Satire In The Visit By Durrenmatt

Use the guided analysis exercises within the lesson as a model for this part of the assignment.

1. Locate an example of satire. Copy and paste it here, making sure to note the source where you found it in a proper citation.

A relationship? Something meaningful? Forever? HA! All ploys and devious schemes devised by horifically cruel creatures, in order to have their every wish granted for all of eternity. These terms were created to destroy our lives, they were created by the most evil and demented of all creatures, The Female. Ask any boyfriend, or should I say "slave", and they will tell you that the Female is a very mean creature that gets her every way without any questions. They turn us into their servants and force us into a permanent relationship, or a permanent "slavery", as I prefer to call it.

A book where everything is backwards, where everything stirs away from reality and does not make a whole lot of sense when it comes to relativity. The main character Arthur Dent is being targeted by these unprepossessing aliens to demolish his house to make a intergalactic bypass, when moments later they are going to destroy the earth. All Arthur can worry about is his house when the earth is going to end. In reality a normal human would be worried about surviving. A smart computer built by Deep thought detects that the answer to the ultimate question is Forty-Two, now all of the humans are insanely muddled as to why the answer is Forty-Two. Mice are now ruling over humans when we have experimented with them for years, the mice are the rulers over the humans and are experimenting on them. Satire is used in many ways throughout this book, but there are only a few that really express how today's society is ruled over.

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is truly a satire. In The Importance of Being Ernest, Wilde mocks the society in Britain, and the rules it followed in the 1800s. He uses satire in the description of every character and other themes like marriage, intelligence, morality, and lifestyle primarily aimed at the upper class of the time. At the turn of every page the use of satire proves again and again to be ideal when questioning the morals and values of people.

A group of girls walk into a grocery story with nothing but a bikini on and all eyes immediately swoop to the bare skin that is showing. Attention always shifts when a bare shoulder is seen in almost any public setting. The controversy over what is suitable to wear in public is often seen in present day news. In the short story “A&P” written by John Updike, the main theme shown is dressing in the minimal amount of clothes can draw attention to one's appearance. The theme can be found through a humorous tone as a clerk at the local grocery store checks out the local shoppers.

Chris Lilley's Summer Heights High is a highly controversial mockumentary that showcases 3 different over exaggerated characters. One of them is Jonah Takalua, a stereotypical Tongan delinquent. Many have praised his work, saying that it is a clever use of satire to convey important criticisms of today's society. However after learning about satire myself throughout this unit I have determined that Summer Heights High is an unsuitable and highly ineffective show for teaching satire in secondary school due to the high levels of crude language and stereotypical humour shown in Jonah that conceals the satirical techniques used. Jonah has been represented extremely ineffectively through the poor use of the satirical techniques of exaggerated caricature and ridicule which certainly have the potential to influence students negatively. Lilley’s social criticism of the view that all Polynesian students are seen as trouble makers, is lost by his overemphasis on the very behaviours he is satirising.

In Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut uses satire in the topics of war, aliens, fate and the reasons for life itself. In Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the author uses many literary devices to bring across his point including black humor, irony, wit and sarcasm. He mainly uses satire throughout the book. Satire is a literary device found in works of literature that uses irony and humor to mock social convention, another work of art, or anything its author thinks ridiculous to make a point.

In Sea Oak, George Saunders applies satire to examine social classes. Specifically, he utilizes the narrator’s aunt, Aunt Bernie, to explain a valuable lesson: one should appreciate what they have by making the most out of it. It is essential for us to acknowledge what we have, on the grounds that one day it might be gone. Inside Sea Oak, Aunt Bernie experiences two lives: a before life and an after-life.

Diseases cause greed and want for money in some characters, which has a huge impact on society. For example, in Year of Wonders, as the plague escalates around the village; Josiah Bont’s greed and want for money causes him to charge extortionate prices for the burial of dead bodies. His greed even once forces him to bury someone alive; as can be seen by Christopher Unwin, “not only tried to rob me of my life – he stole the very clothes I lay in”. Similarly, in

Molly Ivins once said, “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.” She has been shown to be correct in many works, including A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens uses his position as an influential writer in Victorian London to call for change and reformation. He mindfully mocks the workings and current events of Victorian London, and he uses satire to call certain situations to light so that they will never be repeated. This can be seen through scenes in A Tale of Two Cities, where Dickens mocks the London judicial system, the French nobility, and The French Republic which formed after the revolution.

“How to poison the earth” by Linnea Saukko can be seen in two different aspects. The first one would be by looking at it in a literal way, in which it will make it a very harsh, inhumane and cold text. On the other hand, it could be seen as a satire, sarcastic and ironic text in which Saukko expects to catch the reader’s attention. Saukko exaggerates the sarcasm, and satire in her writing in order to make the readers realize and understand the main purpose of her essay, which is to warn readers about threats to the future of our planet.

Being labeled a muckraker is a label I would not mind having. Without muckrakers how would we find out the whole truth about individuals and businesses, not just the stuff they tell us. Muckrakers find out information that is needed to be made public, but for whatever reason, is not told to the public. I support Mitford’s view that it is an honor to be called a muckraker.

Greed is perhaps one of the most destructive forces in this world, it breeds anger, hate, jealousy, and more. The novella “The Pearl” is based on how the finding of a pearl causes greed to be awakened in the hearts of people and cause them to commit evil. During the Novella, Steinbeck develops the theme that greed left unchecked can cause immoral behavior and that is show in the doctor, the attackers, and Kino. All of them are forced by greed to commit sins that they otherwise would not do.

During Russia’s transition to communism in the early 20th century, conflict and unease permeated every part of life. Nothing was stable and very little of what the Bolsheviks had fought for had come to fruition by the time the USSR disbanded in 1991. The “classless society”, which was to work together for the prosperity of everyone, never became a reality. In the end, the majority of Russia’s 20th century was an utter failure on a grand scale. However, there were many amazing products of the system do to the great importance of education in Russian culture. Priceless novels were written, timeless movies were made, and great scientific endeavors were realized despite the rigid control placed upon Russian persons by the government. In