Satire as a stylistic device involves the use of exaggeration, humor, and irony to show the shortcomings of the events present in the literature work. In most cases, they relate real-life situations with the events described by the literature work.
Satire exposes the vices or the flaws in the targeted society humorously. The origin of satire dates back to ancient Roman critics and writers, and the Greek poets highly used it to expose flaws in society. Below are examples of satire in literature.
Unfortunate coincidence
Unfortunately, literature work by Dorothy Parker contains a lot of sass and cynicism on modern twentieth-century poetry. Dorothy Parker uses satire to portray love as weak, unlike the perceptions of lots of people that love should be strong and emotional feelings for both partners.
The literature is about two people who claim to be madly in a love relationship.
Unfortunately, one is lying about it. To some extent, he paints love as unreal or unable to last long.
Parker says that by the time you swear you’re theirs, you should never shiver not unless you are lying about it. Reading through his work will significantly help you in writing satirical essays. Paperap.com is a website where you can find a lot of things about satire.
Animal farm
Animal farm is a novel by George Orwell published in England on 17TH August 1945. This literature work narrates a story of a farm animal that decides to rebel against humans, and they hope that they will create a system where they will be treated equally as human beings. George Orwell uses satire to clearly show how the animals thought they would be happier later in life than before. You can find a study guide for this novel at https://www.enotes.com/topics/animal-farm.
Eventually, a pig duped Napoleon takes over with many dictatorships that they expected.
Things get worse during Napoleon’s reign due to the oppressive force of their leader. This fable reflects the events that lead to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Stalinist period of the Soviet Union.
During the Russian revolution, he used different animal stereotypes to satirize other people’s natural personalities. The sheep are used categorically to represent the unthinking public mob, and George expects the target reader to understand how the mob behaved compared to a sheep.
A midsummer night’s dream
It is one of the best comedies written by William Shakespeare. The comedy is based on four Athenians who ran away to the woodland. Then Puck causes the boys to fall in love with a similar girl. When the four run through the forest to chase each other, the Puck helps the master trick the queen.
The statement by Lysander in the play depicts the clever use of satire by Shakespeare. He uses satire to explain how humans tend to foolishly idealize all the aspects of romantic love and perceive everything with many possibilities that are hard to achieve.
Lysander’s personality reflects a lot of satire because he claims that he has never heard or read of a love story that is not troublesome. Considering that none of them has had an ideal foundation to base idealization on passionate love, it’s humorous how the characters are filled with the romantic notion of love.
Lysistrata
Lysistrata is amongst the oldest ancient Greek novels full of comedies and has used a lot of satire. The literature narrates a story of a woman’s unique mission to stop the Peloponnesian war. Lysistrata convinces Greece’s women to deny their husbands’ intimate desires to force them to negotiate for peace.
Aristophanes uses satire to convey different ideas in the literature work, such as war and peace. He uses satire to describe the events of the war and the complexities associated with male and female relationships.
He says that may gentle love and the sweet Cyprian Queen shower the seductive charms of love on their bosoms. That’s only if they stir a feeling amongst men so that they may stand firm as sticks. All this is an attempt to be recognized as the peace-makers among the Greek people.
Gulliver’s travels
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift is an adventure narration that involves several journeys of Lemuel Gulliver- famously known to be a ship’s surgeon. Due to a series of mishaps, Lemuel Gulliver ends up on several strange highlands inhabited by people and animals of unusual sizes. For him, it isn’t easy to unmask their philosophies, but after every return to the England home, he manages to recover from these unusual experiences.
Satire is used in this; literature works differently through the setting, plot, character, and narration. He uses satire to describe English society. They compete by dancing on a rope to charm the emperor to gain a higher ranking office.
This dance is a straight shot at England’s election process, and he gauges it by doing a series of ridiculous activities unrelated to politics. Jonathan Swift also satirizes the parliamentary system through the Lilliputian politician.
He puts it that the Warpole was an extremely wily politician when he made the Swift shows, and this shows it makes the Flimnap the most dexterous of the rope dancers. In this case, Jonathan is trying to ridicule how the political system is organizing itself but making many mistakes by engaging in things that are not useful.
Adventures in Wonderland
Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is among the best examples of satire in literature. The narration is centered around a girl who mysteriously falls asleep in the grassland, and starts dreaming of following the rabbit down its hole. At that point, the girl thinks that very few things are impossible.
The girl has bizarre adventures with the illogical and mysterious creatures. At some point, she grows tall as a house and then afterward shrinks to about 3 inches.
The novel satirizes the rule and the conventions of Victorian society. It pokes fun at the upper-class intellectualism with a unique sense of humor. That’s through the way Carroll overturns the natural way of doing things by emphasizing the bad aspects.
