Conformity In Why We Are Infidels

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Conformity and Rebellion Conformity being the role one takes into matching a behavior, belief, or attitude to a group just to fit in. Rebellion is resisting or going against the authority one has over someone. The theme Conformity and Rebellion is greatly described in “A Modest Proposal” “Why We Are Infidels” and “Imagine There’s No Heaven”. Each one of these nonfiction storylines provide a great understanding of the author’s stance on religion and beliefs. No matter what is occurring in today’s society, everyone fits in a certain category whether it is christian, muslim, atheist, etc… In the story “A Modest Proposal” the author Jonathan Swift claims childbearing is the answer to solving the amount of poor people in the streets of Ireland. During the 1700s, Swift states it is too expensive to provide food for all the helplessly poor children including their mothers. Women would have children just to sell as food to receive money to support themselves. Before the children were sold, they would be fattened up to provide better meat for the wealthy. During this time, …show more content…

L. Doctorow, explains that fundamentalism cannot help itself. Although the world has been considered ‘infidels’, this nation is considered most powerful through prayer no matter what religion one is to be. Thomas Jefferson claims, “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry” (Doctorow 387). By this statement, the nation has only expressed their faith even more. Infidel meaning a nonbeliever in christ, has grown throughout the nation recently due to horrible instances testing one’s faith in God. Doctorow proclaims infidelity is becoming the norm nationwide and people are considering this choice more and more due to his/her mentor becoming an infidel. Culture and Identity another theme that contains to infidelity due to certain cultures believing in God while other cultures may believe in something

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    Pamphlets were often used to spread ideas throughout Ireland in the late 1600s, however, many were discarded and ignored. “A Modest Proposal,” by Jonathan Swift, uses the pamphlets to his advantage by proposing a ridiculous idea to show how messed up the state of Ireland was. Swift proposed that the babies of all the poor would “contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands” or in other words, improve Ireland 's economic problems and standard of living (Swift). His main reason for proposing this drastic idea was because women continued to have children they could not provide food or anything for in some cases and Swift’s idea would make the children “beneficial to the public” (Swift). For these reasons, Swift looks at not only the politicians to blame for the poor conditions but the citizens of Ireland as well. In “A Modest Proposal”, Swift uses harsh

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  • Jonathan Swift's Essay, A Modest Proposal

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    Swift wrote his proposal for those that were tired of looking at poor children of Ireland. He starts out explaining the situation in Ireland regarding single poor mothers that have three to six children and cannot afford to feed or clothe them. The children of the poor are a burden and a disgrace for Ireland. He suggests that a certain number of the kids be set aside for breeding and the rest be auctioned off for consumption when they reach a year old. Swift backs his proposal with six key points. One, there will be a reduction of "papists" in the country. Two, the poor will have some valuable assets to help them with their economic needs. Three, the new goods will burst economy. Four, the parent/s will gain money and will not have to support their children year after year. Five, "would bring great custom to taverns." Six, there would be a greater incentive to marry and better child rearing practices.

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  • Rhetorical Analysis Of A Modest Proposal

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    In eighteenth century Ireland, the nation was in a famine and an epidemic of poverty due to the high prices of land and food. Jonathan Swift saw a problem, so h wrote and spread what we call today, A Modest Proposal. Swift’s essay is satirical. He exaggerates and gives inaccurate statistics to deliver a thesis that runs deeper than the explicit one about eating babies. While much of the essay seems to imply that Swift’s persona eats babies, there are some instances where Jonathan hints at the ironic themes of the writing.

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  • A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poverty

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    To start off, the full title of Johnathan Swift’s writing 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." From just reading the title of the book “A Modest Proposal”, I was thinking it was a story about romance and how a gentleman proposed marriage to his female lover. His proposal, in effect, is to fatten up these undernourished children and feed them to Ireland's rich land-owners. He does this to illustrate how backwards and bad the state of Ireland is and the social classes. For these reasons, he looks at the politicians to blame for the poor conditions because of the apathy they presented while in the decision making process, to resolve the conditions.

