"Advice to Youth" is a satirical essay written by Mark Twain in 1882. Twain was asked by persons unspecified to write something "to heyouth." While the exact audience of his speech is uncertain, it is most probably American; in his posthumous collected works, editor's notes have conjecturally assigned the address to the Boston Saturday Morning Club. In the essay, Twain speaks primarily of advice which can be broken into six specific topics. These include: selective obedience towards parents, respecting superiors, the wisdom of going to bed early and waking up early, lying, firearm etiquette, and the importance of good books. This essay is a classic example of

Juvenalian satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or ...

. This satirical mode can be seen in Mark Twain's recurrent employment of sarcasm while addressing the youth with his words of wisdom. Interpreted by scholars as a critique of authority, Twain's "Advice to Youth" may have been a topical response to the

prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol ...

of alcohol in

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to th ...

in 1881, a legislative action which many residents found deeply upsetting.

References

Essays by Mark Twain 1882 documents 1882 essays {{Ethics-essay-stub