Satire Of A Story example essay topic

Satire Comparison By: Zach Dees The "Rape of the Lock" and "Gulliver's Travels" is two stories that were written long ago, both having some similarities and differences. Overall I believe that these two stories are completely different due to the fact that one is a lot more fictional than the other, and one is written in poem form. So it is somewhat difficult to find similarities. But, nevertheless I will present the differences and similarities in these two stories and I will be talking about the theme, setting and word choice. In my opinion I did not like either of these stores.

But if I had to pick to one I liked best it would be "Gulliver's Travels". It did not use the big, hard to understand, Old English words nor was it written in poem form. It was simply a fictional story about fictional feats where the lesson learned is also a lesson we can learn in today's society. It seemed that in the Rape of the Lock, Pope used very big and confusing words to describe certain emotions and situations that I did not understand.

If I am going to understand the satire of a story I must know what the words mean and Pope made the satire in this story hard to understand unless I was to have a dictionary beside me. Some of the context was the same but very little of it was. Both stories were written in the 1700's and only 14 years apart. I think Pope might have been more intellectual but his imagination can't top Swifts'. Nor did Pope make satire as easy to understand as Swift.

It is hard to find two stories like this that have the same setting. In "Gulliver's Travels" the main character is washed upon a fictional island full of people who are 6 inches tall. He eventually makes a compromise with these people, but after a while he starts getting somewhat arrogant and cocky. This may symbolize a country or maybe type of government when Swift is trying to use satire. It doesn't make much sense to me but it is imaginary and Swift still finds good ways to show satire bye poking fun at government, countries and political systems. In 1712 "the rape of the Lock" was written and the only likenesses I can find in these two stories setting is the time frame the two stories were written.

They are only fourteen years apart and the culture is in that time was a lot alike. One story is being told by a passionate poet who seems to have a lot of sense. The other coming from a more comical imaginary type writer. But people, culture and the way people viewed things were similar in these two stories. What I took from the theme of "Gulliver's Travels" was there will always be someone bigger and better to come along. No matter how big or good you are there will always be someone bigger and better than you.

The theme I pulled from "The Rape of the Lock" was "you don't know what you got until it is gone". I believe Pope was making fun of women and how they stress over every little detail about themselves. Vanity is defiantly in women and this story shows it comically if you can understand the choice of words Pope used. Gulliver is the biggest and most dominant person around until he ended up on a new island where he was the smallest and weakest. That's when he realized just how lucky he was to be on the island full of little people, but it is too late.

Therefore, "you don't know what you got until it's gone". The two of these stories are completely different I think. I personally liked "Gulliver's Travels" because I could understand it a lot better and it held my attention better as well. The satire is heavily used in the both of these stories. In "Gulliver's Travels" Swift was poking fun at the different types of government and how ridiculous some of them are. In "The Rape of the Lock" Pope was making fun of women, their friends, and the vanity in society at that particular time.

For someone to be really interested in both of these stories they first must recognize the use of satire and its definition.