for these families. So, in order to avoid confrontation with her family, Roseanna ended up living with the Hatfields for a period of time. Sadly, Johnse was not that interested in Roseanna and left her. Eventually, the feud died out after the imprisonment of eight members in the Hatfield family.





Here is one cartoon representing the feud.

Like I mentioned before, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn satirizes the family feud between the Hatfield and the McCoy. In the novel the two families are the Grangerfords and the Shepardsons. While Huck is sailing downstream, he meets a boy from the Grangerford family. The Grangerford family has a big home and they own many slaves. Huck is very amazed by the family and their home. Huck soon finds out about a feud the Grangerfords have with a neighboring family, the Shepardsons. When Huck asks Buck Grangerford why there was a feud, Buck simply says that he is not even sure how the feud actually started. Also, one day at church Huck finds a note in a bible from a Shepardson boy to Sofia Grangerford. Huck realizes that the two teens are secretly dating. This is just like Roseanna McCoy and Johnse Hatfield.

I feel as though Mark Twain satirizes the McCoy and Hatfield feud because it shows how ridiculous the families were acting. They were both wealthier families who got into a fight for a pig, when they probably had twenty others. It shows that the feuding was pointless because no one really knew why the families were fighting in the first place.

If you would like to learn more about the Hatfield and McCoy feud, check out the link below.

http://www.history.com/shows/hatfields-and-mccoys