Dr. Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal

Irony is a beautiful technique exercised to convey a message or call a certain group of people to action. This rhetorical skill is artfully used by Jonathan Swift in his pamphlet “A Modest Proposal.” The main argument for this mordantly ironic essay is to capture the attention of a disconnected and indifferent audience. Swift makes his point by stringing together a dreadfully twisted set of morally untenable positions in order to cast blame and aspersions on his intended audience. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” employs despicably vivid satire to call for change in a world of abuse and misfortune.

The satirical essay “A Modest Proposal” written and published in in 1729 by an Anglo- Irish man named Jonathan Swift, in response to the worsening conditions of Ireland, was one of his most controversial and severe writings of his time. The narrator in Swift’s essay “A Modest Proposal” argues for a drastic and radical end to poverty in Ireland. Swift’s proposal suggests that the needy, poor people of Ireland can ease their troubles simply by selling their children as food to the rich and make them useful, benefitting the public. With the use of irony, exaggeration and ridicule Swift mocks feelings and attitudes towards the poor people of Ireland and the politicians. However, with the use of satire Swift creates a

During the early 1700s in Ireland, there were countless people that lived in poverty. Families that had many children at that time were usually the families that lived in poverty. If they chose to sell those children instead of keeping them, at the end of every year they would make 8 shillings for every kid they did not keep. In time, it would have been more beneficial for the poor families to sell their children because they would be making money on them (Baker). In 1729, a man named Jonathan Swift believed that he found a way to eliminate some of that poverty and feed the rich with the same solution. To propose his theory, he wrote “A Modest Proposal.” He wanted the poor people to give up their children as necessary evil. In the essay, Jonathan Swift challenges the status quo of the time and place in which it was written by saying people should sell and eat children and believing that women should be breeders (Swift).

Jonathan Swift uses humor in his essay ‘A Modest Proposal’ in the form of satire. His writing style specialized in gaining entertainment and humor from the issue that is being criticized. Jonathan Swift was a satirist who is famous for his ‘Modest Proposal’, in which he proposed a shocking but humorous remedy to satirize the false modesty of British pamphlets and the government during eighteenth century.

In “A Modest Proposal,” Swift suggests that women should sell their children as food instead of struggling to support them. Jonathan Swift not only uses rhetoric to dehumanize the women and children throughout the proposal, but he uses his sarcastic tone, his insincerity, and the idea of how ridiculous the proposal is to make his argument not serious. Jonathan Swift illustrates the poor living standards in Ireland as well as the corruption in the social classes within “A Modest

Think of a summer afternoon, you are having a barbeque, your family is preparing for a feast, your father is taking good care of the baby, then he slowly places it on the grill, the sizzling sound makes everyone’s mouth water. Well, that is a very immoral example, but in that era, it was all Johnathan Swift could suggest. To clarify, this idea of eating babies is what Jonathan Swift proposed in his satirical pamphlet “A Modest Proposal.” The pamphlet was written centuries ago after the events of the potato famine in Ireland. Lower Class citizens became poor quickly and were dying of starvation. Ireland’s closest neighbor, England, did not help Ireland with this problem, so in need of a solution Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal.” In Swift’s pamphlet, the author addresses the major concern of poverty with satire using pathos, logos, and ethos to motivate his country to resolves the issue.

A Modest Proposal is a deeply ironic and humanistic essay by what it denounces. Swift proposes that the poor of the country sell their children aged one year to those who will be able to afford this "delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food". This provocative proposition denounces the selfishness, inhumanity, and injustice of political economy: if the poor are devoured, figuratively, by politicians and the rich, as well as propose that they are also literally. Exclusion becomes ingestion. It also reveals a certain conception of the human being whose reason and common sense are doubtful.

In Jonathan Swift's essay "A Modest Proposal", he discusses the problem with the number of poor children in the streets whose families are too poor to support them. Swift comes up with a plan to solve this problem that will hopefully help the number of poor children. The plan is to eat the children because he believes that they are going to be an excellent source of food for anybody. The satirical essay mocks how the rich treat the poor as if they are poor animals. Throughout the essay, Swift uses the rhetorical appeals, ethos, pathos and logos to convince the audience to agree with his solution.

