Satire is the use of humor, exaggeration, irony or being ridiculous in the sense to expose or criticize other people's stupidity or actions in the context of topical issues. Many people won't notice it but sometimes we usually use satire to either correct a person's action or to criticize on what was said. I remember a time in which my friends and I decided to go out and ice skate one nice winter day. We enjoyed our outing and shared some laughs in between of seeing each other skate. At the end of the day we were satirical and we were mimicking each others falls. We didn't care if anyone saw us acting ridiculous outside. We may act satire even without being aware of it.
Taylor Mali's wrote a piece called "The the impotence of proofreading". Within his essay many words were misspelled , this is the correct spelling of the first paragraph. "Has this ever happened to you? You worked very hard on a paper for English class, and then get a very low grade (like a D or even a D-). All because you are the world's worst speller. Proofreading your papers is a matter of the the upmost importance." What's being satirized in this essay was use of spell checking without knowing how to spell. Even though Taylor did some spell checking, for the reader , it really doesn't makes sense. So its always good to proofread any form of writing before handing them in and also not to rely on spell checker.
An article that intrigued me the most within the web page "The Onion", was a article called "Pearl Harbor". Josh Hartnett was A man affected from this catastrophe after seeing the gruesome movie. "For 10 years, I've been waking up in the middle of the night, panicked from the same nightmare in which I experience Pearl Harbor all over again."He recalled saying:"Everyone knows Pearl Harbor was a terrible, terrible thing," Hartnett added. "But they can't truly fathom how awful it was unless they were actually there." For Josh this was a traumatic experience that he encountered. He also added " All those scared and confused voices, all that yelling—it's still fresh in my mind". Josh also recalls saying:"It was just shot after shot and like eight million things getting blown up at once. It was appalling. And so loud. It seemed to go on for an eternity." Josh is satirizing two things in this article , which was The magnitude of how bad Pearl Harbor truly was for him as well as certain nightmares that he recalls having frequently. It's agreeable that if anyone had to experience something that traumatic that went on in the history of the United States , It will be difficult to recover without the help of a psychologist. Not everyone can conquer everything.
Mark Twain wrote an article called "Advice To Youth", Which he shared great words of wisdom. One paragraph that attracted my attention was the one about lying. The satire was when Mark said: "Once caught, you can never again be in the eyes to the good and the pure, what you were before. " This statement is true, because once u lie people will tend to change their opinion about you and that sometimes can hurt you in the long run. This quote also brings upon funny memories that I've had in my past. But as for me I would lie about small things , like whether I received money or whether I ate candy or not. My mother would always ask these questions when visitors were around, and even though I lied it was for a good purpose. Nobody wont deny candy if handed.
H.H.Munro (Saki) wrote a short story called "The Story Teller". Within this story, there was an aunt who was taking care of three children. A bachelor accompanied them through their journey. The aunt began story telling but the kids was disruptive and kept asking questions. Suddenly the bachelor emerged from his corner and decided to tell a story that would interest the kids. While story telling he mentioned a girl being "Horribly Good","There was a wave of reaction from the kids, in favor of the story. The word"Horrible" in connection with "goodness" was a novelty that commended itself". The satire was an exaggerated statement which gave a sense of enthusiasm for the kids as well as the aunt. Those two words were the key point of satire in the story. It also seemed to introduce a ring of truth that was absent from the aunt's tales of infant life. The ending of the story had an Ironic ending, in which the protagonist of the story was suddenly killed by a wolf, due to the sounds of her medals of obedience. The satire is the death of the well behaved girl who was suddenly killed by a wolf.
An article called : "Reading Satirical Articles Can Get You Tortured, Sent To Gitmo" by: Cerning was very interesting. It explained about a British resident who was held captive at Guantanamo Bay who was identified as a terrorist and a local threat to the United States. At the time the United states were still paranoid after the Twin Tower collapse. "Binyam Mohamed, a former UK asylum seeker, admitted to having read the ‘instructions’ after allegedly being beaten, hung up by his wrists for a week and having a gun held to his head in a Pakistani jail." Evidence shows that an offending article called: "How To Build An H-Bomb" was first published in a US satirical magazine and then later placed on a series of websites. The website claimed that a nuclear weapon can be made by ‘using a bicycle pump’ and with liquid uranium ‘poured into a bucket and swung round’. The satire is that is not possible to suddenly make an atomic bomb by using these materials. Binyam said that "it was just a joke " and It's clearly a satirical bent, but the United States Government took this as an serious manner. The CIA accused 30-year-old Mohamed, a caretaker, of plotting a dirty bomb attack. He was a prisoner for up to eight years which involved a lot of tortured but he had his freedom at the end of this whole ordeal.
This Cartoon has satire written all over it. Why? Because the guy is asking: "Why the duck is defending our old president of the United States, George Bush". The duck said it was because they are paying him too. Meaning if they weren't paying him, then he wouldnt be defending him. Any kind of Politics have satire in them, Mostly to convey a message or either to make people laugh.
Satire is the use of humor, exaggeration, irony or being ridiculous in the sense to expose or criticize other people's stupidity or actions in the context of topical issues. These readings has lead me to understand different forms of satire. It also made me realize that many people use satire in literature and some do convey messages. Which lead me to contribute to the definition of satire and also to have greater knowledge of this literary term.
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