Taking back in 1972, Dr. Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish essayist, argues in his satire, “A Modern Proposal,” the economic issues within Dublin, the capital of Ireland, which consists of poverty and overpopulation, consequently, creating a dreadful blanket over the society as a whole. Swift then decides to provide an ironic metaphorically inhumane solution, by one of which, highlights the matter at hand in Dublin, Ireland. He achieves this by using the following rhetorical devices: diction to express the unimportance of the poor and gruesome actions used towards them, allusion to refer to a similar practice such as cannibalism, and hyperbole to give the solution a horrid effect in hopes of introducing it in a greater understanding. Firstly, …show more content…
Jonathan Swift uses an allusion towards another similar practice throughout his satire— cannibalism. Specifically, starting in paragraph eight, Swift mentions, “… healthy child… most delicious… wholesome food…” At this point, it becomes clear he is alluding towards cannibalism because he is referring the children as food to the wealthy. As he puts it, a “healthy child” is considered as delicious food. This can be provided with support later in the paragraph, such as, “I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.” Here, he is listing the possible meals, which can be served from human meat. Thus, by referring to the less fortunate as food to the high-class, it only proves to show their want to benefit off the …show more content…
In other words, going back to paragraph nine, Swift claims, “… good fat child… excellent nutritive meat… grow popular among his tenants…” To clarify, Swift does not actually mean the children will be eaten, but rather taken advantage of by the wealthy to gain a higher status among his friends. As a result, Swift highlights the corruption in Dublin between the poor and the wealthy. To support this, in paragraph fifteen, Swift implicitly remarks, “… shambles may be appointed for this purpose…” In this case, he exaggerates the word “shambles” to make it mean something else, such as a slaughterhouse. In other words, he makes it seems worse than it actually is. So, since it is an exaggeration, he could have meant the extortion caused within the
There are so many problems with this article, but first would include that Swift is very nonchalant about the murdering of these babies for money. He then goes on to talk about the babies as if they were cattle or a pig that a farmer would fatten up for Christmas dinner. Also, he was trying to be satirically funny at the end when he mentioned he would never be able to do this plan. But, he is plainly mocking the reader and quite frankly thinking that they are stupid, with Swift’s arrogance and inhumane look at these helpless babies that this work has nothing but grave weaknesses. Overall, the author tries to convince Ireland’s poor families to sell their children to the rich to eat for money. Such an outlandish plan that was useless to even consider, yet write about in the first place.
This was mostly done by his descriptions of preparing the children like they are a chicken, and his list of advantages to eating children. While describing how to prepare a child Swift said, “a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food.” The manner in which he described a human child the same way one would a cow, chicken, or fish. The obvious lack of ethics and morals in this passage cement that this essay is satirical and should not be understood as a legitimate solution to the starvation issue. He later listed the advantages of a system that breeds children for food, these advantages are all very unethical simply based off the fact that they are benefits of eating infants. Swift mentioned ideas including the murder of Catholic babies, eating humans as a fun custom, and giving the poor something of value (their own children). His use of ethos shows the audience that the essay is satirical and emphasizes the extreme ridiculousness of his ideas.
Jonathan Swift, a well-known author, in his essay “A Modest Proposal,” implies that the Irish people should eat children so that they can better their chances of survival. Swift supports his implication by describing how his proposal will have many advantages such as, eliminating papists, bringing great custom to taverns, and inducing marriages. He comes up with an absurd proposal to eat and sell the children to the elite so the Irish can have a brighter future. His purpose is to show that the Irish deserve better treatment from the English. Throughout his essay, Swift uses sarcasm, satire, and irony.
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.
Swift used disgust to describe how the young children will be prepared. Swift stated “that a young healthy child well nurse, is... a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust” (4). Another example that Swift used was how some people would skin the young children and use it as clothing. “Those who are more thrifty may flea the carcass; the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen” (6). The frustration part of it was towards the higher authorities. Swift obviously cared about the people of Ireland to create this essay. Swift states that “who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets… crowded with beggars” (1). The capital of Ireland is “crowded with beggars” and the higher authorities is not doing about this problem. Swift is at least trying to find a solution to solve this problem by making this proposal. By making the readers disgusted and frustrated, Swift strengthen his proposal because he wants to show and to do something about this
In Swift’s satirical essay he stated the main issue to be the hunger and starvation of Irish country and their lack of money to support oneself. He said the complication was they themselves don’t have food, to many families in poverty, and that the Englishman took their land and charging high prices for rent. Swift makes this argument because he too is an Irish men and he struggles to see his fellow men parish in the streets. He desires his people to stand up against England and take back what’s theirs. He argues that the Irish...
