Modest Proposal And Mean Girls: A Comparative Analysis

The movie “mean girls” is about a sixteen-year old homeschooled girl named Cady Heron who lived in Africa for the last 12 years of her life. After 12 years she returns to the United States and is now going to High school. Attending public school for the first time in her life. The homeschooled girl entered girl world that is full of lies, drama, gossip, boys and rules. She started hanging out with the “Plastics” and become friends with. The movie showed many example of conflict management styles, it reflects on the American culture values and beliefs, and power style.

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 movie Mean Girls is filled with characters that are easy to relate with, quotable lines, and a hilarious but realistic plot line. One other major thing that the movie has is concepts of the development that occurs during late adolescences including social, emotional, and cognitive development. Mean Girls is about a girl named Cady that is attending a public high school for the first time after being home schooled in Africa for all of her life. She knows nothing of the American teenage culture or customs or about the public school system. During her first week of school Cady becomes friends with two people in one of her classes named Janis and Damien, who unbeknownst to her are a part of the

Satirical Elements Behind Mean Girls Mean Girls, a movie released in 2004 and written by Tina Fey, uses a array of satirical devices to makes her audience convulse with laughter, but also to poke fun at the stereotypical cliques associated with high school students. Some people worship Mean Girls as the end all be all for accurate representations of high school, but it is, indeed, a satire that utilizes lampoon and caricature to emphasize the ridiculousness of the drama stemming from the popularity hierarchy present in many high schools. While the movie attempts to point out the flaws in how seriously our culture takes high school drama and popularity, Fey successfully creates a Horatian satire with the persona being the naïf, Cady Heron.

"A Modest Proposal" is a social commentary written by Jonathan Swift, he uses techniques such as irony, satire, and sarcasm to mock the Irish government of his time. After reading Swift's essay half way through, one might not believe how graphic and shocking it's been written. He wrote a letter suggesting they sell the children of the poor to the wealthy families, as this will provide food, clothing, and will decrease the population. Throughout the letter he uses remarkable details as to how they should go about eating the children, treating them as livestock. The letter ends with a completely different tone when the author explains the absurdity of his proposal and instead suggests something a bit more realistic and humane like the wealthy should give up some of their luxuries. He uses a lot of thorough, literalized metaphors, and ironic and sarcasm techniques to a devastating effect. A Modest Proposal has been judged as an excellent work of rhetorical brilliancy, and it acquires readers critical attention up until now Swift exposes all the bizarre remarks and ideas he has been discussing about are all a humorous way to make fun of the way the government is run and how they are not serving their country. Afterwards he expresses a proper proposal of taking away some of the wealthier people's luxuries in order to help their economy. this essay explains the three techniques used in Swift's proposal, such as; Irony, Satire and Sarcasm.

The movie Mean Girls follows Cady Heron as she experiences high school for the first time in her life. As she is thrown into a new society, this film provides the opportunity to socially analyze high school. From figuring out her new culture and society that she is engrossed in to realizing how social status can both negatively and positively affect her values and beliefs, there are many concepts that Cady learns and is taught as she makes her way through her first year of public school.

Stereotypically, men and women have very different roles in the eyes of society. Gender roles and stereotypes have a history in religious, political, legal and economic systems. In reality, men and women are more alike than most people assume. Throughout the world there are struggles with identity, power, and violence occurring everyday between both men and women. The film Mean Girls, directed by Mark Walters, follows a young girl, Cady’s, transition from being home schooled to public high school. Cady enters the school’s group of mean girls, otherwise known as “the plastics”, which consists of Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, and Karen Smith. Throughout the film each character struggles with their true identity.

Satire is a form of literature in which an author tries to demonstrate his or her point of view by ridiculing. The author uses heavy irony and sarcasm in order to criticize a social issue. A perfect example of a work of satire is Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. In this satirical essay, Jonathan Swift attacks on the issue of the Irish poverty in the 1700s. The essay sarcastically suggests that Ireland’s social and economic problems would be quickly solved by putting the children of impoverished Irish families on the food market. Through heavy exaggeration, Jonathan

Deciding what is most important in life is often a struggle, especially during high school. Mean Girls is a teen comedy film loosely based on the self-help book titled Queen Bees and Wannabes. The main character is a high school student named Cady that just moved from Africa and has been homeschooled her whole life. The American culture and society she is introduced to is embodied by the Plastics, who are the most popular girls at North Shore High: Regina, Gretchen, and Karen. The pressure put on Cady by society causes her to struggle to decide what her priorities should be. Mean Girls criticizes the traditional notions of femininity that are expected of women, as they are not required for them to be successful and accomplished.

