Barbara Ehrenreich is a writer who decided to embark on the challenge of living the life that someone lives working a low wage job. To do this, she traveled to Florida, Maine and Minnesota. She was supposed to stay at each location for a month. She began her work in Florida because it was close to home.
In Los Angeles, there is a well known stormed called the Santa Ana that often occurs during the colder months. Joan Didion writes an essay that discusses what the storm is and how it affects the Los Angelenos. Although primarily writing for everyone’s knowledge, being she is a fellow citizen, she directs her thoughts towards Los Angeles’ people She gains a connection with her audience and their emotions. After doing this she selects specific words to help enhance the intensity of the storm. She also uses long sentences to further describe the intensity of the storm through her writing techniques, but towards the end of the essay she uses short sentences to provide information and to show she is knowledgeable to the audience .
Slanted Perspectives Authors of a long-form piece of journalism, while unable to completely remove bias, can substantially minimise it by employing facts, direct quotations, and a disciplined use (or disuse) of hyperbolic and implicative language. In Johann Hari’s “The Hunting of Billie Holiday,” Hari depicts a relatively unbiased version of the events surrounding the Federal Bureau of Narcotics’ pursuit of the famous African-American singer, Billie Holiday. The article frequently references specific events and individuals in its account and employs frequent use of direct quotations from primary sources such as FBN internal memos and New York Times articles (Hari, Politico). One particularly striking example is a quotation from George White,
She describes journalism as “the effort to achieve illuminating candor in print and to strip away cant” (lines 27-28). By portraying her audience in such a respected light and also by using the exact and scholastic words that are likely more favorable to the audience, Luce shows a personal acknowledgement and appreciation of who she is speaking to. “No audience knows better than an audience of journalists that the pursuit of the truth, and the articulation of it, is the most delicate, hazardous, exacting, and inexact of tasks. Consequently, no audience is more forgiving (I hope) to the speaker who fails or stumbles in his own pursuit of it” (lines 41-47). By comparing herself to the very thing is criticizing, she demonstrates a humility that only builds her ethos.
As time goes by and you realize there is no going back, it gets harder and harder to remember what came before. This detachment is a reality that people who live a public lifestyle face. This detachment is what prompted Inez Victor to tell a reporter that memory is the major cost of public life in Joan Didion’s Democracy (Democracy). Through stories within Democracy and
Satire is used by many famous writers to create humor and to criticize people’s unwise, and senseless actions. As George Orwell once said, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." (Orwell, 1945). People will always be greedy and think they are smarter than others but this is untrue. The one who thinks he is smarter or better than the other will always end up losing in life.
In Willa Cather’s essay she unfolds Sarah Jewett’s ability to express her feeling for writing through her diction to form art. In Sarah Jewett’s novel, her feeling for writing is shown through her main character who came to New England to write her own novel. Jewett shows the struggles she feels when writing her own novels through her character. In one of the passages she writes, “Literary employments are so vexed and uncertainties at best and and it was not until the voice of conscience sounded louder in my ears than the sea on the nearest pebble beach that I said unkind words of withdrawal to Mrs. Todd”(18). Miss.
The definition of satire is a work that ridicules its subjects through the use of four techniques such as exaggeration, reversal, incongruity, and parody in order to make a comment or criticism about it. The book Cat’s Cradle is a great example of satire being portrayed. In Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, he creates his own religion “Bokononism” to satirize all of the other religions that are in the world. Bokononism is made from and built on lies (foma).
Satire: 16 & Pregnant “Hi, I’m Betty and I’m from Jefftown, West Carolina. I live at home with my grandparents because my parents we’re too young to take care of me. I spend my day’s at home watching t.v., cooking, and lurking on social media. My boyfriend and I just recently broke up. But never mind that, I have other things to be worrying about because I’m pregnant.”
In contrast to the explicit success of the eighties and early nineties, Nirvana and the musical evolvement/birth of grunge sent a wakeup call to the youth which sent a large majority of them into an attitude for the rest of the decade which screamed ‘apathetic’. Indifferent, detached and misanthropic, Daria embodied the very essence of smug unpleasantness. This was a show which trusted its audience to be intelligent enough to get the jokes which the characters made. This stands in slight contrast against the ‘polished’ MTV of today. When MTV decided to produce a show based on one of the characters from ‘Beavis and Butthead’ with two writers from the said television show, they decided collectively that instead of repeating the same formula
Voltaire’s Candide takes us through the life and development of Candide, the protagonist. Throughout his adventures, he witnesses many travesties and sufferings. Like many Enlightenment philosophers, Pangloss, Candide’s tutor, is an optimist; this philosophy was adopted by many to help mask the horrors of the eightieth century. Pangloss teaches Candide that everything happens for a reason. Voltaire uses satire, irony and extreme exaggerations to poke fun at many aspects; such as optimism, religion, corruption, and social structures within Europe.
According to dictionary.com, satire refers to “the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.” (Dictionary.com) During the enlightenment period when Voltaire wrote Candide, communicating one’s displeasure with social and political issues was not acceptable and those who did were often looked down upon. By using satire, Voltaire is able to exaggerate his feelings while at the same time mocking social norms and those in power. Voltaire uses satire in Candide to communicate his opinions on several topics, which include, suicide, religion, sex, and the philosophy of optimism to name a few.
Her figurative language directs the audience not only to see the images of what she was observing, but also to fill our ears with the elaborate sounds. She brings her journal to life by using figurative language to carefully describe her emotional feelings. "Pay my respect”, “black coats”, “little cemetery", "unbelievable". Her description goes as follows; the sound of the construction site, the moist air of March, the touch of the aluminum being pressed, the taste of pastrami sandwiches being made and the sight of Ground Zero filled with its solemn visitors.
One of the most valuable aspects of personality is humor – we value one’s sense of humor and make friends often based on finding certain things funny. But how and why do we consider things to be funny at all? Human beings have strived to uncover fundamental truths about human nature for centuries – even millennia – but humor itself is still yet to be pinpointed. Henri Bergson is only one of many who has attempted this feat, and his essay Laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic from 1911 breaks down comedy into what he believes to be its essential forms and origins. While Bergson makes many valid points, Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times that was brought to screens only twenty years later seems to contradict many of Bergson’s theories, while Bergson seems to contradict even himself over the course of his essay.
Satire is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. A literary work in which human foolishness or vice is attacked through irony, derision, or wit. Mockery is teasing and contemptuous language or behavior directed at a particular person or thing. Also the behavior or speech that makes fun of someone or something in a hurtful way. “The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope and “My Satirical Self” by Wyatt Mason from The New York times are both about satire and mockery.