Throughout the treatise, Swift cites multiple statistics: how much it costs to raise an infant up to one year, Ireland’s total population and the percentage of women who are old enough to give birth, the number of families who are able to provide for their children, the average number of miscarriages, and how much money a child could make if sold as a slave. Evidently, these statistics support his cannibalistic proposal, for it provides a logical construction throughout the essay. He proposes that Irish peasants who cannot afford to provide for their child should butcher their children, thus providing income for the poor of Ireland. The statistics make this proposal appear more authentic, and because the proposal is absurd, the audience will deeply question its ethicality. Obviously, the reader will understand that Swift’s argument is illogical, leading them to analyze the more modest proposals of Swift’s essay. At the end of the essay, hopefully, the actual modest proposals—taxing absentees, rejecting materials that promote foreign luxury, teaching landlords to have mercy toward their tenants, etc.—would appeal to the reader. This would give them a better judgement of solutions that are more appropriate for Ireland’s
His solution is paradoxical in that eating children is beneficial for economic reasons, of which he lists in points of order with numerical calculations, yet raises further moral problems. Swift utilizes verbal irony in his writings to demonstrate a contradiction in his sarcastic proposal of eating children by dehumanizing certain people to achieve a constant expression of his own opinions. Swift’s proposal appears to be anything but “modest” as consuming children is irrational and absurd, adding to the sarcastic and humorous aspect of the work. He dehumanizes women by saying that they act as “breeders” and they can only pay for their children by “[getting] the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging.” Rather than utilizing language on how parents should be able to have plentiful food, he states they “contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands.”
315) It is evident that Ireland is struggling with overpopulation, famine, and poverty, just based on that one sentence. Swift uses satire in his proposal to grasp the people of Ireland’s attention. The just of the proposal mentions the idea of eating babies to provide income for the “breeders” (Swift, pg. 319), meat for the wealthy (Swift, pg. 317), and surplus for the nation altogether (Swift, pg. 320). Meanwhile, the satire used in Swift’s proposal is not to be taken literally but to foreshadow the issues causing the turmoil. “I desire the reader will observe that I calculate my remedy for this one individual kingdom of Ireland, and for no other…Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: of using neither clothes nor
This essay by Jonathan Swift is a brutal satire in which he suggests that the poor Irish families should kill their young children and eat them in order to eliminate the growing number of starving citizens. At this time is Ireland, there was extreme poverty and wide gap between the poor and the rich, the tenements and the landlords, respectively. Throughout the essay Swift uses satire and irony as a way to attack the indifference between classes. Swift is not seriously suggesting cannibalism, he is trying to make known the desperate state of the lower class and the need for a social and moral reform in Ireland.
While describing the poor, Swift portrays them as animals, using “breeders” to describe mothers, “plump and fat for a good table,” to refer to the children, and calling the body of a dead child a “carcass.” By using these words that are generally only used to describe animals, even though the Irish are clearly human, Swift presents to the audience the degradation of the Irish in British eyes, hoping that his extreme treatment of the Irish as something nonhuman would remind his readers of their own views and make them question whether they’re justified. Despite his stated goal of decreasing poverty in the nation, Jonathan Swift comes off as having an uncaring tone for the Irish people in his “Modest Proposal”, but his apparent insensitivity is meant to have the opposite effect on his audience. He tries to open their eyes to both the experiences of the Irish and their dehumanization at the hands of the British so that they would care more about the Irish poor. Though his strategy may seem unconventional, with not a word in his proposal directly supporting a genuine concern for the Irish, it’s actually a fairly common form of argument.
Swift states in his story “at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.” (Gray) This imagery is very ironic to the reader because in today’s society we usually cook animals or different types of food, but in this decaying society Swift says that they will use these cooking methods to prepare year old children. Would you want to have a child sitting on the dinner table as a main meal of your Christmas dinner? Swift continues his imagery by stating “I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child.” This imagery of a carcass of a good fat child relates to seeing a carcass of a chicken or turkey on thanksgiving, and this helps reinforce the decay of society just like the decaying carcass. The decay continues through this imagery because of the citizens blindness to the fact that they would pay for a child's carcass than any other animal, and this is also ironic to the reader because we aren’t used to thinking of a child’s carcass as a source of food. The imagery Swift displays through his story enhances the reader’s understanding of the theme occurring. The theme of moral and ethical decay is brought to light through the ironic imagery of the citizens paying for the carcass of a child and using traditional cooking methods that would be used on animals in today’s society is
In 1729, Jonathan Swift published a pamphlet called “A Modest Proposal”. It is a satirical piece that describes a radical and humorous proposal to a very serious problem. The problem Swift was attacking was the poverty and state of destitution that Ireland was in at the time. Swift wanted to bring attention to the seriousness of the problem and does so by satirically proposing to eat the babies of poor families in order to rid Ireland of poverty. Clearly, this proposal is not to be taken seriously, but merely to prompt others to work to better the state of the nation.
One of the voices that is present throughout the story is that of irony. The story itself is ironic since no one can take Swifts proposal seriously. This irony is clearly demonstrated at the end of the story; Swift makes it clear that this proposal would not affect him since his children were grown and his wife unable to have any more children. It would be rather absurd to think that a rational man would want to both propose this and partake in the eating of another human being. Therefore, before an analyzation can continue, one has to make the assumption that this is strictly a fictional work and Swift had no intention of pursuing his proposal any further.
Swift explains how selling a marketable child will be profitable and why the people of Dublin are willing butcher children to survive. He does this by saying, “I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs” (585). Swift uses verbal irony in a powerful way to state that Irish people should not be treated like animals killed as food. Swift points out the famine and the terrible living conditions that are threatening the Irish population by stating that children are a good source of food just like real animals do.... ... middle of paper ...