What Is The Theme Of A Modest Proposal A Satire

In the essay, the proposer says "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…" (Swift 58). This excerpt from the passage effectively uses pathos and ethos to appeal to the reader 's emotions and morals. He takes jabs at the American people by saying that an American acquaintance told him that they love to eat their children too. During this time, the slave trade was in full effect in

He also includes imagery in A Modest Proposal. Swifts exaggerated imagery leaves a strong impact on the reader. In using descriptions like, “...carcass of a good fat child...” (93), he engraves a horrifying image on a baby on a platter in the minds of the reader. The strong uses of imagery throughout the essay bring his point across. A third rhetorical device that this essay is thick with is irony.

His titular so-called “modest proposal” is in fact cannibalism, namely that the Irish economy can grow within all social sectors discussed above by means of eating “infants’ flesh” (2433), or bringing it “to the market” (2435). The satirical technique employed here are juxtaposition and hyperbole, as the title pronouncing the proposal propounded in the piece as “Modest”, as well as Swift’s own proclamation regarding his “humble” proposal that he hopes, naturally, “will not be liable to the least objection” (2432), is juxtaposed next to the utter irrationality of the absurd nature of the actual hyperbolic proposal. The tonal fashion in which he segues from his sarcastic yet also human and poignant lamentation of his country’s “melancholy” state (2431) and his seeming righteous indignation for some Irish mother’s “savage and inhuman” resort to murder their “poor innocent” “bastard children” through abortion due to their inability to support them in their indigence (2431), into stylistically casually stating that “a young healthy child” is “at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food” (2432), is of course jarringly irrational and ironic. This preposterous proposal is of course utilized by Swift as a means to circuitously draw the reader’s attention to the sole rational proposal for Ireland’s economic plight, which is to cure “the expensiveness” of the Irish’s “pride, vanity, idleness”, to teach the English landlords “to have at least one degree of mercy toward their tenants”, and to use products only of domestic “growth and manufacture” (2436). Swift emphatically repeats that he will tolerate “no man talk to me [him] of other expedients” (2435, 2436), such as the one above, which he indirectly characterizes as being “vain, idle, visionary thoughts”, while referring to his own proposed cannibalism as

The full title of the original piece is, "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick." In that essay, Swift ironically argued that children from poor Irish families should be purchased at the age of one year, fattened for commercial sale, and then marketed as live meat to wealthy landowners. This would control the population, give poor Irish families a source of additional revenue, suppress acts of infanticide and abortion, and provide culinary adventure to the wealthy. By pushing to such extremes the indifference and cruelty that he actually witnessed, Swift created an enduring essay that serves as an historical indictment of English rule in

There is at least one logical fallacy in A Modest Proposal. Swift refers to his American friend throughout as the guy he got all his information on eating babies from. It infers that Americans eat babies. The fallacy is that because he is considered an expert, when he says something readers must think its true, which it isn't.

Instead of kindly donating, he spits out a crude and evil response saying “Let them die, and they better do it quick to decrease the surplus population” and “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” referring to how the workhouses/prisons could be the poor’s ‘home’. However, at the end of the play, with the help of three spirits and his dead business partner, he changed into a caring, energetic man with a love for

Overall Anna quindlen’s essay talks greatly about how kids who aren’t supplied free school lunch can actually go starving. She uses a great deal of factual based evidence as well as evidence provided by other people or sources to draw a great deal of empathy out of the reader in an act to persuade them to “end it”. Her essay was also written with great care as to allow the reader to stay interested long enough to provide her with the time to pass on the information that needed to be given without being drawn out to the point of them losing all

This article uses cannibalism of children as a metaphoric display which is graphic yet logical to prove his point. For example, he gives a great description of how one would cook the babies to keep the reader intrigued. The idea of such acts is horrible yet hilarious, once it’s discovered what Swift’s real plan is. He want people to think about the prime causes of poverty and hunger, which Swift wants to end. Swift applies a creative argument that suggest one solution while actually arguing for a different

Swift, throughout the essay, illustrates the children as animals by using metaphors that relate to that. The first example is on the second page of Swift’s essay in which he states “A child just dropped from its dam.” (Swift, 2) This metaphor is typically used to describe animals being born but instead Swift uses it to describe children being born. Another example of Swift using metaphors in his essay is when he states that “I grant this food will be somewhat dear… as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.”

Jonathan Swift used his persuasive techniques to convince people baby killing, and even eating the corpse. Jonathan used such incredible wording, that the readers thought that it was a fascinating and efficient way to help the poor and the hungry. According to Swifts satire, he said "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...” (Swift 486). Jonathan has a way with his words, which is why he was so efficient in convincing the people of a complete utter joke.

It doesn’t take long to summarize Swift’s,Modest Proposal. To help solve the problem of the poverty-stricken, oppressed, and uneducated population of Catholics in Ireland, Swift’s projector calmly and rationally proposes that thousands of the children should be killed and eaten. This will help both the overpopulated poor, who can’t afford to care for their children anyway, and the rich, who will get a good meal out of the whole process. Even in his introduction he explains the reason for his proposal: “for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden to their parents or country; and for making them beneficial to the Publick.” What follows is an attempt to justify such a seemingly outrageous scheme.

In a Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, a solution to the burgeoning population of poor citizens and their children in Ireland is sought by the author. Swift begins by stating his intentions of “making these children sound and useful members of the commonwealth” by aiding in both the parents who cannot support them, and the beggar children who commonly “pick up a livelihood of stealing.” Swifts goals seem reasonable, even valiant, until he digresses into the means to which he thinks Ireland’s poverty problem can be solved. Swifts proposal, boiled down, is to fatten famished children and in turn feed them to Ireland’s upper classes. He proposes a detailed plan to sell the children at market, and even how they can be prepared.

In conclusion, one can admire the third Pig the most because he is the most clever, quick-witted, and bold. Since the Wolf was cruel and wanted to eat him, the Pig thought of unique ways to defeat the Wolf, like his method of leaving an hour earlier to gather the turnips. This clever plot against the Wolf ultimately saved his own life. The third Pig was not only clever, but he was a quick-thinker in tricky situations. When the Wolf showed up early to pick apples, the Pig was caught off-guard.

A Modest Proposal is a satirical work by Jonathan Swift aimed at skewering English reactions to the then-contemporary issues of poverty and famine in Ireland. It revolves around a detailed argument that the problems of poverty, famine, overpopulation and many other social issues could be solved by selling one year old Irish children to be cooked and eaten dressed “hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs” at English dinner tables (Swift, p.386). It was written in the early 18th century when Ireland was effectively an English colony and had been ruled as such for centuries. Colonialism is never benevolent, and under the English yoke poverty and its attendant social evils ran rampant among the Irish, especially Irish Catholics. Jonathan Swift

In Garrett Hardin’s “Lifeboat Ethics” he explains that the world we live in is unequal and becoming increasingly poor. He tries to explain that if the poverty isn’t controlled, then the Earth will become completely poor and unrestrained. I believe that Hardin’s writing of “Lifeboat Ethics” is effective and persuasive, because with every solution to fix the poverty of our world he has a counterargument. Hardin uses numbers and percentages to show the population increases of poor countries versus rich ones, and he also paints pictures, using metaphors.