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Swift uses a lot of statistics and calculations to support his proposal. For example on page 915, “I calculate there may be about 200,000 couple…I subtract 30,000 couple….annually born.” There are also calculations on pages 916 and 918, showing that he has planned all of the details of his proposal out, which helps make A Modest Proposal, a strong, augmentative essay. Swift also explains all the benefits of his proposal, as shown on pages 917 and 918, “For first, as I have already observed….Sixthly….fear of a miscarriage.” As a result of Swift explaining his proposal and benefits detail by detail, the essay becomes stronger and the proposal starts to look appealing.…
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Swift paints us a picture of his everyday view, the sight of impoverished citizens begging in the streets, pleading for money to feed their hungry families. With no obvious solution to the problem, Swift jokingly proposes a cheap, easy method that rich and poor can partake in- simply feed the peasant children to the wealthy as a delicacy.…
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However, lest one think that Swift's satire is merely the weapon of exaggeration, it is important to note that exaggeration is only one facet of his satiric method. Swift uses mock seriousness and understatement; he parodies and burlesques; he presents a virtue and then turns it into a vice. He takes pot-shots at all sorts of sacred cows. Besides science, Swift debunks the whole sentimental attitude surrounding children. At birth, for instance, Lilliputian children were "wisely" taken from their parents and given to the State to rear. In an earlier satire (A Modest Proposal), he had proposed that the very poor in Ireland sell their children to the English as gourmet…
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Thesis: Swift uses rhetorical devices to convey a message to the government and citizens to change the law and help Ireland’s economy. Swift uses exaggeration to make his real plan sound like common sense compared to his fake plan and also to show how ridiculous other plans are. Throughout the passage swift explains that many people in Ireland have pamphlets containing plans that are absurd. He mimics ridiculous ideas of other people by using fake, exaggerating and dumb ideas and using it on the passage to show how bad it sounds. An example is “The skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots.”…
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Swift uses exaggeration constantly throughout the passage to blatantly show the increasing flaws with plans poorly crafted by others and to unveil his idea to glorify the nation into his vision while removing British dominance and cultural existence within the nation’s boundaries. Swift states in the passage, “and I believe no Gentlemen would repine to give Ten Shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said will make four Dishes of excellent Nutritive Meat.” Swift uses this statement to show how desperate the…
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Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” incorporates satire in his writing that exposes England’s economical exploitation of Ireland. The full title includes, “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 Public” (Swift 558). His essay, very skillfully, brings shame to and sheds light upon the impoverishment of the Irish people at the hands of England’s greed for profits. He employed satire and irony as an effective tool to make the reader understand the state of oppression of the Irish using the most extreme statements. In his writing, although grotesque, Swift’s use of satire effectively confronts the abuses and shortcomings of the political and economic structure of the time, and he successfully uses sarcasm as a constructive method to criticize the social issues faced by the poor Irish natives.…
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Swift lets us know right off the bat that the fictitious author of his essay is a cultured man. One finds the first evidence of Swift's authors formal background in the title, "A Modest Proposal: For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public." Swift then continues to drive the point home by using complex sentences throughout the rest of the essay, as well as maintaining a relatively high level of diction (there's not a contraction to be found in his essay). Swift uses "sustenance" in instead of "food" and "prodigious" instead of "large" to help accomplish the writers status as sophisticated. With some knowledge of the time period this essay was written in, one realizes that Swift's fictitious author satires the way the English treated the poor during Ireland's potato famine. It is the complex…
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Swift uses a different yet equally effective approach. He begins his essay, 'A Modest Proposal' not by introducing his proposal but by naming all the atrocities happening in Ireland that would be solved by his proposal. Swift's suggestion is that parents who are unable to support their children should sell them for to be made into food and clothing. This mock-serious intro and his detailed and calculated proposition so shock and disgust the mind that it forces Swifts audience to realize…
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Swift finally gets down to some real arguments when the narrator lists all the arguments that he will not give any time to. If eating the children were off the table, the people would have to turn to realistic arguments like these, such as the encouragement of virtue and thrift.…
