Satire Naked

Upon being asked what satire was, I found myself dumbfounded, like when someone is asked what umami is, and the only thing they can say is "I know it when I taste it." Theres no denying it, satire is quite complex and yet when in direct contact with it, like in the book Candide, theres no escape to it.
There are several components to Satire:
Hyperbole
Irony
Absurdity
And who it is trageting.

Candide's name eludes irony. He is as his name indicates, innocent and naive.
Nevertheless, the situations he is wrapped in are none but disgraceful.
The thing in the book that is completely ironic and borders ridicule is Dr. Pangloss's philisophy that everything happens for the best. This incurable optimism gives a reason for everything being, like if there wasn't an unknown STD "we would have neither chocolate nor cochineal" (pg. 30). Or that "private misfortunes contribute to the general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are, the more we find that all is well." (pg.31)
Fallatic arguments like these abound in the book, and Candide runs his life by them, accepting his miserable fate, and justifying his suffering with a positive encounter.

Voltaire's wit is omnipresent, I laughed all the way through my reading, and now I wonder, what makes it funny. Hyperbole, irony, and absurdity make us laugh, but really, what makes the book genuinly funny, is us imagining Voltaire writing the book with someone or something in mind, therefore what we are truly laughing at is Voltaire's target. As the book is satire, we know it is mocking reality. And so the thought that the irony, hyperbole, and ridicule in the book are not that ficticious provokes a strange feeling of disgust and amusement.

As indicated in the introduction, Voltaire was targeting suffering (among other things) and the perversion of an optimistic philosphy associated with philosophers of his time like Leibnz, Shaftesbury, and Christian Wolf.
Voltaire says in the introduction, "If all is for the best is explained in absolute sense, without offering hope for the future, it is only an insult added to the miseries we endure."

Satire can be funny, but we must not ignore the serious matters that hide behind entretaining wit. Candide is quite sad, if seen from a different point of view. After all earthquakes, wars, rape, famine, corruption and ingenuity are all real.