Essays on Satire

Satire is the use of sarcasm, exaggeration, irony, humor, and ridicule to denounce and expose human vices, especially in modern issues and politics. Often Jonathan Swift must use satire because his ideas have fallen on deaf ears, so to raise awareness about his topic he...

Jonathon Swift’s satirical pamphlet, entitled A Modest Proposal (1729), portrays a composer who has conceived a plan to resolve the economic crisis that was prevalent within Ireland. The solution that was proposed was to eat the children of the poverty-stricken Irish. Alongside this depiction, Swift...

The evolving workplace of 1920s America presented industries and businesses with an innovative new standard of operation: work smarter, not harder. These innovations included the popularization of the assembly line, the right for women to vote (and, thereafter, the quest for the right to equal...

Tom Sawyer lived with his Aunt Polly and his half-brother, Sid. Tom dirties his clothes in a fight and is made to whitewash the fence the next day, as a punishment. He cleverly persuades his friends to trade him small treasures for the privilege of...

During war, men and woman are swept by emotions that make it difficult to overlook their experiences in war. Jack Croasdile, a prisoner of war, drew under his captivity in 1941 by the Germans a picture titled Anticipating 1942. Featured in the picture, he and...

There is a video that Saturday Night Live made called the “Screen Guild Awards” and in this video they had created a satire theme. The main purpose of this video was the irony of how there were five nominees for the best actor award and...

In the midst of World War II, apprehensive soldier and antiheroic bombardier John Yossarian endures the perpetual torment of war with a tenacious desire to escape. Witnessing a number of horrendous events and ceaseless bureaucratic absurdity, Yossarian and his companions struggle against the surreal parameters...

As Daniel R. White writes in Nietzsche at the Altar: Situating the Devotee, “To laugh at the literal behavior of other characters in the social drama, is to change the truth value of what those characters do so as to undermine its seriousness, its claim...

Many literary authors use a number of literary devices in their writings. Some of the most common are devices such as similes, symbolism, satire, and alliteration. Many writers try to express their own ideas through their writing in hopes that others will one day read...

The Film “Men in Black” uses Horatian and juvenalian satire to develop its manifestation of the “aliens versus humans” conflict. Horatian Satire in which the voice is indulgent, tolerant, amused, and witty. The speaker holds up to gentle ridicule the absurdities and follies of human...

Johnathan Swift was a man with quite a bit to say. And he believed that for anyone to listen to him they would need to be either shocked or entertained. In his two satirical works, “Gulliver’s Travels” and “A Modest Proposal”, Swift takes two different...

The issue of immigration and American attitudes towards it are the object of satire in T.C Boyle’s novel ‘Tortilla Curtain’. Boyle uses sarcasm to attack what he sees as the self-obsessed nature of middle-class America and their naïve view of the world. He laments the...

In the satirical play The Physicists, screenwriter Friedrich Dürrenmatt explores the morality of nuclear science and the true intentions behind the creation of nuclear weapons against the backdrop of three physicists in a sanatorium run by head psychiatrist Doctor Mathilde von Zahnd. After the physicist...

Claude McKay, a prominent African American writer of the twentieth century, one of the famous pioneers of the black American literature, gives an exact picture about how the African Diaspora people are dominated by the white communists in the Harlem in 1930s. His fourth novel...

“Happy Endings” is an interesting short story by Margaret Atwood, which aims at showing that the end of a narrative is not as important as the middle. I choose this story because as a reader I understand clearly that, the middle of the story is...

Throughout the book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis addresses the topics of Christian morality with a twist: it’s written from the perspective of devils. The Screwtape Letters is narrated by Screwtape, an elder devil who is teaching the ropes to his nephew, Wormwood. Screwtape mulls...

In Wilson’s The Future of Life, Wilson utilizes extreme satire to characterize how little each opposing group understands each other, and also underscores the the fact that each group’s rhetoric against each other’s point of views is deeply imbedded in misconceptions. By doing so, Wilson...

T. C. Boyle, author of The Tortilla Curtain, stated in defense of his harsh depiction of characters Kyra and Delaney Mossbacher that, “If it’s satire, it has to bite somebody, has to have teeth in it, otherwise it’s useless” (Penguin Group). This comes as a...

“And anyway, why should the creature be happy?Your affectionate uncle,Screwtape” (Lewis 41). In the preface to The Screwtape Letters, author and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis essentially clarifies the target audience of the work: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can...

Comparing The School for Scandal and Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son has provided an interesting venture into the society from over two hundred years ago, representing society and their expectations. Brinsley recognizes the issues in the society and uses satire to exhibit the members...

Throughout history there have been no shortages of western Christian writers. In a field so competitive, only those who have created work that is theologically influential are remembered by the masses. Martin Luther is remembered for crafting the 95 theses, a simple list of demands...

Today, the good is often overshadowed by the evil. The media is flooded with more crime and negativity than it is the positives and stories of charities and selfless deeds. Similarly, in Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, the bad, those obsessed with money, self-preservation and...

In Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe, dullness is the defining trait of the mock epic’s “hero”, and decay is employed as a theme and a weapon within the poem, underlined mostly as the decay of wit as the speaker dangles his victim and his reputation from his...

Writer and satirist Jonathan Swift stated that “satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own” (Swift). Such beholders, as Swift mentions, use satiric narrative to convey social and political plights. In his satire A Modest Proposal, Swift...

J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye and Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 reveal a concern for innocence within each protagonist. Salinger and Heller center their novels on questions relating to innocence: Holden Caulfield’s “where did the ducks go” (Salinger, 13) and John Yossarian’s “Where...

It seems fitting that Yossarian’s nickname in Catch-22 is “Yo-Yo.” A yo-yo is a perfect metaphor for the recurring images of circularity and linearity that characterizes the chaotic world of Joseph Heller’s novel. On one hand, a yo-yo follows the straight-line, linear path of its...

George Meredith once reasoned, “The true test of comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter.” The importance of encouraging thoughtful laughter in comedy lies in its ability to humorously provoke reflection of some greater idea or theme. In the dark comedy Catch-22, Joseph Heller...

Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 not only in order to make a statement about the absurdity of war, but also to illustrate the absurdity of the human condition itself. Through its style, language, and characters, Catch-22 vividly depicts the absurdity of life using World War II...