In satire, a writer uses humor, exaggeration, or ridicule to poke fun at a current social or political practice.
Scholars have long debated the serious and/or satirical qualities of More's Utopia. However, one area that it reliably satirizes (or pokes fun at) is the truthfulness of narratives of far-away places. In More's time, explorations of the New World were beginning to get underway, and More's work calls into question some of the more fanciful accounts of these newly discovered lands.
More satirizes the reliance on second-hand accounts by making his story a derivative account, rather than an eyewitness account. The narrative comes to the reader through an account provided to Thomas More by the dubious Raphael Hythloday, whose name can be translated as "nonsense peddler." We are, therefore, required from the start to question just how much we can rely on this account.
"Fake news," likewise, is now...
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much satirized by commentators in our society. In a culture where information disseminates very quickly through social media and is often derivative, much of what is taken for "truth" may be entirely fabricated. We too are called upon to question the reliability of what we read or hear.
One contemporary example that might be said to define the satire in Moore's Utopia (satire which is still debated and considered "enigmatic" today) is the rash of reality shows that abound. I take the type of reality show that sends people to the wilderness to survive, not in accord with each other, but in spite of and at odds with each other. As Moore writes in Utopia:
that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; as if there were no difference to be made between the killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion.
These reality shows have the same erroneous and satirically critical premise as they pose the value of survival at any cost against the value of human survival at all cost (even the cost of cooperation). Moore pointed out the imbalance in what is valued and how and our reality shows point out the imbalance in what we value and how we value it.