The year is 1729, a time which was very dark in Ireland. Jonathan Swift writes about how everyone but the poor were suffering in his writing, “A Modest Proposal”. He writes about this dark time and gives crazy yet smart ideas. Mary Shelley’s, “Frankenstein” also has this foreboding tone. Both writings are dark and have the reader wanting to know what will be said next. Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1667. His father, also named Jonathan Swift, died just two months after Swift was born. Swift was sick as a child and was later found out he suffered from Meniere’s Disease. Without a steady income his mother would struggle to give him the best life. She gave him to her husband’s brother, Godwin Swift, a member of the professional …show more content…
The people were suffering and no one would help. Poverty was tremendous at this time. A large scale of Irish immigrated to the colonies with a “I need to get out” mindset. Swift writes in “A Modest Proposal”, “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food.”(10) The idea of eating the children born to poverty sounds crazy. Although crazy if one takes the morals out of the situation it almost seems smart. This shows how desperate and awful the conditions were for the people. Swift also talks about this suffering, he says, “But I am not in the least pain upon that matter because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected.” (18) The whole piece is dark and makes the reader realize the misery, so much it is unimaginable. Lyman A. Baker writes an article describing these times. Corruption and greed were the majority of the problem. “But snobbery and corruption were not the most forceful goads to Irish resentment of the English presence and policy.” (Baker, 1)
During the 18th century Ireland was in a very serious crisis. Jonathan Swift decides to write “A Modest Proposal” as a satirical response to this crisis. In that essay he gives a solution to each of the problems that Ireland was having during that time. The main points that he wanted to discuss were domestic abuse, overpopulation, poverty, theft, and the lack of food. This crisis led the great nation of Ireland into economic struggles.
A “Modest Proposal” is written by a man who had been exiled from England and forced to live among Irish citizens for many years during which he observed major problems in Ireland that needed a solution. The writer of this piece is Jonathan Swift, and in his proposal, “The Modest Proposal,” Swift purpose is to offer a possible solution to the growing problem of the homeless and poverty stricken women and children on the streets of Ireland. Swift adopts a caring tone in order to make his proposal sound reasonable to his audience, trying to convince them that he truly cares about the problems facing Ireland’s poor and that making the children of the poor readily available to the rich for entertainment and as a source of food would solve both the economic and social problems facing Ireland.
abandoned; this made him feel as if he was the only person with out no
In 1729, Jonathan Swift published a pamphlet called “A Modest Proposal”. It is a satirical piece that described a radical and humorous proposal to a very serious problem. The problem Swift was attacking was the poverty and state of destitution that Ireland was in at the time. Swift wanted to bring attention to the seriousness of the problem and does so by satirically proposing to eat the babies of poor families in order to rid Ireland of poverty. Clearly, this proposal is not to be taken seriously, but merely to prompt others to work to better the state of the nation. Swift hoped to reach not only the people of Ireland who he was calling to action, but the British, who were oppressing the poor. He writes with contempt for those who are oppressing the Irish and also dissatisfaction with the people in Ireland themselves to be oppressed.
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.
The main issue Swift is trying to touch on is the overpopulation of beggars within Ireland. This happened because of the poor having numerous children, and both the higher class of Ireland and England not doing anything to aid them. Swift creates an unbiased opinion because of his upbringings; he was born in Dublin, was raised in England, and attended Trinity College in Ireland. He is trying to aim the piece towards both countries because he experienced the severe conditions Ireland was enduring. The piece is satirical to outrage and capture the attention of readers. The assumption Swift reveals is that Ireland will want to change from this piece.
Critic Northrop Frye says, “Tragic heroes tower as the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, the great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divine lightning”. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein greatly exhibits the theme of the consequence of knowledge and irresponsibility among others through its tragic hero, Victor Frankenstein. Northrop Frye’s quote is certainly true when looking at Frankenstein’s situation. Victor is a victim of his divine lightning, and ultimately causes much trouble for himself; however, Victor also serves as the tragic hero in the lives of the monster, his family, and his friends.
Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a shocking satire that discusses the dire poverty in Ireland. It says if one is born poor, they will stay that way unless society puts them to use. Children are food to be eaten. In an economic slump, children will be used to feed and clothe Ireland’s population. Swift’s purpose for writing A Modest Proposal was to call attention to the exploiting and oppressing by the English to the Irish.
In the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the main theme revolves around the internal and external consequences of being isolated from others. Being isolated from the world could result in a character losing his/her mental state and eventually causing harm to themselves or others. Because both Victor Frankenstein and the creature are isolated from family and society, they experienced depression, prejudice, and revenge.
It was back in the 1700’s in Britain that true power struggle, rebellion, doubts in the government and extreme poverty began to take light. Thousands of people were left homeless and without clothes, forcing them to defecate on the streets, ultimately leading to disease and plight. Discrimination also played a very large role in Britain, as they treated the Irish as mere scum, leaving them without basic human needs or rights. Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irishman born in Dublin in the year 1667, became a key role in the digressing of discrimination and helped better the failing British nation with his satirical – yet influential – writings that easily swayed society. His writing style contained enormous amounts of irony and wit, especially in one of his most famous works titled A Modest Proposal.
In gothic novels tragic figures are symbols of pain to the characters. Victor Frankenstein brings misfortune to his loved ones, which concludes to his overall tragedy. Ironically the monster in this novel is Frankenstein the creator not the creature. He has seven victims including himself and his fall is due to his ambition to be superior.
Many people know that Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was part of a family of famed Romantic era writers. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was one of the first leaders of the feminist movement, her father, William Godwin, was a famous social philosopher, and her husband, Percy Shelley, was one of the leading Romantic poets of the time ("Frankenstein: Mary Shelley Biography."). What most people do not know, however, is that Mary Shelley dealt with issues of abandonment her whole life and fear of giving birth (Duncan, Greg. "Frankenstein: The Historical Context."). When she wrote Frankenstein, she revealed her hidden fears and desires through the story of Victor Frankenstein’s creation, putting him symbolically in her place (Murfin, Ross. "Psychoanalytic Criticism and Frankenstein.”). Her purpose, though possibly unconsciously, in writing the novel was to resolve both her feelings of abandonment by her parents, and fears of her own childbirth.
Mouth-watering, scrumptious, and delicious are a few words that come to mind when you think of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” His satire on the conditions of life in 1729 was to draw its readers to serious discussion on the distressing matters that plagued their society. His extreme and sarcastic response to the treatment of the ever-growing poor population of Irish families, by the rich English landowners, was to bring to light a matter that they had come to accept as normal. Apparently, over time English landowners obtained ownership of Irish lands and would lease these lands back to the Irish farmers at outrageous prices. This made it nearly impossible for farming families to make ends meet and in some cases to the point of near starvation. When many children of poor families grew up, they fled to foreign lands in search of a better life or they turned to a life of crime to make a living. The staggering number of children born to parents that could not support them was shocking and of a surety rarely considered in wealthy homes. Through this essay, he compelled the current government officials of the time to devise rational solutions that would deal with the large population of poor Irish farmers, and fix the conditions in which they lived.
Mary Shelley in her book Frankenstein addresses numerous themes relevant to the current trends in society during that period. However, the novel has received criticism from numerous authors. This paper discusses Walter Scott’s critical analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in his Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Review of Frankenstein (1818).
In 1729, Jonathan swift wrote his satire essay “A Modest Proposal” about the political and economic crisis in Ireland. Swift’s proposal was to take the children of the “beggars of the female sex” (314) and treat them as a food source, such as cattle. He goes into detail on the rearing and breading of the livestock. Swift also goes in to the sale and preparation of such a delicacy. This essay argues that Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest proposal” utilizes satire in order to speak out against the issues of poverty in Ireland during the eighteenth century. It considers the historical issues of Swift’s time period and why he had to write in the satirical voice, and it examines how satire structures Swift’s essay.