A Modest Proposal Rhetorical Analysis

After reading “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, I’ve noticed that the writing can be a little complicated at first and may require you to reread and actually pick apart the sentences to try and make sense of what Swift is trying to get across. The writer Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” in 1729, which was the same time when the Irish was plagued with three years of a drought and a potato famine that had left many starving and looking for ways to keep food, even very small amounts in their stomachs (630). Swift saw what the famine was doing to the people and the chaos that had followed. He then decided to write “A Modest Proposal,” which consisted of solutions, both ridiculous and serious on how to end the starvation of thousands.

Swift was trying to get people’s attention by suggesting outrageous solutions, and that’s exactly what he had accomplished. “A Modest Proposal,” which was written mainly for Irish and English writers, was reprinted seven times in the same year (630). The fact that Swift’s essay was reprinted that many times had shown that his writing was being taken seriously, and people were finally beginning to realize that they had to come up with solutions, that they need to do everything possible to make these solutions possible. Although his essay was meant to be taken as a joke, but a joke that would open people’s eyes to the inhumanity that was happening, people really started coming up with many solutions that could hopefully fix the problem, and that is exactly what Swift was hoping for. Before “A Modest Proposal” had been written, the potato famine and the drought wasn’t being taken as seriously and many did not understand the consequences of the famine such as disease, starvation, sickness, and much more. It is estimated that in the six years the famine had lasted, about over a million men, women, and children died because they relied heavily on potato in their diets and a million more had fled the country (TheHistoryPlace. Gavin, Philip. Irish Potato

Not only do we know that the paper was reprinted several times, but we also know that people were trying to finally help each other out and trying to come up with some kind of solution. What Swift wanted to do was catch people’s attention and shed light on the inhumanity that was going on, and in order to do this he had to come up with a solution so outrageous, a solution that talked about killing kids off and eating them to finally get everyone’s attention on this horrible problem the Irish was facing. Swift wrote the essay so believable that he had actually made people think that the way to end this famine is to eat the children. But as you read further into the essay, you’ll notice that he was being ironical and then Jonathan Swift listed off real life solutions, ones that you would have to do anything possible to make happen so they could put an end to the famine, which was of the worse famines to ever have occurred (TheHistoryPlace, Irish Potato