George Gladwell: The Use Of Satire In American History

The Impact of Humor As Leo Rosten, an American humorist and author states, “Humor is the affectionate communication of insight” Humor is an intelligent way to enforce an argument to your audience. With the employment of humor, the authors are able to persuade their readers into understanding, and sometimes agreeing with their opinions. Humor allows authors to have the insight about their topic thus, giving the author credibility and zealousness. In Laura Fraser's essay, “Why I Stopped Being a Vegetarian”, she employs the element of humor to strengthen her essay in a myriad of ways.

True humor is supposed to be used as way to make people look at situation from a different perspective and to laugh about it. An example of this is from the reading “SantaLand Diaries” where David realized that life was not going as expected. He is thirty –three years old and applying for an elf job. He tries to imagine a whole new world where he is able succeed and accomplish his dreams within three weeks of being in New York. In the reading he says “I’m trying to look on the bright side” he is using this imaginative world to help him get through a really tough time within his life.

The definition of satire is a work that ridicules its subjects through the use of four techniques such as exaggeration, reversal, incongruity, and parody in order to make a comment or criticism about it. The book Cat’s Cradle is a great example of satire being portrayed. In Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, he creates his own religion “Bokononism” to satirize all of the other religions that are in the world. Bokononism is made from and built on lies (foma).

For example, one way he shows satire is in the beginning of the prompt he says “country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism”(Twain). Twain is showing how the soldiers were ready for war that even their chest was on fire because of how much patriotism they had. When soldiers go to war I don't think there breast burned them for feeling patriotic. This shows how ironic he is because that didn't really happen. Twain trys to explain to the people how the soilders were so happy to go fight and knew they were going to win

For years, one of the single greatest techniques available to writers has been a sense of satire and dark humor. Former satirist, Voltaire, have motivated modern day writers like Libba Bray to create what some might consider thoughtful laughter with in a satire novel. Voltaire and Bray unique style from different eras both share a common goal of targeting an intended audience through diction, exaggeration, and invectiveness. By analyzing Candide (Voltaire) and Beauty Queens(Bray) by the “true test of comedy” you will see in each novel it is expressed by it diction and tone.

There are two types of satire; juvenalian satire is when someone is made fun of but they don’t find it amusing, when the satire is biting mean, and horatian satire is when the victum finds it funny as well, so more playful. A few famous writers have perfected the art of writing with satire, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift are two great examples. High School parking lots are the best parking lots in each town. First of all, high school parking lots have the smallest parking spaces which makes it so easy for each student to part properly. They are able to maneuver any vehicles, especially large trucks, into these spaces easily.

Saving the Modern World: One Satire at a Time There are so many problems that the world faces today, some more urgent than others. Some individuals choose to focus on the newest fashion style or celebrity breakup rather than focus on one that could bring about the doom of a nation. The use of satire in great literary works, television entertainment, and comics is an effective way to enlighten the world on the difficulties it faces.

Satire is used in literature to criticize and point out society’s flaws. The criticism is usually masked in humour. Irony is commonly used in satires to expose flaws, an effective example is John Smith’s A Modest Proposal, he effectively uses irony, to communicate his argument about the poverty in Ireland at the time. Similarly, in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale she criticizes the society that women live in. Atwood uses allusions to the Old Testament, Cultural Revolution, Salem Witch Trials, and the Taliban to satirize the oppression of women in political, religious and social aspects.

Satire is used by many famous writers to create humor and to criticize people’s unwise, and senseless actions. As George Orwell once said, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." (Orwell, 1945). People will always be greedy and think they are smarter than others but this is untrue. The one who thinks he is smarter or better than the other will always end up losing in life.

Irony is often used in literature to illustrate certain situations to the audience. In some pieces of literature that might be pointing out an unjust system, in others that might be to add a comedic effect, but whatever situation the author wants to illustrate, irony is very beneficial. Through small and witty, one-liners, or a bigger dramatic irony situation contrasting two very different situations, irony can be very beneficial for the reader to understand the story. Both “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins have a corrupt dystopian society. Through the use of irony, the author can portray the corruptness to the audience.

One of the most valuable aspects of personality is humor – we value one’s sense of humor and make friends often based on finding certain things funny. But how and why do we consider things to be funny at all? Human beings have strived to uncover fundamental truths about human nature for centuries – even millennia – but humor itself is still yet to be pinpointed. Henri Bergson is only one of many who has attempted this feat, and his essay Laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic from 1911 breaks down comedy into what he believes to be its essential forms and origins. While Bergson makes many valid points, Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times that was brought to screens only twenty years later seems to contradict many of Bergson’s theories, while Bergson seems to contradict even himself over the course of his essay.

Surprisingly, satire and religion have been interconnected not only conceptually, but also within the practices of certain cultures throughout history. In Ancient Arabia, works of satire were revered for having powerful magical qualities because the satirists obtained “alliance with the spirits”, according to Robert C. Elliot, author of The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art. However, Elliot emphasizes that the most important function of the satirist was to “compose satire against the tribal enemy.” (Elliot) Ancient Arabic tribes would hold satire battles designed to attack the enemy’s honor as a preliminary to war. (Elliot)

The purpose of my paper is to scrutinize closely the concept of social satire, revealing and thereby amending the society’s blight in relation to the novel, The Edible Woman by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The novel is unambiguously interested in the complex body truths in the Consumerist Society. In The Edible Woman, Atwood furnish a critique of North American consumer society in the 1960s from a feminist point of view. As a feminist social satire, it takes specific bend at the way society has customised the methods of marginalizing and preventing women from having power, authority and influence.

Another positive for freedom of speech for comedians is that the jokes made can lighten the mood of the subject. A comedians function in society is to challenge authority, and talk about subjects that may be unacceptable (Hartsell). Comedians are expected to go too far, but when they do, they are disapproved for it. Although, the audiences may only laugh at a joke because of how awkward it is going to be if no one did. “People like to mask their feelings due to not wanting others to really know how they feel—so people may laugh in times of nervousness because they are trying to balance their anxious feelings” (Kaminski).

This is typical of burlesque comedies. This makes this diary full of elements of political satire and the notes of sarcasm are toned down through an exceptional use of drollness and hilarity