Rhetorical Analysis Of A Modest Proposal

Swift begins his essay by describing walking down a street in Ireland. He describes how you would see, “beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms” (Swift, Para. 1). This gives the reader a mental

Furthermore, Swift also creates a strong argument throughout this essay, with the use of logos; appealing to logic and his use of statistics. Swift states that the “number of souls in this kingdom…of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couples who wives are breeders”; furthermore proposing that an infant can be sold for “two shillings per anun” and “with eight shillings net profit the mother will also benefit and be fit for work to produce another child.” Another quote that implies the reader of his logic and reason , is when he states in these lines that an infant’s flesh can be seasoned throughout the year “with a little pepper or salt…especially in the winter.” He also states that the carcass

In Jonathan Swift’s satire, “A Modest Proposal”, Swift writes about the starving people of Ireland in the early 1700’s. He makes a wild and absurd proposal to help remedy the problems of overpopulation and poverty. Swift wants to make a political statement by using the “children” as satire to grasp the attention of the audience - the English people, the Irish politicians and the rich – and make them aware of the political, moral, and social problems. In “A Modest Proposal”, Swift’s arguments are presented effectively by using pathos (emotional appeal), ethos (ethics and values), and logos (logic reasoning and facts).

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.

A way that Johnathan Swift used A Modest Proposal to show pathos in the story was when he said "Their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn into thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender of Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbados." This Shows Pathos because he is trying to make the audience feel bad for the children. This would make the audience feel bad for the children because it makes it seem as if they will end up living a bad life such as crime or will coward from their own country. As said earlier, the Irish thinks that it would be the solution to the economic problem which is to sell their own children. A better example of pathos in the story was when he said "But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real. Of no expense and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in England."

Throughout Swift’s content, he uses rhetorical devices such as pathos, logos, and ethos. Jonathan Swift intelligently uses pathos to play a huge roll on people’s emotion in an effort to convince them of the legitimacy of his argument, “… and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting, although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs,” (689). Logos appeals to the logical thinking of the audience is introduced in support of his case. Swift gives the logical portion by using numbers to show how many unfortunate babies would meet their demise yearly, “… the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males… one male will be sufficient to serve four Females. That the remaining hundred thousand may at a year old be offered in sale,” (689). Ethos was shown when he talked to high authority people about the situation, “Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March... For we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician… there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent,”

Overall, Swift is also using irony by relating this unheard of cruelty to babies to cruelty animals. He suggests that buying children alive and “dressing them hot from the knife as we do roasting pigs” (411) is the best way to serve them. This was intended to tell the audience that the Protestants are basically treating the Catholics like animals with no regard to life. This carefully crafted technique lets the reader see how malicious the Protestants are actually being, and that they are killing Catholic babies alive by ruining any chance at a good life. Swift did not actually mean for people to go out and cook babies like pigs to get the most satisfactory, he simply meant that if you are going to treat them like pigs, you might as well eat them like pigs. If the people of Britain can’t see that through adults, maybe

“I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs” (A Modest Proposal). Comparing the children to roasting a pig shows that the children do not mean that much to anyone and they can just be burned alive and no one would care. He also uses the word “flesh” generally to refer to the children when they’re being served and eaten which is an animalistic association (A Modest Proposal). Usually human children would not be referred to as “flesh” or “pigs” at all. This, again, reflects upon how England and the Irish ruling classes treated the people of Ireland, especially the less fortunate. Other words Swift has a tendency of using are “breeders”, “males”, and “females” (A Modest Proposal). It’s not common to hear these words in regard to a human being especially coming from a priest. More directly with his wording, Swift speaks of the landlords in a negative manner. “I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents…” (A Modest Proposal). This statement shows the way the English landlords would take every penny their tenants had. England and Ireland’s wealthy class did not care for their people what so ever, and Swift’s satire was very effective in proving these points.

Indeed the proposal to eat the poor is a shocking statement, but what adds to the shock value is the delivery. For example, take the last statement regarding a fricassee. This statement is not necessary for the point, but it certainly adds to the appalling nature of the quote. The sarcastic nature puts Swift so far above the poor subjects that it evokes an extremely humorous response. Swift digresses and uses sarcasm numerous times in the essay, to emphasize truisms in a manner that tries to be less than direct, but has the ultimate effect of clarity. For example Swift proposes that some one of the uses for the children would be to

Swift demands the audience to recognize the narrator's purpose "having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infant's, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich." (Swift 489) The speaker optimistically believes that his idea is for the best. If Swift did not believe that his idea would not have a positive outcome he would not have suggested. Regardless of Swift's inhumane suggestion, which is negative, he only tries to reveal the positive of the situation. This feeling of insecurity is his way of disparaging the Irish and English government.

First and foremost, Swift starts off with an appeal to logic. Swift starts by criticising the kingdom for example “I think it is agreed by all parties, that this

Indirectly, the ideals from Bacon’s, The Four Idols, is agreeable with the pamphlet, A Modest Proposal, due to the false notions people believe in society. The tone of Swift efficiently lets him get his message across, while Bacon’s idea came across directly and upfront. Even with Swift giving advice to all, the ironic event is Swift came out with this pamphlet anonymously because he knew of the consequence afterwards like stated in the “Idols of the Marketplace.” All in all, Swift’s opinions regarding how individuals need to believe in the true notions of others, directly correlates with the beliefs Bacon stated in The Four

Jonathan Swift would think that everyone’s responsibility is to buy children from the poor, fatten them up for a year, and then eat them. If you’re not into eating children, then you’ll be sacrificing a lot. If you are a cannibal, like me (since I’m Irish), you’re obviously not risking a lot of your comfort like people who aren’t cannibals. So, people should make the world a better place by contributing to the eating of children. No matter if you’re anti-cannibal or pro-cannibal, you should be eating children. It’s the peoples’ responsibility to sacrifice any shred of comfort they have to eat children. Our responsibility is to help the “[beggars] of the female sex followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every

A good satirist often disguises the key point of an essay and Swift is no exception. After outlining aspects of his proposal, he makes an effective appeal to reason: "After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual" (116). Using the tone of high-minded satire to the very end, Swift concludes with a short paragraph recusing himself from personal gain were his proposal to be enacted.

The way in which Swift presents his speaker’s ridiculous ideas in “A Modest Proposal” not only projects negatively onto his political opinions, but also depicts his own opinions by positioning himself as opposite to his speaker. Swift presents his own opinions by endowing his speaker’s with a shocking lack of empathy for human beings, implying that Swift himself is at the other end of the spectrum. In Erin Mackie’s article "Swift And Mimetic Sickness", she postulates that “In ‘A Modest Proposal’ Swift mimics the modern policy man to exhibit his incapacity, at once cognitive and visceral, to register a categorical, that is epistemological, failure and its accompanying moral horrors. With his plan for factory farming Irish infants, the Modern Projector makes us sick precisely because he is not sickened” (364). In doing so, Swift not only establishes himself in the opposite camp, but also positions anyone who disagrees with his political stance to become identified with the cannibalistic speaker in “A Modest Proposal”. In spite of the fact that his speaker’s unfeelingness is perhaps exaggerated, it is hard to win an argument in which you are embodying the role of an upper-class cannibal. Thus, Swift’s self-defeating representation of the upper-class causes any upper class person's opinion against Swift to be preemptively invalid in an epistemological sense.