Satire Examples in Literature and Movies (Essay Sample)

While the world may occasionally erupt with violence and rancor, one powerful tool for lasting social change remains constant: the well chosen word. Skillful writers and speakers can shine the light of language on injustice, corruption, and hypocrisy. Yet, while all good writing can inspire change, the effectiveness of satire is unique. Blending humor with societal critique, satire lets us laugh at our faults while still encouraging us to amend them. Indeed, satire has been used throughout the centuries to highlight follies with humor and transform society peacefully. From Chaucer to Wall-E, satirical authors challenge society through language and literature to examine and correct personal and societal faults.

In The Prologue from The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer we meet many people from all different aspects of life. All the characters are shown to us in a satires way. He does this so you are able to see what is wrong with the world at that time. For example if you look at the Manciple, Chaucer hints to the possibility that he could be working in a better job. You can see this in line 597 “Fit to be stewards in land and rents and game”. This shows you that he loves his job and the people he works for and with. Lastly, the main reason I am so interested in the character is because he is illiterate but when it comes to the market and how to get the best deal, he is smarter than most of the College professors. Chaucer makes this very appreciative in lines 592- 596 “That an illiterate fellow can outpace / The wisdom of a heap of learned men? / His masters— he had more than thirty than— All versed in the abstrusest legal knowledge,/ could have produced a dozen from their College”. This makes you think that he is almost made for his job and is the best potable person for it. It shows how some people look down on people who are less educated even though they do their job perfectly. You see this in how all the college professors try his job and they think it would be easy but all fail at it.     

Then a few hundred years later you can see that people are still using satire to show what is wrong with society. Lizzy, from Pride and Prejudice, has many good qualities, but the director doesn’t shy away from showing her bad qualities. On many occasions she judges people and doesn't give them another chance to prove themselves or change her opinion of them. This leads her to push Mr. Darcy away and rejected his proposal because he was rude when they mant. Through the movie she works on her problems, as Darcy does his and they end up marrying each other. Jane Austin is trying to show us by using satire, how people in that society are Juget and how it takes a lot to get them to change their options.

Even today people are using satire. One of the best examples of modern satire in my opinion is from the movie Wall-E. Wall-E is a kids movie about a robot who has to clean up the world because of human pollution. Through the coerces of the movie we see how dirty and how lazy people have become. The human population had to be sent up to a place in space because of how bad the earth has become. Wall-E went up to the place in space where the humans are to save his robot friend from the humans. There he sees how lazy people have become. All the people do is sit in a chair and stare at their phone and robots do everything for them. They can’t even get out of their chairs because they are so fat. Wall-E is using satire to show how lazy people have become since they have gotten electronics and how they don’t try to fix anything till it affects them personally. This is supposed to criticas people about their laziness and how they don’t care about the world.

All in all satire has been around for years. We have looked at three different examples from three different time periods that show great examples of satire. This shows that satire has and is still being used to criticize society.