A Modest Proposal Rhetorical Analysis

Take a little bit of salt, pepper, and lemon juice, set the oven to 350 degrees, and cook for 4 hours. This is a perfect recipe for those cold winter nights, or busy hours at a tavern. Though, what is this recipe for? It’s for the babies of Dublin. Not for them to eat, for them to be eaten. Jonathan swift, the author of “A Modest Proposal” had a purpose when it came to the writing of this satirical piece, and that purpose was to raise awareness about Ireland’s poor estate. But, he needed a way to do this, and that way had to be interesting enough to catch the attention of other people. Through the use of satire, metaphors, and other literally devices, Swift informs the public about the famine and poverty that is spreading all over Dublin.

“Swift argues for the potential of Ireland but says that poverty remains so ingrained that realizing this potential is impossible without serious reform” this shows how serious the poverty was in Ireland. In 1720, the sea bubble burst. The sea bubble was a company who bought the debt from England and then attempted to sell the debt in the forms of stocks. Sadly, the amount of money that a share was worth kept going down to the point where everybody who invested in this whole ordeal lost all of their money and ruined Ireland’s

Many laws were put into place to make sure that the protestant religion dominated all of Ireland. Many of the conditions were very harsh, the catholic citizens of Ireland were not allowed to vote, become lawyers or members of the armed forces” these laws were put in place to strip the catholic Irish men of any power. The penal laws were very successful in eliminating Catholics in Ireland and almost forcing the people to convert to protestant faith. While there were many others harsh consequences of being catholic in Ireland, if you decided to turn to protestant faith you would get power back. For example, if the oldest son of the family converted to protestant, he would get all of the land that was taken from him back. There was also a very large gap between the rich and the poor in Ireland. In “A Modest proposal” Jonathan swift writes about how young children can benefit those of the higher class. He establishes this predator prey relationship between the rich and the poor, the poor being the prey and the rich being the predator. This social gap is very crucial when it came to the writing of “A Modest Proposal” Swift used metaphors to compare them to animals, basically putting the poor on the bottom of the social food