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  • A Modest Proposal And Let Them Eat Dog Rhetorical Analysis

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    In the time frame that Swifts’ A Modest Proposal was written Ireland was going through political, economic, and religious struggles. In 1729 England had contrived, with the help of Irish venality, to wreck Ireland’s merchant marine, agriculture, and wool industry. Prostitutes in Swift’s paper are having kids like senseless people, but yet they can’t afford to feed them. Jonathan Swift proposes that his people should sell the babies and eat them. He thinks this would help solve the problem of over population. Swift tried to give his people pamphlets on how to fix the problem that was plaguing their country, but they ignored them. Swift says “These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants.”(1) Swift proposes that the mothers sell the babies for 8 shillings; the rich would find the child to be a delicacy and the extra money would go to the landlord. So everyone would benefit from this proposal. He does this as a way of making his people aware of what is going on in their

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  • A Modest Proposal Rhetorical Devices

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    To put things into perspective, famine and poverty made huge impacts on Irish society which would’ve made the respective audience either well-off considering the circumstances, or one of the “beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children,” (Swift 2633). With this said, authors such as Robert Phiddian claim that “the reader is caught between two authorial voices in the text, that of the Proposer's and that of Swift's, and whichever way he turns, he has to confront the truth that there are those who devour and there are those who are devoured” (1). Irish society would have either placed readers of the essay under those who were able to raise a child comfortably, inevitably placing them in the class where the consumption of said children would have been the proposed norm, or as those who had to sell their human kin for consumption in the Irish market. The lack of room for escape from being placed in either category forces the reader to essentially come to terms with either idea in the midst of their initial shock and discourse at eating babies and

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  • Pathos In A Modest Proposal

    755 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is an attempt to bring attention to horrible the condition in which the poor or destitute people in Ireland are living in. His argument that children of these improvised people should be sold to “the persons of quality and fortune” (A Modest Proposal) for consumption, is Swift’s gruesome way of saying you might as well eat the babies, if no one is going to actually try to fix the problems of the poor in Ireland.

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  • Humor as an Argument: A Modest Proposal

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    The essay, A Modest Proposal, is a proposal to end the economic dilemma in Ireland by selling the poor’s children, at the age of one, for food. The narrator states, “I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their father, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance” (Swift). According to this proposal, by selling the children for food to the wealthy in Ireland many problems will be resolved. The poor mothers will earn money to live on and will not have to raise children, the wealthy will have a new meat source and “an increase in his own popularity among his tenants” (Sparknotes), and the economy will improve because of all of the market action. In the narrator’s eyes, this proposal equals an all around win for the people of Ireland and he cannot see any objection to his plan.

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  • A Modest Proposal Analysis

    660 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ is by far the most bizarre and disgusting proposal that I believe I have ever had the displeasure of reading. Swift’s proposal as distasteful as it was (no pun intended) dealt with addressing the poverty that affected Ireland in the 1700’s. The issues that Swift addressed were indeed of dire importance but the manner in which he initially suggested these problems be solved is like reading a sick and twisted horror story. Swift proposes the idea of eating children as a means to end poverty. I think that I can safely say that every human in the world at some point has had a crazy thought, but to actually put it on paper and distribute it as if it would be a welcomed idea is mind boggling to me, especially in the era that this was suggested. He actually compares women to “breeders,” men to cattle, and using children’s skin for clothing! For me, I am a visual thinker and reading a proposal like this put the most horrible images into my mind. It is almost like driving by a train wreck, you don’t want to look but you can’t look away! The absurdity of the idea and the way that he suggests it would make marriages happier and mothers more tender to their children in hopes of a larger payout is completely disgusting. I would not have imagined that Swift would have been allowed to further his writings during this time due to the town or city folk thinking he was a danger and had absolutely lost his mind! The more I read the story it became clear to me that his initial proposal was merely an attention getter. I believe that he wanted the shock factor to lure people in and then tell them his real proposal.

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