What Is Moral Satire In Hubert Selby's Last Exit To Brooklyn

Knowing the genre of a novel is believed to be the key essential on understanding what the author is truly striving to portray. For Hubert Selby’s novel, Last Exit to Brooklyn, people often debate on what the genre he was wanting to express. This resulted on two options, Naturalism and Moral Satire. With complete readings and careful analysis, the best genre that fits the novel is Moral Satire. The characters in this book face exaggerated situations that bash the main issue about the life of slums in the 1950s. In addition, their actions are also very emphasized to the point where it doesn’t seem logical nor have any moral purpose. Lastly, it gives the reader a realization check on the violence and horror of our society that tend to look away

In fact, an article named, Beyond Revulsion, states that the individuals of the book “exist in violence - the outer violence of gratuitous cruelty and destruction… of terror, hate and oppressive, senseless frustration. Their language is the language of the gutter” (Fremont-Smith). Upon further analysis of Last Exit to Brooklyn, you will never come across a scene where Selby mentioned anything good that has happened in each of the character’s lives. Selby focused on specific scenes that showed the most gruesome effects in each character’s actions and decisions. In reality, people always chose to close our eyes, ears and run away when we even sense some type of fear. They go for the easy route in life where there is nothing but happiness; however, they get so far into it that you will end up losing track on the true reality of your

According to Donald Pizer’s American Literary Realism, he explains that “naturalistic novel was deterministic in nature. The fate of any specific individual was determined by conditions beyond his or her control.” Since the novel was taken place in the 1950s, where World War II just ended, the streets of Brooklyn wasn’t too favorable and most of the population were stuck in poverty. Back then, people shame at anyone who looks different in any particular way, and rules were rarely enforced which resulted in many violence that were just brushed off. This type of environment could be reasoned that the character’s choices were influenced by outside forces. This type of genre could only mean that the characters didn’t have any control in their lives and that they solely relied on the people around them to help them make decisions. Although this could be a possibility, the characters in the story like Tralala and Georgette definitely did not rely on the people around them to survive. No matter what kind of help came their way, they chose to take the different route. They both had full control over their lives and was not influenced by their surroundings whatsoever. Since nature did not determine how they lived their lives, Last Exit to Brooklyn is not really considered a style of