Advice to Youth, by Mark Twain, Essay Example

In the short essay Advice to Youth, Mark Twain’s characteristic satirical verve is used to excellent effect. The essay takes the form of an address to a congregation of youths, and generates its comic effects by parodying the “didactic, instructive” (M. Twain, 1882) and edifying tone generally called for by such occasions. The conflation of the didactic tone adopted by the speaker with the anarchic sentiments expressed produces an initial impression of absurdity, but the wit which runs throughout the work, and the substance of the social criticism it conveys, operates at a deeper level, as all good satire aims to.

The full effect of the satire comes from the “sting in the tail,” the conclusion to the piece. After giving advice which includes, among other things, working hard at lying and beating people with bricks, the speaker tells his audience: “Build your character thoughtfully and painstakingly upon these precepts, and by and by, when you have got it built, you will be surprised and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resembles everybody else’s” (Twain, 1882). With this conclusion, what at first glance seems like the eccentric opinions of an unusual individual turns out to be, rather, a caustic comment on the hypocritical norms of society.

The choice of the form of the piece, a talk “in the nature of good advice,” further adds to the satirical force of the essay. Parodying the convention of a sage figure dispensing advice to innocent youth in the expectation of imparting sociably beneficent lessons, Twain portrays the speaker rather as a slightly unhinged, all too honest character whose opinions in no way correspond to platitudinous social orthodoxy. The anti-idealistic aspect of the speaker’s views is the most noticeable element of this aspect: the advice to obey one’s parents “when they are present,” to, if offended by someone, “hit him with a brick,” and to “begin your practice of this gracious and beautiful art [of lying] early” are all significant for the blunt pragmatism of the sentiment expressed, a pragmatism the norms and expectations of polite society gloss over in favor of high-minded expressions of charitable and beneficent virtues.

The eschewal of such expressions finally works, rather than to undermine the credibility of the speaker, to satirise the hypocrisy of the norms from which they proceed. One of the greatest strengths and beauties of satire, and humor more generally, is its ability to put points a more ponderous, long-winded and self-important style would require pages of close argumentation and examples to convey across in brief flashes of illumination. The best example of this from Twain’s essay is the following:

Think what tedious years of study, thought, practice, experience, 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”—the most majestic compound fracture of fact which any of woman born has yet achieved. For the history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sewn thick with evidences that a truth is not hard to kill, and that a lie well told is immortal. (Twain, 1882)

Thus, with the lightest of touches, Twain outlines a point it takes a significant portion of as inspired a philosopher as Nietzsche’s oeuvre to elaborate. Nietzsche himself, with his espousal of a light-hearted, laughing approach to the work of the intellect, would perhaps see the significance of this point.

Mark Twain’s Advice to Youth can thus be considered a concise, engaging, and playful deflation of certain pretensions inscribed in social norms and expectations, and a provocative illumination of the hypocrisy on which these are based.

Works Cited

Twain, M (1882).  “Advice to Youth.”  In J.M. Weiss and H.S. Weiss (Eds.) The Signet Book of American Essays (282 -291). New York: Penguin.