Manoj Arra
AP English
In the “Damned Human Race”, Mark Twain uses satire and logic to explain how the human race is actually worse than other animals. He explains how Humans descended from other Animals and that they are more “animal” than animals. He proves that man is unnecessarily cruel and animals are not by comparing an earl and an anaconda and showing that the earl kills unnecessarily. He then shows that animals are not greedy while humans are by proving that humans tend to look for more money even when they have it while animals take only as much as they need. Twain shows that humans are vengeful and also indecent and vulgar. Man is the only animal that engages in war, unnecessarily killing masses of his own species and man is the only species to rob its own kind. Man is the only species who enslaves his own kind. Man is the only religious animal; he kills others and commits crimes in support of his religion. Twain states that the main reason that man is so defected is because of his sense of morality. It is because man knows between right and wrong that he can commit wrongs. Without a sense of morality, man is no different from other animals and in the process, he is more perfect.
I agree with some of the points that Mark Twain makes yet I find that some of his other points do not make sense. One of the big things I agree with is the fact that man is cruel while animals are not. I found the comparison to the anaconda, a very dangerous animal, to be very humorous and accurate. It is ironic because most people think of anacondas as vicious killers yet he proves that they are only killing out of necessity. Some of the points I disagree on are things such as the vulgar of man and greed. The comparison he makes to animals just doesn’t seem to make sense and is not comparable. One cannot know if animals get vulgar thoughts, but one can assume and that is exactly what Mark Twain did, he assumed. His final conclusion that the reason man is imperfect is...