We meet satire very often – this genre allows a person to rest and recover from stress and many other difficult situations. But how is it written and why many of the philosophers call satire the most refined and cunning weapon that a man could come up with and how to write in this subtle genre yourself? To begin with, before starting work on the essay, we need to find out what is the definition.
What Is a Satirical Essay
The genre has been known since ancient times; this word of Latin origin means literally “all sorts of things”, “mixture”. It is a merciless rebuke. Even in ancient times, it was established that it is dependent on the problems of modernity and has more possibilities in the choice of artistic forms. With the passage of time, it loses its significance to a certain genre, as it is usual for other classical genres, as with elegies, idylls, etc. The exposure was the main sign of satire.
The basis of the genre is conviction and laughter, with the help of laughter, the author exposes the shortcomings, human vices. A characteristic feature is a negative attitude to the image object and the presence of a positive ideal against which the negative features of the depicted are revealed. The authors creating the object of “high degree of conventionality. He uses hyperbole and grotesque; grotesque forms can be embodied in a fantastic plot, as in the Adventures of Gulliver.
Satire in literature puffs and exaggerates human vices to such an extent that they become ridiculous. This genre is characterized by an open expression of dislike, coarse, and sometimes insulting vocabulary, intentional sharpness of assessments. It is a subtle insidious and relatively hard literary technique. Authors implement it when they ridicule human vices such as pride, greed, laziness, lust, gluttony, etc. According to Scribophile, satire is a literary device that uses irony and humor as a way to draw attention to prevalent cultural and societal flaws.
There are the main features of the genre:
- a kind of comic;
- angry, wicked, destroying laughter;
- the sharpness of life situations and characters;
- violation of proportions in the phenomena depicted;
- the presence of hyperbole, litoty;
- not a clearly expressed positive hero;
- orientation against negative phenomena in society and the nature of man.
Now when we understand the meaning of the word, we can proceed with the compilation of an algorithm. It will help us write the right, brainy essay.
How to Write a Satirical Essay
A satirical story is one of the most interesting and complex genres. Many do not fully understand that there is a difficult thing to tell a cheerful story. However, not all writers manage to do this in such a way as to catch the reader, and to convey the true essence of their intention.
Such stories are a special kind of stories as such, but their main distinctive feature is the unsurpassed humor and irony that the author lays. What is necessary to write good satirical essays?
To do this, you need the main quality – a sense of humor. If a person does not have a sense of humor, but he has a lot of writing talents and skills, he is unlikely to be able to write a worthwhile humorous work, even if he uses his entire arsenal of means and techniques.
In such stories, the characters are portrayed in a funny way. The main goal is to get the reader to evaluate the satire through laughter since this is the best cure for daily stress. These stories are a kind of pill. Moreover, funny stories provide an excellent opportunity to look at yourself, another person or situation with other eyes, take a critical look at what is happening.
To write such a story, you do not just have to invent or recall an amusing story from life. You also need to appropriately present it. To do this, writers use a whole set of expressive tools that help to achieve the desired effect. This is a hyperbole, an exaggeration of a situation, a property or a character trait. The skillful use of hyperbole gives a tremendous comic effect, and there is an inverse hyperbole reception – a litoty. This is a deliberate understatement of any features, properties, etc.
Here are a few more tools that you can use to write a story:
- unexpected comparison,
- a literal interpretation of phraseological units and other words with a double meaning,
- listing of unrelated objects as homogeneous,
- the use in one context of words with direct and portable meaning, etc.
To intrigue the reader to the end, many authors use such a technique as an unexpected denouement. They use various absurdities in the behavior of heroes. The author can give them comical features of character or appearance, put in unusual situations, gift with unusual names and give “talking” surnames.
There are many ways of writing a satire. It all depends on the imagination of the author himself and his extraordinary sense of humor.
Top 10 Ideas for a Satirical Essay
- The Day When We Will Be Recognized Only by Instagram
- What to Do If You Do Not Have an iPhone?
- When a Man Becomes a Woman and Vice Versa
- Being a Homeless Person Is Not Bad
- The Goal of My Whole Life Is to Work in the Office
- When the American Dream Turned into Consumerism
- The Best Ways to Track Your Boyfriend with iPhone and Social Networks
- In My Opinion, Global Warming Is Just a Joke
- When America Starts to Be Friends with Russia
- When Robots Create Their State
- List of 5 Do and Don’ts For Satirical Essay Writing
Do:
1) An important step in the writing is the designation of boundaries that the author should not pass over under any circumstances. Satire is beautiful when there are no excesses in it, you do not need to cross the limits of moral permissiveness. Otherwise, you can pour on yourself the lava that you brewed in the pot of your satire;
2) It needs to be written from real stories that happened in life and you saw them, but for correctness, you should not ridicule a particular person. On the basis of his character make up a composite character whose vices will be then ridiculed;
3) For more successful writing, it is necessary to study the work of other humorists, to see what techniques they use, what they talk about, what they hint about;
4) Satire is the art of bitter laughter. Your task is to combine the incompatible – ridiculous with truly not ridiculous. Laughter is a means of debunking shortcomings, an instrument of scourging human vices and manifestations of social evil;
5) If you write a satire, then be prepared in advance that not all your viewers or readers will adequately perceive it, many people are very vulnerable. You should be more careful.
Do not:
1) Do not talk about specific people and personalities with direct text;
2) Be careful with the topics of power and politics because there is a big risk of acquiring enemies;
3) Satire should in no case contain direct and personal insults;
4) Do not use foul language when writing a college essay, leave this flight of thought for your blog;
5) The satire largely depends on the appropriate cultural context, take it into account in your essay.
