This paper explains that satire is a device that writers utilize to comment of the state of the human condition. The author
points out that the character Orgon, in Jean Baptiste Moliere's play Tartuffe, illustrates man's gullibility; Swift, in his essay "A Modest Proposal", emphasizes how man has become
insensitive to his fellow man by proposing a logical argument and Voltaire in "Candide" demonstrates the folly of
philosophy. The paper states that each author shows how the readers can learn from their behavior if they stop being serious long enough to lighten up and learn to laugh.