A Modest ProposalJonathan Swift
A calm economic case for eating children.
The speaker's reasonableness is the attack. Swift never breaks character, which is why the horror keeps escalating.
← The devices guide
Satire
Mockery with a purpose: the work exposes a vice or folly by making it ridiculous. Satire always has a target outside the text, and usually a preferred alternative it does not state.
How to spot it
Ask who is being laughed at — a character, the narrator, or you. If the narrator is also a fool, the satire is aimed at the reader.
Why writers use it
Because ridicule can go where argument cannot, and because laughter is hard to arrest.
In the texts
Vanity FairWilliam Makepeace Thackeray
A narrator who keeps reminding you these are puppets.
The satire includes its own author, which is why it never feels self-righteous.
Animal FarmGeorge Orwell
The commandments edited overnight.
The joke is the technique: power changes the record, not the principle, and everyone agrees to misremember.
Common misread
Satire is not simply criticism. It needs a form — exaggeration, parody, irony — that makes the audience complicit in the joke.