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Iratze Rico

English 3P, Osman

March 13, 2019

The Lowest Animals

What is Twain’s purpose in writing “The Lowest Animal”? How effective in his use of

satire in achieving that purpose?

In the essay, “The Lowest Animal” by Mark Twain about humans being more dangerous

and selfish than animals. Mark Twain shows us many irony and exaggeration examples, which

are apart of satire. He gives us examples and proof on how humans are more dangerous and

selfish than animals.

Twain’s overall purpose in writing “The Lowest Animals” is that studies have shown that

animals are less wasteful than humans. Humans are shown to be more selfish and greedy. They

do certain things for their own entertainment. Twain states, “ They killed seventy- two of those

great animals and ate part of one of them and left the one to rot,” (p. 181). This quote shows

irony because it is ironic how humans are more harmful than animals. This quote matters

because when I really think about it, I would have thought that it would be the animals being

more harmful since they will attack mostly anything. This is effective because it shows how

humans pretty much kill for entertainment and just because they want to. Another example of

irony is, “The cat is moderate- unhumanly moderate: she only scares the mouse, she does not

hurt it, she doesn’t dig out its eyes, or tear off its skin, or drive splinters under its nails…” (Twin
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p.183-184). The cat is relating to his purpose by not torturing the mouse for pleasure or his

entertainment. Unlike men who kill and harm animals just for their own entertainment.

Mark uses satire by mentioning the scientific method and doing experiments. He uses the

examples of satire to show proof about his theory. He does experiments on animals to prove

others that they are not the dangerous ones. Twain states an example of satire which says, “... and

keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other

people’s countries and keep them from grabbing slices of his” (p. 184). This is a great example

of satire because it is mentioning how slaves used to be treated by humans just because of their

color. It assembles to its purpose because it shows how humans can be greedy, selfish and

dangerous all at the same time.

Works Cited

“The Lowest Animal” from Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain, edited by Bernard DeVoto.

Copyright 1938, 1944, C 1959, 1962 by The Mark Twain Company. Copyright 1942 by

the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reproduced by permission of

HarperCollins Publishers.