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Discuss The Use Of Irony In A Modest Proposal By Jonathan Swift
Analysise of a modest proposal by jonath swift
Outline of a modest proposal
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Well known and famous author, Jonathan Swift, in his persuasive essay, A Modest Proposal, convincing people that there needs to be a new way to help out the population problem while helping out the hunger problem as well. Swift’s purpose of this essay is to show people another way to make the population go down but really he’s trying to grab their attention then inform them of his real idea. He adopts an aggressive tone in order to convey his audience which is the people of Ireland.
The issue that is at hand in his persuasive essay is that Ireland is over populated and they need to think of a way to deal with this said problem. They need to deal with this problem over else the population will keep going up and they will run out of food for people even faster. The context of this issue is that they are living in a place where there are not enough food, water, and clothes for everyone so they have children starving and tons of people are begging for anything to get them through the day. Johnathon Swift is making the argument that we should slay and eat all children under the age of 1 because we have way too many of them anyways. He’s an educated writer and well known author and a father of children. There might be some biased because he doesn’t have a child under the age of one so maybe he doesn’t want to have to kill his own child. The target audience is the people of Ireland because they are all living in the struggle along with himself. The main point is the Ireland is over populated and people are poor, hungry and in poverty. The argument is structured in a way that he catches the reader’s attention then at the very end he says that everything he said he doesn’t actually want any of that stuff to happen and that there needs to b...
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... the population is to sell all the children under the age of one and then people could use the money they make from that and buy food. It doesn’t refute opposing claims because there isn’t any opposing claims brought up in the piece he only talks about his plan and his plan only.
His argument is weak overall, but that is because it is meant to be weak because he has a whole other meaning behind what he is saying. The strength in his arguments was that he got the reader’s attention like he wanted then at the end told them how he really felt about the whole issue. What he was really good at was getting his readers attention because if he didn’t grab their attention then the whole point of the essay would be pointless. He could have been less descriptive in the parts where he talked about cooking children but other than that he did a pretty swell job at what he did.
The issue that was facing the Irish people was there were numerous Irish women, with their children in tow, begging on the streets in order to put a meal on the table every night. These women could not find work, and so they were forced to beg in order to provide food for their family and starving children. Jonathan Swift is making an argument to have these poor Irish women produce babies that at the age of one would be sold for a profit. The target audience is the poor Irish families that have too many children to be able to feed. This also targets the rich families of Ireland who will be the ones that will purchase the babies from the poor. The main point is to stop all the women in Ireland from raising so many children that they could not have enough means to be able to feed or clothe them all. The purpose is to help these Irish families that have too many mouths to feed and bodies to cloth already, and this will give them the opportunity to be able to sell their babies after one year and to even make a profit off them as well. The argument is structured first by showing the reader that there is a problem with the poor Irish families not having enough food to feed their quickly growing families. Then Swift moves on to talk about selling these babies to the Lords and wealth...
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.
Jonathan Swift in his essay, "A Modest Proposal" suggests a unique solution to the problem concerning poor children in Ireland. Swift uses several analytical techniques like statistics, induction, and testimony to persuade his readers. His idea is admirable because he suggests that instead of putting money into the problem, one can make money from the problem. However, his proposal is inhumane.
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?
For starters, in line 28, Swift writes about the horrors that overpopulation causes. He says, “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, alas! Too frequent among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast.” This line is written as serious. It calls the death of babies a crime, and describes the “savage” and “horrid” infanticide; yet the thesis of the essay is about the systematic murdering and consuming of one year old children.
I am a Christian and I don’t disagree with the author. But, whenever you are making your case for your side. One should always present the opposing argument. This article fails to do this. It actually makes a lot of statement like this:
...e. The absence of counter claims to many of his arguments while being supported makes the argument suspect. Adding with that some logical fallacy errors and phrases indicating guesswork without evidence and his thesis loses further ground. Looking at the article overall the argument is semi convincing depending on whether the reader agreed with him or did not before they read the article. If coming from the same viewpoint the argument is likely effective in further convincing them, however if coming from a different viewpoint the ineffective aspects of the argument coupled with a few potentially insulting phrases are unlikely to convince the reader.
