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Personification
Definition of Satire
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of satire, but satirists can take... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians, are often the subject of... read full definition
Satire is the use of humor, irony, sarcasm, or ridicule to criticize something or someone. Public figures, such as politicians... read full definition
Key Examples in Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Satire
Explanation and Analysis—The Dears:
During a pointed moment of reflection, Miranda adopts the exaggerated voice of a Red Cross volunteer to ridicule the shallow performance of wartime femininity expected of women like herself. Using verbal irony and satire, she describes her own role at dances for enlisted men in a voice dripping with sarcasm:
It must be frightfully hard on them, the dears, to be floored like this when they’re all crazy to get overseas and into the trenches as quickly as possible….I didn’t know there were so many good-looking men in this country, good heavens, I said, where do they come from?…the way I feel about it is this, we must do everything we can to make them contented, but I draw the line at talking to them. I told the chaperons at those dances for enlisted men, I’ll dance with them, every dumbbell who asks me, but I will NOT talk to them, I said, even if there is a war.
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Explanation and Analysis—In Flanders Fields:
Porter draws attention to the numbing effect of patriotic propaganda through a blend of literary allusion and satirical mimicry. During a public performance laden with wartime clichés, Adam and Miranda exchange a knowing aside as the speaker crescendos:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘In Flanders Field the poppies grow, Between the crosses row on row’—‘He’s getting into the home stretch,’ whispered Adam—atrocities, innocent babes hoisted on Boche bayonets—your child and my child—if our children are spared these things, then let us say with all reverence that these dead have not died in vain—the war, the war, the WAR to end WAR, war for Democracy, for humanity, a safe world forever and ever—and to prove our faith in Democracy to each other, and to the world, let everybody get together and buy Liberty Bonds.
Related Themes:
