Santa Sand Diaries Rhetorical Analysis

1. Irony as we talked about in class is considered to be intellectual or a sort of dry humor. It also has a double meaning, where you say one thing but the opposite meaning is implied. For example, in the reading “SantaLand Diaries” David and another elf realized that Santa is an anagram of Satan. So they would substitute the word for Santa by using Satan in front of customers. Some examples “Don’t forget to thank Satan for the baby Alive he gave you last year”. Even though they used the name Satan it was actually implied to be for Santa.
Satire is the use of humor to overly exaggerate the critical purpose and to also mock other’s weaknesses. An example of satire is from the reading “SantaLand Diaries” during this scene a parent was telling their child to start behaving if not Santa would bring him coal. She then turns to David to include him in the

True humor is supposed to be used as way to make people look at situation from a different perspective and to laugh about it. An example of this is from the reading “SantaLand Diaries” where David realized that life was not going as expected. He is thirty –three years old and applying for an elf job. He tries to imagine a whole new world where he is able succeed and accomplish his dreams within three weeks of being in New York. In the reading he says “I’m trying to look on the bright side” he is using this imaginative world to help him get through a really tough time within his life. This is an example of changing the situation.

B. Based on Critchley’s article humor functions as anti-depressant by allowing the cognitive relation to, oneself and the world. “Humor has the same formal structure as depression but it’s an anti-depressant”. It’s a way to suppress depression by being able to find positive functions for the superego.

Humor relates to the Super-Ego through the acknowledgment of oneself being ridiculous. “Superego has gone under ‘maturation’ maturity that comes from learning to laugh at