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...
The idea of eating all the youth in the country is obviously self-defeating and is not being seriously suggested by the writer. He is simply trying to show how desperate the lower class is in Ireland. Swift introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting, taxing absentee landlords, of encouraging the domestic economy by buying Irish goods, of discouraging pride, vanity, idleness, by dismissing them in his essay by saying that they are impractical. However, these reforms greatly differ from his ?modest proposal? because instead of the poor sacrificing their children, it would involve the rich sacrificing some of their luxuries. He is trying to point out the fact that reforms that would be practical and beneficial to the people of Ireland are being overlooked for the convenience of the rich.
During the 18th century Ireland was on 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 for each of the problems that Ireland was having during that time. The main points that he wanted to discuss were domestic abuse, over population, poverty, thieves, and the lack of food. This crisis lead the great nation of Ireland into economical struggles. By all of this problems, the parents couldn’t maintain their children so they needed a solution. Now this incredible man comes with a solution that is going to blow your mind, Swift decides to give them a proposal. It was a really uncommon one but very helpful for them. This proposal is going to stabilize once again the country of Ireland.
During the 1720’s, the Irish people were suffering dearly, due to the oppression by Great Britain. There oppression came in the form of being displaced by wealthy English people who were buying up land in Ireland and then not living there. They would proceed to rent some of their land to the Irish people at extremely high rent, which eventually led to them not being able to pay neither their rent or provide their families with food or clothes. The reason behind Swift’s proposal is simple. He is an Irishman. He has a sense of patriotic duty to attempt to help his fellow Irish people. He wants them to know that it is possible to move forward form poverty and out from under the oppression of the British. He structures his essay through a basic form of presenting an idea and then backing it up with “facts” like the growth in weight of babies or expert accounts on the taste of children from a credible source. Something that Swift just assumes that the audience will take for granted. Additionally he assumes that the audience won’t simply put his article down, taking it as the ramblings of a mad man talking about eating babies like it’s a normal everyday thing.
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.
The issue is that there is a growing number of poor and starving women and children living on the streets of Ireland that are a burden to the public and the country. The context is that these homeless and starving women and children are left to fend for themselves on the streets. Jonathan Swift is making the argument from the point of a concerned citizen who has spent years among the poor in Ireland studying the situation and trying to come up with a solution. Johnathan Swift used the example that those who visit Ireland and see the streets crowded with women and children that are beggars conclude that Ireland is a very poor, overpopulated country full of beggars and that they look down upon their country that is in such poor shape. His bias is that as a citizen living in Ireland, he does not want to be looked down upon by other countries. His targeted audience seems to be the citizens of the country and those in higher up positions who ...
Thus, solving the economic and population problems in Ireland. Swift does this through a very sarcastic and harsh style that was advanced at the time that he wrote it. This essay did not actually comply with finding a solution to the problem in the country. He was actually attempting to show those of Ireland that this was the similar to what the government was allowing to occur.
Jonathan Swift offers an outrageous solution to the problem of overpopulation and mistreatment of the people of Ireland. The modest proposal, which Swift offers, is to have year old babies sold for money to sustain their parents and to nourish the affluent members of the society. The “surprise ending” of the story is when the narrator concedes that he did not consider his opinion as final and that he would accept tenable and effectual solution which could be proposed by accountable leaders. Politicians would avail the solution if they understood the misery suffered by the bloated population due to neglect by the state and initiated an internal change in the Irish government. Towards the end of the story, the narrator creates room for an amenable resolution to the problem of vast poverty. The point in the reading where I realized that the ending would be different from what the beginning suggests is where the narrator labors to give a list of measures which could be adopted to solve the problem. These measures are presented in the penultimate stages of the story, after the narrator ha...