Satire is a literary device that adroitly ridicules folly or vice to expose or correct it. It focuses on human imperfection as it manifests in people’s behavior, ideas, and societal institutions or other creations. Satire uses tones of entertainment, mockery, disdain, or exasperation toward a flawed subject, hoping to create awareness and subsequent change. In this article, we explore the meaning, forms, examples, and techniques of satire.

What is Satire?

Satire uses humor, irony, or exaggeration to render informed criticisms of people and social conventions. Famous people, political elites, groups and ideas, popular trends, and cultures are some of the most common targets of satire. It is featured in various literature genres, fiction, and non-fiction, including poetry, monologues, comics, articles, essays, short stories, and novels. 

Types of Satire

Below are the three major forms of satire:

Horatian: This satire aims at character flaws in people rather than societal matters. It focuses more on entertaining the audience based on people's imperfections than on educating or criticizing a person or an idea.

Juvenalian: This is often political satire used to expose ills, inequality, injustice, or other issues in a society or group of people. It can be funny but still possesses a serious undertone than Horatian satire.

Menippean: This satire condemns people's attitudes in society. Like Horatian satire, the focus is on a person, exposing their improper behavior and philosophy. But Menippean satire carries a serious tone.

Examples of Satire

Here are examples of renowned fiction that feature the use of satire:

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). This novel mocks and condemns institutionalized racism and religion in the south. 

George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945). This anti-utopian satire mocks the Russian Bolshevik revolution. A group of farmyard animals overthrow their masters but end up being ruled by an oppressive dictatorship of pigs.

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). This science fiction novel explores broad themes like the Second World War and the philosophical question of whether free will exists.

Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (1991). This novel, narrated in first person by serial killer Patrick Bateman, criticizes capitalism and consumerism.

Satire Techniques

Here are some methods for creating compelling satires:

1. Exaggeration: This requires overstating or understating specific features of a person or thing to make their appearance better or worse. Exaggeration is the core of satire. You need to dare to blow things out of proportion to show the ridiculousness and humor that they possess. Otherwise, you may struggle to find anything worth ridiculing.

2. Incongruity: Here, you display something unexpected and abnormal in an otherwise regular scene or story. You can achieve this by making something normal appear absurd. For example, you can take a common saying, like "believe women." And point out something bizarre about it. Like, "We should believe all of them, including the ones that kill their husbands and the ones that cook their babies."

3. Reversal: This is like the incongruity technique. Except here, you flip the natural or traditional order and position of things. This can be effective in exposing idiocies in human actions or attitudes. An example can be a student teaching their teacher or a child parenting their parents, like in the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. 

4. Parody: This requires imitating a person or an original work — fiction or non-fiction — or reenacting an actual event. Parodies often mock prevailing conventions in literature and style. And in popular culture, they taunt people's actions or the proceedings in a popular social or political event. A famous example is the Cold Open on Saturday Night Live.

5. Irony: This requires expressing something but meaning the opposite — verbal irony. This can come as sarcasm or false praise, where you say the opposite of what you mean, aiming to mock someone or something. For example, "I really love your company. Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than hearing you rant about the woes of politics."