Swift wants the reader to describe the persona he adopts as one with a deep understanding of the deplorable circumstances in Ireland, so that he is deemed reasonable in his proposed solution for the state of the kingdom. He successfully achieves this by incorporating thorough descriptions of his plan, such as in the explanation having 20,000 poor children reserved for breeding and the remaining 100,000 used as sustenance for the rest of the populace. Swift also forms a solid argument by appealing to pathos in addressing heartbreaking topics such as, “the mothers who, 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,” which promotes sympathy in the readers, thereby influencing them to agree with his proposal to counteract such unfortunate circumstances.

The movie Mean Girls is set in a high school setting. The movie starts with a new girl coming to the school as a first time public school student. Cady, the new student, is immediately accepted into a group of friends, but later invited to another. The first clique she joins pushes her to become friends with the second group. This subsequently led to a typical high school drama scene. The ways these high school students go about their normal life seem very alike to the “typical” high school. Even though the movie Mean Girls by Mark Waters, uses humor to portray some questionable realism, it effectively depicts characteristics of ordinary high school life and uses realistic characters.

Swift when faced with a humanitarian crisis, a tyrannical English Empire, and a strong divide between social classes, uses his pent up agitation to develop a piece of satire which both compels and shocks those who read his work. “A Modern Proposal” is centered around the idea of cannibalism. In Swift’s reformation of Irish society a new division of laborers would be created labeled “breeders”. These “breeders” would raise infants to the ripe age of one, and then sell them to the wealthy to be slaughtered, served and possibly made into apparel. Throughout his proposal Swift uses comic juxtaposition and grotesque elements to further convey his criticism of Ireland. By comparing the lower class breeders and their children to animals, Swift uses comic juxtaposition to hone in on the notion that the impoverished people in society have long been denied the humanity the wealthy pride themselves on. No longer being seen as meaningful, important human beings, the poor are left begging for the respect that comes with money. Pregnant woman seen as being mere vessels for produce in his imaginary world, are compared to cows saying “Men would become as fond of their wives during the time of their pregnancy as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, their sows when they are ready to Farrow” (5). By linking together items which normally do not go together, Swift is able to divulgue into the responsibilities and vulnerabilities associated with womanhood. Swift futher’s his

In the teen comedy Mean Girls, directed by Mark Waters, the protagonist (Cady Heron) is welcomed into the stereotypical high school setting after being raised in Africa for all of her educational path. Cady, never being in a public-school setting, comes across the Plastics: Regina George (unspoken leader), Gretchen Wieners (gossip queen), and Karen Smith (the stupid, clueless one), who are at the top of the social pyramid. Befriended by the girls, Cady is left to decide whether or not she belongs in this clique or if her place exists in a different one. Throughout the film satirist and comedic scenes are used to show the different sexist lenses and stereotypes that women are viewed with.

First, by applying Marxist lens to “A Modest Proposal” readers begin to see the oppression of certain characters and how class plays a role in this fictional society. In “A Modest Proposal” Swift uses sarcasm to convey his message that society is broken and the people must do something to fix it, to heal it. Swift’s proposal is so satirical, it makes you laugh, but also feel guilty about laughing. Swift is proposing babies be eaten, that’s horrible, but it’s also so absurd that it’s funny. Society plays a huge role in this story, the rich live nice, luxurious lives. For the rich, their biggest problem is what a nuisance the babies are, children in their world that run recklessly through the town, thieving and causing mayhem. Swift states, “... pick up a livelihood by stealing till they arrive at six years old;” (1) at six years old, kids already have to steal. The rich view this stealing as a selfish crime, the poor see it as doing what

Swift’s development of the absurd proposal for eating young children so that “the poorer tenants will have something valuable” or that there “would be constant customers for infants flesh” is enhanced by numerous examples of biting irony. Such irony exists even in the title: “A Modest Proposal.” Upon reading the text, the audience can agree that Swift’s proposal is far from modest and such irony servers to enrage and puzzle the readers to the point that they question why he would be using such shifting, ironic diction. Swift’s use of absurd logic to his proposal supplements the effectiveness of verbal irony, since no one would believe that children should be eaten to improve “in the art of making good bacon”. The aforementioned examples illustrate Swift’s craftiness and the use irony to almost mock the audience. In true Juveliean fashion, such techniques are designed to arouse the reader to anger and suspicion of what is trying to be said. A satire based on the Horatian type wouldn’t use such blatantly offensive irony. Rather, the tone of voice would be “gentler, more good humored and sympathetic” (“Horatian Satire”).