A Modest Proposal Rhetorical Analysis

After reading “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, I’ve noticed that the writing can be a little complicated at first and may require you to reread and actually pick apart the sentences to try and make sense of what Swift is trying to get across. The writer Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” in 1729, which was the same time when the Irish was plagued with three years of a drought and a potato famine that had left many starving and looking for ways to keep food, even very small amounts in their stomachs (630). Swift saw what the famine was doing to the people and the chaos that had followed. He then decided to write “A Modest Proposal,” which consisted of solutions, both ridiculous and serious on how to end the starvation of thousands.

Swift decided to write “A Modest Proposal” because he hated the inhumanity he had witnessed within the Irish (630). He was trying to get his point across by not being serious, but by offering outrageous solutions to such a serious problem. His first solution that he said would help end the hunger of thousands by having the people kill of the children and eat them (631-632). Swift suggested that the children were a grievance and only got in the way, he argued that there were too many kids running around and wreaking havoc as he had said there was not enough to be able to support these kids and it’d be easier for the adults to kill them and eat them so they can live instead (633).
Although Swift wasn’t actually considering killing off kids and eating them, many people who read his essay took it seriously.

Swift was trying to get people’s attention by suggesting outrageous solutions, and that’s exactly what he had accomplished. “A Modest Proposal,” which was written mainly for Irish and English writers, was reprinted seven times in the same year (630). The fact that Swift’s essay was reprinted that many times had shown that his writing was being taken seriously, and people were finally beginning to realize that they had to come up with solutions, that they need to do everything possible to make these solutions possible. Although his essay was meant to be taken as a joke, but a joke that would open people’s eyes to the inhumanity that was happening, people really started coming up with many solutions that could hopefully fix the problem, and that is exactly what Swift was hoping for. Before “A Modest Proposal” had been written, the potato famine and the drought wasn’t being taken as seriously and many did not understand the consequences of the famine such as disease, starvation, sickness, and much more. It is estimated that in the six years the famine had lasted, about over a million men, women, and children died because they relied heavily on potato in their diets and a million more had fled the country (TheHistoryPlace. Gavin, Philip. Irish Potato

Famine).
Although Swift had joked about eating the children to avoid starvation, he did make some serious suggestions as to how to slow the famine and hopefully end it for once and all. Some of the more real life solutions he made were to tax the absentees at five shillings a pound without using clothes and furniture except what you can afford or build yourself, this will help to avoid foreign luxury (636.). Another proposal he had made to the people is “…of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was take: of being a little cautious not to sell our country and conscience for nothing: of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy toward their tenants: and lastly putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill…” (637). What I believe Swift meant when he wrote this particular sentence was that killing our own won’t help anything and if anything make the outcome much worse. He also is saying that people need to help each other, and he was referencing the feud between the Irish and English. While the Irish was suffering terribly from the famine, the English completely ignored them and continued with their daily life as if nothing was going on right next to them (630). I Believe the Irish and the English hated each other because both of them were completely different religions, and that had caused a conflict going back into years earlier. Although Swift wasn’t fond of the Irish, he really disliked what he witnessed with them, and the suffering they endured (630).
I believe “A Modest Proposal” was very successful overall with the Irish and the English.

Not only do we know that the paper was reprinted several times, but we also know that people were trying to finally help each other out and trying to come up with some kind of solution. What Swift wanted to do was catch people’s attention and shed light on the inhumanity that was going on, and in order to do this he had to come up with a solution so outrageous, a solution that talked about killing kids off and eating them to finally get everyone’s attention on this horrible problem the Irish was facing. Swift wrote the essay so believable that he had actually made people think that the way to end this famine is to eat the children. But as you read further into the essay, you’ll notice that he was being ironical and then Jonathan Swift listed off real life solutions, ones that you would have to do anything possible to make happen so they could put an end to the famine, which was of the worse famines to ever have occurred (TheHistoryPlace, Irish Potato

Famine).