Yesterday's Satire And Its Relevance In Today's Wo

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Marcano Rivas, Alexandra Satire INGL 4019 Prof. Bothwell October 27, 2010 Yesterday’s Satire and its Relevance in Today’s World Once upon a time there was a society composed by men with different ideologies and ways to perceive life. Some of them managed to position themselves in a powerful condition, others were left behind in the race to power and commodities; this was the beginning of the separation of social and political classes. Those who were at the top of society (position defined by themselves) started giving value to the components of civilization, such as work, education, politics… human beings. Then, the condition of a person depended on banalities such as sex, family ranking, education, instead of recognizing the value of humans just because their people, not animals or objects. Now, society was corrupted, leaded by immorality and the absence of common sense and valorization of life; it was the definition of absurdity. This absurdity opened a new window of literature bravery were writers could lose their minds away in the mockery and protest to their present, seeking for a change. Satire was their weapon, a way of delivering a message using laughter, irony, contempt, tools that would assure the receiving of the message (Gordon, The Literary Encyclopedia). The pioneers of satire created a new way (a different way) of indentifying what was relevant in their period and invented a mode to oppose to the current of events that were dragging their society to catastrophe. What they didn’t suspect at that moment was that the relevance of their smart and sneaky way of portraying their present created an evolutionary path to the future (our present). The social problems that affected the satirist from several centuries ago, like war, immorality and corruption, still exist in our modern times, authorizing the present writers to use the weapon that was so
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