Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Swift's use of satire
Discuss humor and satire in swift a modest proposal
A modest proposal irony in text
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Swift's use of satire
Although I realize your concern, you have missed the point of this well thought out essay completely. Despite what you may think about A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, this essay is a satire master piece filled with irony. Swift’s essay was not intended to convince people to eat babies, but to call attention to the abuses Catholic’s face from their well-to-do Protestants. He only uses eating babies in his essay to explain to the reader the impossible burdens the Protestants are imposing on the Irish Catholics and by making their life hard, they are making a life of a new born impossible.
He makes his first point on page 411 when he tells the reader that eating babies is no problem for landlords because they have “already devoured most of the parents” (411). Swift is not saying that the landlords have literally devoured the parents, the Irish Catholics, and is again not saying that they should eat babies. Instead, he carefully wrote that sentence to explain the hardships put on “the parents”. He is making the point that the Protestants expect too much money from the Catholics and are therefore devouring them. The Church, who is against unjust killing, is unjustly killing the lives of the Irish people and their babies. This sentence is not designed to offend anyone, but to put the issue of high taxes, along with other impossible expenses creating hardship, out in the open. Swifts purpose is completely morale and carefully planned, if you are going to make the babies lives borderline impossible to live, you might as well eat them.
On the same page Swift mentions that eating babies will “lessen the number of papists among us” (411). By saying the Protestants are ready to eat and lower the count of Catholics, Swift is...
... middle of paper ...
...that eating babies is the only solution, that this place would be better if they did eat babies, but by comparing eating babies to more reasonable ideas, he is encouraging change. This irony is a strong method of persuasion. It pushes people (mainly Catholics) to accept and peruse moderate methods of change rather than crazy, extreme ones.
It is easy to see that you may have been confused on the purpose to Swift’s essay, but I assure you this essay has no intentions turning the world into senseless carnivores. This essay is to teach kids the different rhetorical strategies, such as irony, to make a writing piece, a master piece. In the majority of Swift’s reasoning for eating babies, he is trying to convince the Protestants how inconsiderate their actions are, not eating babies is actually good. This is just another technique in the art of persuasive writing.
In “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift writes of the poor men, women, and children of Dublin, Ireland crowding the streets due to the years of drought and crop failure. He estimates that 120,000 children are born each year and asks the question of how these people are to be provided for. Then he tells of his proposal. He states that 20,000 of the 120,000 may be reserved for breeding purposes, while the other 100,000 be sold to dine on. Swift offers several advantages to his proposal some being: the poor tenants will have something of value in their home, the wealth of the nation will greatly increase as well as the cost of caring for the child will be eliminated after a year, and eliminating the food shortages the nation is undergoing. The only counter argument he offers is that killing and eating those infants will decrease the population so much that it will make it easier for England to concur them. He finishes his proposal with a statement that he himself is not interested in making a profit since his own children are past the right age and his wife not being able to have any more children.
The point where you see that Swift’s proposal is meant to be satiric is when he starts to talk about the economic gains of selling poor children. It is meant to be a point to address the exceeding amount of poor children that are being sold to slavery rather than an indication to cannibalism. A modern audience
The issue that Swift is addressing is the fact that there are too many poor children in Dublin and that they are becoming such a huge burden for all the poor mothers or parents of the country. Swift then creates his own solution to the problem. He proposes that all poor children who are around one year of age, be cooked and eaten by the people of Dublin, preferably the poor. With this solution, he argues that it will eventually put an end to the overpopulation of the poor young children and it will satisfy the hunger for all the other people. Crazy right?
The obvious lack of ethics and morals in this passage cements that this essay is satirical and should not be understood as a legitimate solution to the starvation issue. He later listed the advantages of a system that breeds children for food, these advantages are all very unethical simply based off the fact that they are benefits of eating infants. Swift mentioned ideas including the murder of Catholic babies, eating humans as a fun custom, and giving the poor something of value (their own children). His use of ethos shows the audience that the essay is satirical and emphasizes the extreme ridiculousness of his ideas. Swift’s use of these three devices created a captivating and somewhat humorous satire.
