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”The Damned Human Race” By Mark Twain

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The essay the damned human race has been written by Mark Twain. In this essay Mark Twain uses satire, most notably sarcasm, to show that the world is more downhill than the average individual could imagine. The author does not approve of Darwinian theory that the man has been ascended from the lower animals, rather claims that that the man are actually de-evolved and are the lesser species – “descending from the higher animals”. The author further claims that the unappealing conclusion he reached was not guessed or speculated or even conjectured, but was based upon the commonly called, the scientific method. He says that his theory was based upon conclusions from his own observations in performed experiments. Mark Twain compares the behavior of different animals to human beings to prove it against to the Darwinian Theory. He publicize that the entire human race is both corrupt and flawed and while comparing he says that the man is an avenger who waits for his perfect chance and then take revenge on them, a quality which is unknown in higher animals.

The author further vent that how the quality of vulgarity, indecency, obscenity are created by the man himself and how the animals are utterly innocent in front of these qualities and he further points out many other factor to make the reader believe that it might be possible to believe that the man has not been ascended from the higher animals. He states that ‘man is the cruel animal,’ and that we can attribute this to his moral character. The standout comparison in this essay was between the anaconda and earl that the anaconda will only eat what is needed by it and kill only what it will eat but the earl is cruel and could kill as many as it could basically for the sake of pleasure. Mr. Twain further claims that man is the only animal that believes in war and takes pleasure in causing pain and that the higher animals only engage in individual fights but never in organized masses whereas the man is so cruel and of bad character and that he would his assemble his brethren about him and forth without any feelings and with the cruel intent and calm pulse to exterminate his very own kind.

He further declares that man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country, takes possession of it and destroy him. Mr. Twain brought up several points, with regards to organized religion, stating that “man is the only religious animal”. Mr. Twain further declares he disregard the fact that man is the reasoning animal and says that his experiments have proven that the man is the unreasoning animal and that the record of a man is the fantastic record of a lunatic. Mark Twain manages to carry his sarcastic tone up to the very end of the essay. This is all done very sarcastically and borderline-mockingly; and the end result is a master work in the art of satire.

REVIEW
Mark Twain is a very popular writer with many successful pieces of work. In this essay he shows a harsher side of himself. I agree and disagree with Mark Twain’s essay. He shows signs of a joking tone at times but it is clear that he is not ridiculing the entire subject just for the sake of a cheap laugh or for stupid ridicule; it is obvious that he wants things to change. This essay will make you wonder about the bad qualities which is embedded in a human being but I thing that Mr. Twain, in this essay has exaggerated the bad qualities of a human being by depicting them as completely worthless, wasteful and a corrupt creature and not even considered the good qualities which can be only found in a man and not the higher animals. He gave us the feeling that he wanted the reader to believe that a man is such a degraded creature that his worth should be below animals. I do believe that even though he did live in a different time but cruelty still exists the same but If you analyze the human race or all animals, you can find evil in both creatures.

In my point of view the comparison between animals and man were not done properly because Animals also do some awful things to each other. I do agree that many men kill each other because of greed, corruption, or solely due to the sake of pleasure as explained by Mark Twain, but that does not mean that all humans always kill to be cruel and wasteful. There are a lot of positive traits of humans as well; but he goes into detail of only the negative traits of humans. If there are bad people, there can also be good people. In the essay He uses satire to reveal that humans falsify and contaminate their only superior trait over the lower animals, the animal’s sense of morality.

He believes that man is not a reasoning animal, which in my opinion is completely wrong because it is the main trait or factor which distinguishes us from all the other creatures of the world, man has the capability of distinguishing between right and wrong and it’s not all the time that a man choses wrong over right and in my opinion it was completely foolish of Mr. Twain to call a man foolish because the achievements the human brain has accomplished cannot be compared to the brain of an animal because if not for the great brain of a man, even Mr. Twain could not had written all the great pieces of work he wrote let alone this essay. Best of luck,luv yaaaaaaa Miss u. emu;,;

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