When the Candle Goes OutThe Complexity of Simple Jokes and the Limits of Satire

Much attention over the decades has been devoted to the nuances of humor in literature, especially regarding the power of satire to comment on American culture. This article focuses on the fragile collaboration between those who produce humor and those who respond to it as audiences to consider, in particular, the limits of laughter and comic satire to affect readers. This article uses two precise examples of humor in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) as symbolic representations of distinct types of humor, one exhibiting the often overlooked complexity of simple jokes and the other an example of cultural satire. Juxtaposing these two examples exposes the tenuous relationship between humorists and audiences, a fragility that has troubling implications for the persuasive power of satire.