An essay reflecting Mark Twain's sarcastic paper on "The Lowest Animal."

Essay by bluntside9High School, 10th gradeA+, May 2003

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The essay, "The Lowest Animal" by Mark Twain fairly sarcastic although it still makes the reader really think about what he's saying. Throughout the essay, Twain makes several well thought out ideas about mankind. However those ideas are not all ones that everyone would be proud of or agree with.

The overall message of his essay is to explain Twain's point of view about why humans are the lowest animals. Several times throughout the essay he mentions how humans kill just for the hell of it and waste a great deal of valuable animal material. Also he uses examples how people kill each other all the time throughout the world and all the terrible events going on during his time. If Mark Twain was here today he would use the war and all of the altercations about religion and all the terrorist attacks as fuel for his essay, or at least as material to add to a second edition of it.

The author's attitude is very sarcastic through the entire essay. Also it seems that he is being very pessimistic. He zooms in on all the evil and hatred in the world and doesn't focus on all the caring, giving and kind people throughout the world. He does have many excellent points about the way people are and a great deal of it is really true but I think that he went just slightly too far. Overall though the essay does have a high-quality base idea but I think that the examples used only represent a small percentage of the overall population.

The purpose for Mark Twain to write his essay is simple because he felt a certain way about his topic and he wanted to express the way he felt. He wanted to make people...