A Modest Proposal Rhetorical Devices

Authors tend to use a variation of rhetorical strategies to effectively convey their central idea. In Modest Proposal, Dr. Jonathan Swift professionally presents the overwhelming conflict occurring in Ireland during the early seventeenth century. By including his trenchant use of satire, Swift can effectively call attention to the unjust conditions of Ireland to the English people. In the proposal, Swift presents a very persuasive rhetorical strategy through his use of a formal diction, a grotesque imagery, and a satirical irony, that all transition to his use of appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos, to generate the purpose of his central idea. To effectively focus the reader’s attention on the tragedy taking place in Ireland, Swift includes

The use of his satire both adds and detracts from the essay. On the one hand, when discussing a concept as wild as eating children to the extent that Swift does, it

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift was an innovator of the writing style called Satire. Jonathan Swift used an extreme example to make his point. In A Modest Proposal Swift uses the example of cooking, eating and selling the children of poverty stricken families to help make income for the people of Ireland. This extreme example got many people's attention after all Swift suggested cannibalism of young children. That is what Satire is, the use of humor, irony, or exaggeration to expose and criticize other peoples vices or stupidity to make a point.

Jonathan Swift's 1729 essay, A Modest Proposal, was a true example of satire at its best. Many readers at the time rejected the essay because they failed to understand the irony. It is presently one of the most well known works of satire and is a classic example of the technique most commonly used today. The entire essay from the title down to the last sentence were meant to be taken ironically, which is a rare form, but very effective when trying getting a point across. This essay will explain why the text was meant to be taken ironically and why Swift used irony instead of straightforward statements.

A Modest Proposal I believe uses satire to make its point, which is the use of irony, humor or exaggeration to criticize the ideas of others. Swift clearly does not truthfully hope for the people of Ireland to sell their children as food, but he’s using the idea to convey a message. Swift makes amusement of identical pamphlets that were being broadcast at the time. His word choice throughout the story, including the word modest in the title, highlights this by making fun of the false modesty in the tone of many of the pamphlets. Their style may have seemed logical, but their propositions presented an pride only too ordinary among the British ruling class toward their Irish subjects.

In A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift challenges the Neo-classical period by creating a sense of instability in their way of thinking. He attacks the society by carelessly endorsing cannibalism in hopes to help Ireland through their economic crisis. He demonstrates this by humbly proposing and assuring "that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food."

To begin, in The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope uses satire to invoke a capricious, melancholy mood to illustrate the absurdity of fighting over the cutting of one's hair. Hidden inside this poem is a crafty criticism of the society that helps create the crisis over the stolen lock. A Society in which appearances ere more important to a person’s sense of identity, and treats the insignificant with utmost importance.

In the essay “A Modest Proposal” written by Jonathan Swift, the author proposes a solution for hunger, poverty, and overcrowding in Ireland by eating children. Swift uses satire and sarcasm throughout his entire essay in order to grab his audience’s attention. The essay discusses how the British government treats the people of Ireland and compares it to the consumption and trade of human babies. In paragraphs 20 to 26 Swift lists advantages of his proposal, also with rhetorical appeals and rhetorical devices strategies such as metonymy, oxymoron, metaphor, and irony to develop his position in the argument and reveal the real meaning behind his proposal.

The short story, “A Modest Proposal,” written by Johnathan Swift, is anything but a modest proposal. Swift satirically proposes a compromise to rectify a burden of the Irish people. The nation’s predicament is the children of the poor people being a hinderance to their parents and their country. The compromise is eating the infants to not only save food that would be needed for the kids but to give a larger amount of food to the poor people. Clearly this satirical essay is just that, satirical, but the way Swift delivers his proposition is very persuasive. Through his use of rhetorical devices such as tone and litotes he is able to emphasize his points, while at the same time he throws in a hefty amount of irony to keep the reader from thinking the piece is truthful and serious.

When one thinks of the phrase “A Modest Proposal,” does one come to think of fattening babies so they can sell as meat. In Jonathan Swift’s essay “A Modest Proposal,” Swift uses satirical writing to communicate with the reader to expose the critical situation of the poor people of Ireland. Whom besides going through a tough period of famine have to endure the overwhelming taxation rates of the English empire. The author’s proposal intends to convince the public of the incompetence of Ireland’s politicians, the lack empathy of the wealthy, the English oppression, and the inability of the Irish to mobilize themselves against this situation. Johnathan proposed an outrageous solution that the Irish folks eat their children at the age of one or sell them in the market as meet. Finally, he manifests to be open to other suggestions to help overcome the country’s crisis. The proposal was made strategically using several different parts: the text, author, audience, purpose, and setting to persuade the tax to go lower.

The sarcastic views of Swift’s understanding of the poverty of Ireland leads him to make a proposal for a solution to poverty, where he ignores the concern of human morale by displaying the lacking efforts of England to help. Swift uses methods that work to get or help better understand a situation, for example being sarcastic in a situation where a person wants something out of the situation by satire. The undeniable effect of satire catches the attention of England to further display the poverty of Ireland which is displayed throughout Swift’s Modest Proposal with exaggeration, incongruity and reversal.

In Pope’s mock-heroic verse The Rape of the Lock (1717) what is criticised is a moral fault: mainly, immoderate female moral pride. There are several versions of the poem. However, we have preferred the last one which consists of 794 lines in five cantos, as it was revised to be included in Pope’s Works (1717) and is the one which stands now. Written in heroic

In Pope’s The Rape of the Lock he highly insulting towards women and he focus’ on a horrible incident that happened to the main character of the poem, Belinda’s hair and tries to use satires to make it humours and turn her bad experience into a laughable event, although it is not very serious, but Belinda’s appearance

Trivial matters make a good satire. A satire, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a poem ridiculing prevalent vices or follies by means of elevated language and other poetic devices. Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock poem is a mock-epic, a subgenre of the satire. Pope’s poem follows a pattern that resembles epic poetry – It is relatively long, divided in cantos, developed in heroic couplets in Iambic Pentameter. Also, the action of the story takes place in a single day, in a single location: London; thus, there is a unity of time, place and action. By means of these devices, the speaker creates a mock-epic where otherworld characters –Sylphs, spirits, and so forth – interact with Belinda, an earthly character with the intention of protecting her from any harm (Canto 2, 122); Belinda is an aristocratic young lady who, according to fate (Canto 3, 151) –a central point in epic poetry, loses one of her locks at the hands of the baron in the social gathering that is taking place later on that day at the Hampton Court Palace. Belinda, being part of the aristocratic circles, is determined to be the center of attention in that social gathering, for she wants to be highly regarded (Canto 3, line 25); however the opposite happens when the Baron cuts one of her locks that Belinda feels dishonored (Canto 4, 152), according to her viewpoint. It is the excessive importance that Belinda gives to her flock what, by a change of focus, the speaker uses to play with the

The Rape of the Lock is a social satire upon feminine frivolity. In his poem, author Alexander Pope uses light humor and clever mockery to critic the women of his time and to introduce his readers to what he believed to be the many “Female Errors” of his time. To do so, Pope uses Horatio satire, a literary term for lighthearted, gentle satire usually used to point out general human failings, to comment on 17th century women's excessive obsession of self embellishment and self decoration.