The Power of Satire

This post will be a little different as I will be straying from Analyzing Literature and simply talking about a literary device called Satire.

Satire has been around for centuries and used in different ways to persuade people to a certain opinion, to make fun of an event that took place, to help people see the unseen. When trying to create satire the most important thing to remember is that if it didn’t actually happen then it’s not funny it’s simply bullying. Satire is meant to be silly or humorous but if you are slandering or defaming someone’s character that would not be considered satire. We see satire often on shows like Saturday Night Live.

The following video satirizes the abilities of high school students to cheat on essays. They are being criticized for how obvious it is that they cheated.

Famous author’s that wrote entire books that satirize society include Oscar Wilde and his play The Importance of Being Earnest and Jonathan Swift that wrote the iconic novel called, Gulliver’s Travels. I share these two particularly because I teach them regularly in my classes, so I may have a sort of bias towards them when it comes to examples of Satire.

In Oscar Wilde’s play, Importance of Being Earnest, he is satirizing the upper class society of England and Europe.

In Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, he satirizes the frustrations experienced in the US military towards the end of WWII.

Satire is a way of bringing to light issues and behaviors among a society that have gone unchecked. The goal is to make people laugh at their own silliness and hopefully change their ways for the better. It can always be used to emphasize or bring awareness to injustices happening in the work place or among social classes through irony, exaggeration, and humor.