One way that Swift tries to persuade the reader that his proposal is normal or ethical is through the fallacies of the scare tactic. Swift uses his proposal as an attack on the economic problems going on in Ireland. In the beginning swift begins to persuade the reader that his proposal is logical and normal. Do we agree on the fact that eating children is morally and economically wrong? He also states that his proposal would make the children “beneficial to the public” (444). Can we agree that Swift is not suggesting that the people of Ireland would really eat their children. More or
It is a Satire because of the proposal Swift made; the Irish should eat and sell their babies to reduce the number of beggars with the goal of getting rid of poverty. Swift even suggests that the Irish should eat teenagers. Logos were used to convince readers of the this problem in Ireland. One of the Logos used throughout this Satire, is the persuasion of which the Roman Catholics are a danger to the Country of Ireland. Their so called danger is their financial loyalty to their church versus supporting their own families (Bryon Edgington), and as well as they are the fastest breeders. This made the Roman Catholics considered as beggars, because they were poor due to their loyalty to the church. These would be the children Swift is suggesting to eat. “It will have one more collateral advantage by lessening the number of papists among us.” (Swift 1394). Another Logo is revolving around the “poor” which are also considered as the “breeders”, the fictional speaker introduces the argument of assumption that the breeders understand and accept the guidelines of the proposal “Secondly, the poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distressed help to pay their landlord’s rent,” (Swift 1396). This shows that fictional speaker does not care and have any sympathy for those of which who are poor. It may seem like this is not logical because why would
Swift supports Puchner’s theme of a lack of individuality which conveys how humans are losing their humanity by using Ireland’s economic issue which forces the poor to conform to the idea of selling their babies. Swift’s story, “A Modest Proposal”, is intriguing due to the fact that he uses Irelands misfortune to suggest a way to bounce back from this economic crisis which so happens to be eating kids from poor parents who couldn’t afford to raise it. In “A Modest Proposal” Swift states that “I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for Landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the Parents, seem to have the best Title to the Children” (Swift 33). For Swift growing up in Ireland, he
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.
It is a great contradiction and absurdity that a husband and father proposes the idea of cannibalism. The narrator does not want the reader to agree that the solution to overpopulation and poverty in Ireland is to eat babies; he wants the reader to see it. needs to be a practical solution. Although something seems one way to the narrator, Jonathan Swift wants. the reader to see it in the opposite light.
While the speaker’s proposal to put children on the menu to solve the Irish people’s destitution is not to be taken literally, Swift’s underlying message – a criticism of society and the mistreatment of one class of human beings by another – is.
Swift begins his argument by stating his view on the situation and displaying his annoyance. He states, "It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country when they see the streets, roads, and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms" (Swift 1). He uses melancholic imagery for the readers to sympathize with the suffering children and to understand their situation. Similarly, Swift displays his disgust for the wealthy by stating that "There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children… which would move tears in the most savage and inhumane beast" (1). He talks about abortion and shows how ghastly and disheartening the practice is. Clearly, Swift makes use of pathos to slowly gain the reader’s confidence in preparation for his appalling proposal. He knows that many will be emotionally affected by his proposal because no one would want their own c...
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...
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.
This essay by Jonathan Swift is a brutal satire in which he suggests that the poor Irish families should kill their young children and eat them in order to eliminate the growing number of starving citizens. At this time is Ireland, there was extreme poverty and wide gap between the poor and the rich, the tenements and the landlords, respectively. Throughout the essay Swift uses satire and irony as a way to attack the indifference between classes. Swift is not seriously suggesting cannibalism, he is trying to make known the desperate state of the lower class and the need for a social and moral reform in Ireland.
Jonathan Swift, a well-known author, in his essay “A Modest Proposal,” implies that the Irish people should eat children so that they can better their chances of survival. Swift supports his implication by describing how his proposal will have many advantages such as, eliminating papists, bringing great custom to taverns, and inducing marriages. He comes up with an absurd proposal to eat and sell the children to the elite so the Irish can have a brighter future. His purpose is to show that the Irish deserve better treatment from the English. Throughout his essay, Swift uses sarcasm, satire, and irony.