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The late 1600s and early 1700s in particular were a difficult time for Ireland. Catholics made up most of the Irish poor who constituted 80 percent of the population and owned less than one-third of the land. As the Protestant English landowners took over in the 1700s, the Irish Catholics dove deeper into lives of famine and poverty. In “A Modest Proposal”, Jonathan Swift presents several claims and supporting evidence that the consuming of the Irish nation’s growing number of children will solve the poverty epidemic as well as decrease religious enemies.…
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Jonathan Swift, a celebrated name during the eighteenth century, was an economist, a writer, and a cleric who was later named Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Although Swift took on many different roles throughout his career, the literary form of satire seemed to be his realm of expertise. Because satire flourished during the eighteenth century, Jonathan Swift is arguably one of the most influential political satirists of his time. In one of his famous essays, A Modest Proposal, Swift expresses his anger and frustration towards the oppression of the Irish by the English government. In order to gain attention from his audience, Swift proposes the outrageous thesis that the solution to Ireland’s problem of poverty is to feed children of the poor to the wealthy, aristocratic families. To whom Swift is directing his satire…
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Even before the essay, Swift implements his 'dark humor ' with his title. A Modest Proposal is truly anything but modest. The absurdities he uses to portray his solutions to all of Ireland 's problems. For example, offering suggestions of cannibalism is outrageous, yet follows still remains consistent with 'dark humor. ' The narrator says, "A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter"(385). He uses this and many other absurd scenarios in order to support his 'dark humor. 'Hidden amongst all the rhetorical tricks, lies a true moral theme. The speaker 's ludicrous solutions to Ireland 's problems cause the reader to become aware of the extent of the dilemma. Tremendously disgusted with the speaker 's solutions, the readers protest to the inhumane living conditions of the Irish lower-class. In order to clear all doubt against Swift 's proposal, he addresses the problem of possibly destroying the Irish race if their infants are all sacrificed. Swift proposes saving a number of children, strictly for procreation. The narrator says, "I do therefore humbly offer it to the public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed; whereof only one fourth part to be males, which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine; and my reason is that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages; therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females" (384). In the midst of all the absurd proposals, Swift also introduces his genuine reforms. He includes discouraging vanity, taxing…
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Swifts word choices are disturbing and gruesome, in order to pull emotions out of the readers. Swift is trying to make the readers dislike his idea so that they will propose an idea to fix the problem that will actually work. The work is a little exaggerated because I believe that a person's morals would kick in and they would not be able to actually eat babies.…
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He reveals that the children are the reason for the nation’s economic downfall and proves this by indicating that the poor infants either hurt society when they grow up because they will commit wrongful decisions as they were predetermined by their degraded childhood or harm their parents because they prevent them from having employment and earning money. However, through an understanding of satire, the real problem is the British government, Irish politicians, and the wealthier class. Swift expresses that an advantage of his solution would be adding more beef in the form of human meat for its exports to England; implying that since this tyrannical country is taking all of Ireland’s food, they might as well eat their babies. The politicians and the rich are indifferent as they refuse to address the issues in Ireland plunging the population into poverty. The author sarcastically expresses, “therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children,” implying a direct attack towards them, indicating that he is exercising Juvenalian satire. Throughout the speech, Swift applies incongruity, which can be concluded because the idea of consuming infants in a Protestant dominated country is absurd. Exaggeration is also applied as the reader can observe that eating infants to decrease a population is extreme. However, this is…
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The art of procrastination has troubled high school kids for quite some time now. Im sitting here typing my own essay at the eleventh hour, hoping that as the deadline approaches I can piece together an essay to save my grade. “Procrastination is for the efficient at heart”, this quote captures the procrastinators only strength: the ability to make the most out of the time they have. Most students will crack as the pressure of meeting the deadline with quality work overbears them, as they regretfully wish they spent their time wiser. Few will rise up to the challenge and meet the standards, but what separates the students who succeed and those who miserably fail?…
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