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SATIRE ESSAY

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SATIRE ESSAY

Good evening and welcome to another edition of the BBC satire documentary series. Today we will be analyzing the battleground of satirical poetry, examining two well-known satirical poems called
'Life-Cycle' by Bruce Dawe and 'Hymn Of The Scientific Farmer' by
Clive Sansom. But first, lets look at what a satire is and how the victorious poet annihilates the foe of a satire.

According to the ancient Macquarie Dictionary, a satire is a 'term applied to any work of literature or art whose objective is to ridicule.' Using ridicule or mockery in the battleground, a satire has the avowed objective of correcting human faults, while arousing laughter or scorn in its intended audience or bystanders of the
victorious …show more content…

'Hymn Of The Scientific Farmer' does not sing the praises of modern farming methods as might be suggested by its title, but is an example of a satirical poem that criticizes the way in which farmers are destroying the land that they now exploit for their own short-term benefit. As the poet describes in the battleground, the foe 'slaughter trees in thousands,' 'strips the lanes of hedges,' 'rob the flour of virtue,' and 'pump the fowls with hormones,' all for short term benefit. The foe's opinion of the consequence of these practices are also expressed with naïve and fallible comments that they will 'take the gains and go' when the land is destroyed and will 'not be there to see' the consumers who 'die of cancer' due to the foe's malpractices.

It is straightforwardly identifiable to the reader the weapons that the victorious side has used to massacre the foe. Using a direct satire (A first-person speaker addresses the reader whose conversation helps further the speaker's purpose) in the poem, the victorious side has massacred the foe using the weapons of structural irony (e.g. the farmers judgment/conscience is impaired by personal interests), innuendo (e.g. the indirect suggestion of the legitimacy of the farmers practices), and indirect contemptuous suggestion of the farmers. Clive Sansom

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