The year is 1729, a time which was very dark in Ireland. Jonathan Swift writes about how everyone but the poor were suffering in his writing, “A Modest Proposal”. He writes about this dark time and gives crazy yet smart ideas. Mary Shelley’s, “Frankenstein” also has this foreboding tone. Both writings are dark and have the reader wanting to know what will be said next. Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1667. His father, also named Jonathan Swift, died just two months after Swift was born. Swift was sick as a child and was later found out he suffered from Meniere’s Disease. Without a steady income his mother would struggle to give him the best life. She gave him to her husband’s brother, Godwin Swift, a member of the professional …show more content…
The people were suffering and no one would help. Poverty was tremendous at this time. A large scale of Irish immigrated to the colonies with a “I need to get out” mindset. Swift writes in “A Modest Proposal”, “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.”(10) The idea of eating the children born to poverty sounds crazy. Although crazy if one takes the morals out of the situation it almost seems smart. This shows how desperate and awful the conditions were for the people. Swift also talks about this suffering, he says, “But I am not in the least pain upon that matter because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected.” (18) The whole piece is dark and makes the reader realize the misery, so much it is unimaginable. Lyman A. Baker writes an article describing these times. Corruption and greed were the majority of the problem. “But snobbery and corruption were not the most forceful goads to Irish resentment of the English presence and policy.” (Baker, 1)
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...
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.
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.
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.
In gothic novels tragic figures are symbols of pain to the characters. Victor Frankenstein brings misfortune to his loved ones, which concludes to his overall tragedy. Ironically the monster in this novel is Frankenstein the creator not the creature. He has seven victims including himself and his fall is due to his ambition to be superior.
Critic Northrop Frye says, “Tragic heroes tower as the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, the great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divine lightning”. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein greatly exhibits the theme of the consequence of knowledge and irresponsibility among others through its tragic hero, Victor Frankenstein. Northrop Frye’s quote is certainly true when looking at Frankenstein’s situation. Victor is a victim of his divine lightning, and ultimately causes much trouble for himself; however, Victor also serves as the tragic hero in the lives of the monster, his family, and his friends.
The entire proposal stands as a satire in itself; an analogy paralleling the tyrannical attitude of the British toward their Irish counterparts and the use of babies as an economic commodity. In short, Swift suggests that Irish parents are owned by the British, and babies are property of their parents, therefore, England has a right to consume the Irish babies. Swift uses this syllogism to show the British that their despotic reign in Ireland has left the miserable nation in poverty and disarray. Historically, it has been evidenced that England first colonized Ireland for security against, at that time, the Irish barbarians that inhabited the land. Thus, England continues to justify their power over Ireland as “restraining the temptation to consume among England's enemies” (Mahoney). Along with “the assurance of English military power to defend the colony from threat,” the degree of “English political and economic control that the colonists deeply resented,” grew exponentially into a full blown autocracy over Ireland (Mahoney). Swift writes, “Some persons of a desponding nature are in great concern.” This is not simply a concern ...
Through extreme hyperboles, Swift underscores the gargantuan social issues afflicting Ireland in the 1720s. While proposing a plan to solve all of Ireland’s problems, Swift explains that “a young healthy child well nursed is… a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled” (Swift 59-60). Swift exaggerates all of the effects of his plan, especially the supposedly tasty “boiled” child. Rather than simply stating that eating children would solve all of Ireland's problems, Swift goes on to list the many ways these dishes would be prepared. Even
In the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the main theme revolves around the internal and external consequences of being isolated from others. Being isolated from the world could result in a character losing his/her mental state and eventually causing harm to themselves or others. Because both Victor Frankenstein and the creature are isolated from family and society, they experienced depression, prejudice, and revenge.
Many people know that Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was part of a family of famed Romantic era writers. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was one of the first leaders of the feminist movement, her father, William Godwin, was a famous social philosopher, and her husband, Percy Shelley, was one of the leading Romantic poets of the time ("Frankenstein: Mary Shelley Biography."). What most people do not know, however, is that Mary Shelley dealt with issues of abandonment her whole life and fear of giving birth (Duncan, Greg. "Frankenstein: The Historical Context."). When she wrote Frankenstein, she revealed her hidden fears and desires through the story of Victor Frankenstein’s creation, putting him symbolically in her place (Murfin, Ross. "Psychoanalytic Criticism and Frankenstein.”). Her purpose, though possibly unconsciously, in writing the novel was to resolve both her feelings of abandonment by her parents, and fears of her own childbirth.
Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a shocking satire that discusses the dire poverty in Ireland. It says if one is born poor they will stay that way unless society puts them to use. Children are food to be eaten. In an economic slump children will be used to feed and clothe Ireland’s population. Swift’s purpose for writing A Modest Proposal was to call attention to the exploiting and oppressing by the English to the Irish. He wanted to shock his readers by proposing his “modest” proposal. He presents selling babies as food to reduce overpopulation. This causes the reader to disregard this suggestion. Swift wanted to raise awareness on the issue that was haunting Ireland. Throughout A Modest Proposal, Swift effectively uses verbal irony, diction, and sentence structure to achieve his purpose of making people realize that there are problems in society that needed to be handled in a reasonable manner. He also wanted to help advance the country’s trade, provide for infants, relieve the poor and help the rich. Swift ultimately wanted to get people thinking about actual solutions that could solve their current problems.
Jonathan Swift is a well-known author and satirist who graduated from Oxford University in England. He is very educ...
A “Modest Proposal” is written by a man who had been exiled from England and forced to live among Irish citizens for many years during which he observed major problems in Ireland that needed a solution. The writer of this piece is Jonathan Swift, and in his proposal, “The Modest Proposal,” Swift purpose is to offer a possible solution to the growing problem of the homeless and poverty stricken women and children on the streets of Ireland. Swift adopts a caring tone in order to make his proposal sound reasonable to his audience, trying to convince them that he truly cares about the problems facing Ireland’s poor and that making the children of the poor readily available to the rich for entertainment and as a source of food would solve both the economic and social problems facing Ireland.
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.
Mary Shelley in her book Frankenstein addresses numerous themes relevant to the current trends in society during that period. However, the novel has received criticism from numerous authors. This paper discusses Walter Scott’s critical analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in his Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Review of Frankenstein (1818).