Rhetorical Analysis Of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal

Jonathan Swift, a satirist author, writes A Modest Proposal to explain the attitudes towards poverty and starving kids in his society. Jonathan achieves his purpose with figurative language such as irony, sarcasm, as well as exaggeration to point out the negative attitude. These rhetorical devices show how his society dehumanizes humans.

Jonathan implies a pathos appeal by including irony. He compares humans and women to animals which creates an argument. He states, “there may be about 200,000 couple whose wives are breeders.” This comparison saying that woman breed creates the satire in the proposal because he is dehumanizing woman.

Swift includes sarcasm by making his readers believe that he wants to eat children. In his proposal says,

“a young healthy child is a delicious food to be roasted.” This text is dehumanizing because you wouldn’t say that about a child or human, it is something that would be said about an animal such as a turkey. He is implying that the children’s bodies could be sold as goods to the rich outside of Ireland. Jonathan also thinks that the kids can have their flesh used to make boots and clothing items for woman. This is sarcasm because you would not do such cruel work on a child as you would to an animal.
Jonathan use of exaggeration is very excessive. He still dehumanizes the kids by saying they should be put into butcher shops and roasted like pigs. It would be him wanting to put kids in butcher shops to be chopped up. “Among us by the great destruction of pigs will be no comparison in taste of magnificence to a well-grown, fat, yearling child.” This exaggerates how useful the children would be. People wouldn’t allow nor want their children in butcher shops.
In conclusion, Jonathan uses irony, sarcasm, and exaggeration to dehumanize humans in order to achieve his proposal about his society. He compares animals and humans to show the things that people think should be done.