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Satire is one of the key elements in any quality comical text. There are so many techniques involved in the broad spectrum of satire, including ridicule, irony and exaggeration, just to name a few. Satire (if understood) makes the text more enjoyable and worthwhile for the responder. This art of comicality has been lost through the years and it would benefit the audience to see a wider variety of texts using such a valuable perception on humanity. But there have been some excellent texts written and filmed that use this technique to its full extent. These include Unknown Citizen by W.H Auden and The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin, one of the greatest controversial films of its time. Satire adds to the enjoyment of many texts and without it our world would be monotonous and life wouldn’t be as fun had it not been for this great technique.
The Unknown Citizen by W.H Auden was a fantastic poem that uses ridicule to portray its point to the audience. The poem is about a man in society, overlooked and status deteriorated. He is unknown to the records except for his army tags, which were used to classify this admirable man in society. In this poem he is portrayed as a man who does everything required of him, he has a job, he is healthy and pays his dues. This poem attacks society’s generalisations of people who are ’good’ in society, who follow rules and obey the law. It attacks the thoughts and reactions society feels to these people and W.H Auden captures this essence of what society is actually like in the general aspect. This form of Satire is used in a less comical way in this text but still can be an essential part to the understanding and placement of crucial ideas that have been melded into this poem. But the ridicule technique can also be used in a far more comical sense, as seen in The Great Dictator by Charlie Chaplin. Set in the 1940’s it is a film that ridicules the Nazi Germany and Hitler to the finest point. Charlie Chaplin goes all out in this...