Irony is a beautiful technique exercised to convey a message or call a certain group of people to action. This rhetorical skill is artfully used by Jonathan Swift in his pamphlet “A Modest Proposal.” The main argument for this mordantly ironic essay is to capture the attention of a disconnected and indifferent audience. Swift makes his point by stringing together a dreadfully twisted set of morally untenable positions in order to cast blame and aspersions on his intended audience. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” employs despicably vivid satire to call for change in a world of abuse and misfortune.
The entire proposal stands as a satire in itself; an analogy paralleling the tyrannical attitude of the British toward their Irish counterparts and the use of babies as an economic commodity. In short, Swift suggests that Irish parents are owned by the British, and babies are property of their parents, therefore, England has a right to consume the Irish babies. Swift uses this syllogism to show the British that their despotic reign in Ireland has left the miserable nation in poverty and disarray. Historically, it has been evidenced that England first colonized Ireland for security against, at that time, the Irish barbarians that inhabited the land. Thus, England continues to justify their power over Ireland as “restraining the temptation to consume among England's enemies” (Mahoney). Along with “the assurance of English military power to defend the colony from threat,” the degree of “English political and economic control that the colonists deeply resented,” grew exponentially into a full blown autocracy over Ireland (Mahoney). Swift writes, “Some persons of a desponding nature are in great concern.” This is not simply a concern ...
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Lockwood, Thomas. "Swift's Modest Proposal: An Interpretation." Papers on Language and Literature 10.3 (Summer 1974): 254-267. Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 101. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sep. 2011.
Mahoney, Robert. "Swift's Modest Proposal and the Rhetoric of Irish Colonial Consumption." 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era. Ed. Kevin L. Cope, Laura Morrow, and Anna Battigelli. Vol. 4. New York: AMS Press, 1998. 205-214. Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 101. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sep. 2011.
Swift, Jonathan. A Modest Proposal. Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. 2003-2010. Web. 6 June 2010.
The essay “A Modest Proposal” written by Johnathan Swift takes a satirical view on how to solve the starvation issue in Ireland. Swift suggests an obviously satirical solution to eating children around the age of one. He used irony, ambiguity, and ethos to emphasize the satirical nature of the essay and present a captivating idea to the audience. Swift used irony throughout the essay, beginning with the title, “A Modest Proposal”. The irony of the title gives the audience a false idea of what the essay will be, later on he gives his argument and the title serves as an ironic statement.
In eighteenth century Ireland, the nation was in a famine and an epidemic of poverty due to the high prices of land and food. Jonathan Swift saw a problem, so h wrote and spread what we call today, A Modest Proposal. Swift’s essay is satirical. He exaggerates and gives inaccurate statistics to deliver a thesis that runs deeper than the explicit one about eating babies. While much of the essay seems to imply that Swift’s persona eats babies, there are some instances where Jonathan hints at the ironic themes of the writing.
In the time frame that Swifts’ A Modest Proposal was written Ireland was going through political, economic, and religious struggles. In 1729 England had contrived, with the help of Irish venality, to wreck Ireland’s merchant marine, agriculture, and wool industry. Prostitutes in Swift’s paper are having kids like senseless people, but yet they can’t afford to feed them. Jonathan Swift proposes that his people should sell the babies and eat them. He thinks this would help solve the problem of over population. Swift tried to give his people pamphlets on how to fix the problem that was plaguing their country, but they ignored them. Swift says “These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants.”(1) Swift proposes that the mothers sell the babies for 8 shillings; the rich would find the child to be a delicacy and the extra money would go to the landlord. So everyone would benefit from this proposal. He does this as a way of making his people aware of what is going on in their
Through the creation of a pompous, highly educated and sophisticated proposer, in Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, the targeted audience, the absentee landlords and parliament of England, and the reader naturally identify with the proposer. The proposer’s rigorous logic, serious and cynical tone deduces the ghastly proposition of cannibalism for economic, political, moral, and nationalistic gain. However, through the targeted audience’s identification with the proposer, Swift is able to propose the ironic humanity of his satirical proposal and thus indict colonial landlordism in Ireland and in Enlightenment ideals. Swift’s proposer’s tone is used for both the ostensible and actual purpose of the proposal; through the adherence to the ideals of the Enlightenment, which would be that of the targeted audience, Swift is able to critique the ideology of logic and rationality as fundamental to morality in the proposal.
People are defensive about what they believe in. No matter how open-minded they claim to be or how little support they actually have, they will still cling to their beliefs. This makes it hard to discuss controversial topics, but one solution to this issue is satire. Satire uses absurdities and humor to disarm people, making them more open to the item being discussed. Although this practice was fairly common in the past, it has become exceeding abundant in our modern day, with satirical shows like The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, and The Colbert Report.
