Today’s world is abundant with satire, lodged into mainstream culture and media. Satirists manipulate devices such as irony and hyperbole to serve as a foundation for exposing and criticizing. Voltaire’s Candide and Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities are examples of quality literary works that invokes thoughtful laughter through the use of satire.
Voltaire’s Candide is a great satire novel that aims at many controversial social and political issues of the 17th and 18th century. Voltaire use of literary elements such as exaggeration, through religion, class, and politics undermines Voltaire’s purpose. A purpose not to discredit anyone’s practices, but to point out the absurdity in them.
Voltaire utilizes hyperbole throughout the novel. Becoming
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Published in 1987, hitting emotions that we reach to overcome one day. Throughout the work Wolfe utilizes hyperbole, sarcasm, and stereotypes to dissect the rich and “the …show more content…
No worries of sighting blacks. No worries about being robbed. No worries of unhappiness. No worries of bad attention. So why wasn't Sherman McCoy happy? He was rich goddamit! The “Master of the Universe”, a family man, a gambler. Wolfe demonstrates that even with all, there isn't happiness nor friends. Where were Sherman friends when he lost it all? Who had the hotshot’s back?
The help believes this murder is an attempt to murder them. Always treated less than human beings, this was their check. No jury from the Bronx would believe this was self-defense because no one would want to. The poor were also influenced by Reverend Bacon, a black religious. His influence is so great over the community that he constantly gets support.
Voltaire’s took use of literary elements to identify social and political problems. His satirical exaggeration and ridiculous events served to show the inconsistencies in power, politics, and religion. The inconsistencies still existent today. Wolfe's makes use of satirizing these stereotypes. He exaggerates them to the point that it hilariously scary. Scary because how true they are. He utilizes the perceptions of foreigners on ongoing race relations within cities. Bonfire of the Vanities possesses realism, not because of the racial firestorm but the stereotypes. Stereotypes that makes us cross the street once seeing a black man. Well not us.