When one thinks of the phrase “A Modest Proposal,” does one come to think of fattening babies so they can sell as meat. In Jonathan Swift’s essay “A Modest Proposal,” Swift uses satirical writing to communicate with the reader to expose the critical situation of the poor people of Ireland. Whom besides going through a tough period of famine have to endure the overwhelming taxation rates of the English empire. The author’s proposal intends to convince the public of the incompetence of Ireland’s politicians, the lack empathy of the wealthy, the English oppression, and the inability of the Irish to mobilize themselves against this situation. Johnathan proposed an outrageous solution that the Irish folks eat their children at the age of one or sell them in the market as meet. Finally, he manifests to be open to other suggestions to help overcome the country’s crisis. The proposal was made strategically using several different parts: the text, author, audience, purpose, and setting to persuade the tax to go lower.

Jonathan Swift, the writer of the satirical essay A Modest Proposal, grew up and lived in Ireland during times of famine and economic struggles (Conditions). Growing up with a single mother and no father, Swift knew what hard times and struggles were like (Jonathan Swift: Biography). His essay proposes an easy solution to the economic problems going on in Ireland for both the wealthy ruling classes and the poorer classes, although his intentions and the meaning behind his words are not what would be originally thought when initially reading the essay. Through his word choices and the description of specific events of his time, Swift uses satire to grab his audience’s attention and get his own personal ideas and opinions out about all the

I am writing in response to your request of the elimination of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” from the classrooms, libraries, and the school system as a whole. Let me begin by telling you that I took what you said into deep consideration, but after discussing with the work with some of the English teachers at Martin’s Groves Junior High School and conducting research on my own time, it’s become clear that Swift’s purpose of writing is not to encourage people to eat children, because it is satirical writing. I can reassure you that if Swift was really promoting cannibalism, I would remove it immediately from the curriculum. It is

A Modest Proposal was written in the year 1729 by the famous satirist Jonathan Swift. In his work he outlines the pros of eating unwanted children of Ireland for economical benefits in a time of great poverty. While the reader can obviously discard the idea of eating children, in his proposal, in a roundabout way, Swift speaks to hard pressing issues of the time.

Irony is a beautiful technique exercised to convey a message or call a certain group of people to action. This rhetorical skill is artfully used by Jonathan Swift in his pamphlet “A Modest Proposal.” The main argument for this bitingly ironic essay is to capture the attention of a disconnected and indifferent audience. Swift makes his point by stringing together a dreadfully twisted set of morally untenable positions in order to cast blame and aspersions on his intended audience. Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” employs despicably vivid satire to call for change in a world of abuse and misfortune.

In his biting political satire called ?A Modest Proposal,? Jonathan Swift seeks to create empathy for the poor through his ironic portrayal of the children of Irish beggars as commodities that can be regulated and even eaten. He is able to poke fun at the dehumanization of the multitudes of poor people in Ireland by ironically commenting on what he sees as an extension of the current situation. Swift?s essay seeks to comment on the terrible condition of starvation that a huge portion of Ireland has been forced into, and the inane rationalizations that the rich are quick to submit in order to justify the economic inequality. He is able to highlight the absurdity of these attempted

Swift’s development of the absurd proposal for eating young children so that “the poorer tenants will have something valuable” or that there “would be constant customers for infants flesh” is enhanced by numerous examples of biting irony. Such irony exists even in the title: “A Modest Proposal.” Upon reading the text, the audience can agree that Swift’s proposal is far from modest and such irony servers to enrage and puzzle the readers to the point that they question why he would be using such shifting, ironic diction. Swift’s use of absurd logic to his proposal supplements the effectiveness of verbal irony, since no one would believe that children should be eaten to improve “in the art of making good bacon”. The aforementioned examples illustrate Swift’s craftiness and the use irony to almost mock the audience. In true Juveliean fashion, such techniques are designed to arouse the reader to anger and suspicion of what is trying to be said. A satire based on the Horatian type wouldn’t use such blatantly offensive irony. Rather, the tone of voice would be “gentler, more good humored and sympathetic” (“Horatian Satire”).