The A Modest Proposal essay written by Jonathan Swift, has made a lot of people shocked and appalled upon reading his essay. One of the main reasons why some might be appalled upon reading Jonathan Swift's essay includes his solution to preventing the poor children of Ireland from being a burden to their mothers and fathers and making beneficial to the for everyone. One of the solutions that Jonathan Swift suggests includes making the children of the poor families into foods. Jonathan Swift suggests stewing, roasting, baking, or
Effectively ushering change in society or pointing out faults that have existed and gone unnoticed can be a daunting task for any social commentator. Often, blandly protesting grievances or concerns can fall upon deaf ears and change can be slow or non-existent. However, Jonathan Swift in his pamphlet A Modest Proposal, uses clever, targeted, and ironic criticism to bring the social state of Ireland to the attention of indolent aristocrats. He accomplishes such criticism through satire, specifically Juvenalian satire. Swift’s A Modest Proposal stands as an example of the type of satire that plays upon the audience’s emotion by creating anger concerning the indifference of the voice created. He complements such criticism with sophisticated, clever language which may be mistaken for the more docile Horatian satire. Yet, this urbane voice, coupled with irony and the substance of the proposals accentuates Swift’s motive to use anger as a force for action. Through his absurd/humorous proposals, stinging irony, and use of voice, Swift effectively portrays A Modest Proposal as a Juvenalian satire designed to stir emotions concerning the social state of Ireland.
Throughout history, satire has been used to mock people or things in order to have them improve. Over time, it has been in many different ways: through books, plays, tv shows, movies, essays and more. During the eighteenth century, Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal”, an essay that suggests that selling babies to be eaten would be the solution to all of Ireland’s problems. More recently, an episode of South Park titled, “Member Berries”, was released, and it is about sitting or kneeling during the national anthem, internet trolling, and the most recent presidential election. “A Modest Proposal” and “Member Berries” are both satirical works, and they both show this through their ridiculous exaggerations and political nature.
In Jonathan Swift’s satire, “A Modest Proposal”, Swift writes about the starving people of Ireland in the early 1700’s. He makes a wild and absurd proposal to help remedy the problems of overpopulation and poverty. Swift wants to make a political statement by using the “children” as satire to grasp the attention of the audience - the English people, the Irish politicians and the rich – and make them aware of the political, moral, and social problems. In “A Modest Proposal”, Swift’s arguments are presented effectively by using pathos (emotional appeal), ethos (ethics and values), and logos (logic reasoning and facts).
The idea of eating all the youth in the country is obviously self-defeating and is not being seriously suggested by the writer. He is simply trying to show how desperate the lower class is in Ireland. Swift introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting, taxing absentee landlords, of encouraging the domestic economy by buying Irish goods, of discouraging pride, vanity, idleness, by dismissing them in his essay by saying that they are impractical. However, these reforms greatly differ from his ?modest proposal? because instead of the poor sacrificing their children, it would involve the rich sacrificing some of their luxuries. He is trying to point out the fact that reforms that would be practical and beneficial to the people of Ireland are being overlooked for the convenience of the rich.
America today is full of contradicting and often harsh criticisms of society, groups of people, trends, the media, and more. But the most accessible form of criticism is satire, which takes the form of music, movies, and television shows to name a few. Satire is meant to be humorous, which is why it is most seen in entertainment. A classic example of satire is Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” poem in which he satirizes people who have no empathy for the poor. In a similar fashion, popular television show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia centers around and satirizes an ensemble of characters whose personalities reflect many stereotypical American people and the views that they hold.
This essay will have no value unless the reader understands that Swift has written this essay as a satire, humor that shows the weakness or bad qualities of a person, government, or society (Satire). Even the title A Modest Proposal is satirical. Swift proposes using children simply as a source of meat, and outrageous thought, but calls his propo...
He wrote his mock proposal as a policy “for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public” (Swift 1199). Swift builds a logical argument in favor of essentially treating human children as livestock to sell for meat and hides (Swift 1201). “A Modest Proposal” is rife with irony, but Swift carries a serious tone from beginning to end. He never breaks character, and if unaware that this is a satiric piece, leaves the reader questioning if the author is legitimately proposing his preposterous plan. The proposed solution to raise infants for slaughter was not genuine, but Swift was highlighting an authentic and pervasive social issue. He claimed that the absentee landowners “have already devoured most of the parents” (Swift 1201) and that he “could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation” (Swift 1205). Swift’s message was that England was abusing the Irish people and their resources to the point where millions were left impoverished, begging, and suffering with few means to survive. The author sardonically proposes authentic solutions in stark contrast to cannibalism, but in tracts “printed during his lifetime the various proposals were italicized to indicate Swift’s support for them” (Swift 1204). Among these solutions are taxing absentee
In “A Modest Proposal” several forms of satire are demonstrated throughout the story. Satire is defined as the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose or criticize people’s stupidity or vices. (Google) In "A Modest Proposal" Swift uses parody which is a form of satire. Parody is primarily making fun of something to create a humorous feel for it. In “A Modest Proposal,” Swift uses parody to make fun of the people and children of Ireland, expressing the children as delicious food to be eaten.
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own” (Swift). Such beholders, as Jonathan Swift astutely emphasizes, are intended, through guidance of satiric narrative, to recognize social or political plights. In some satires, as in Swift’s own A Modest Proposal, the use of absurd, blatant exaggeration is intended to capture an indolent audience’s attention regarding the social state of the poor. Yet even in such a direct satire, there exists another layer of meaning. In regards to A Modest Proposal, the interchange between the voice of the proposer and Swift’s voice introduces another medium of criticism, as well as the opportunity for readers to reflect on how well they may fit the proposer’s persona. In such as case, the satire exists on multiple levels of meaning—not only offering conclusions about moral problems, but also allowing the audience to an interpretation of their place among the criticism.