Sillinity as Survival

This paper explores the concept of “sillinity”, an intentional lighthearted absurdity, as a narrative strategy in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and contemporary refugee memoirs: Atef Abu Saif’s Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide (2024) and Yusra Mardini’s Butterfly: From Refugee to Olympian—My Story of Rescue, Hope, and Triumph (2018). While Twain’s novel is celebrated for its humor and satire, this study argues that its sillinity operates as an emblem of resilience and survival under precarious conditions. By examining Huck’s humor to navigate societal and geographical borders, alongside Abu Saif’s and Mardini’s use of humor to confront displacement and state violence, the paper highlights sillinity’s ability to transcend temporal and geographical boundaries. This analysis positions Huckleberry Finn as a timeless text that offers a nuanced framework for understanding the interplay between humor and endurance in the contemporary refugee narratives and establishes sillinity as a universal tool for reclaiming agency and resisting subjugation

Adventure · Amusement · Emblem · Narrative · Refugee · American Jewish Fiction Analysis · American Literature and Humor Studies · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis