A Modest Proposal And Angela's Ashes Compared

“A Modest Proposal” & Angela's Ashes Compared In the memoir of Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt in chapter VII he reads to a nearly blind man named Mr. Timoney, Jonathan Swift’s masterpiece “A Modest Proposal.” It is ironic due to the fact that the memoir as a whole can relate to the the passage of “A Modest Proposal.” Both of these works can compare and in the aspects of Irish poverty, yet they contrast very much due to the fact that one of the authors actually lived through it and the other just discusses things about it. Both authors use narration, tones, and imagery in their writing to convey their ideas and shape their work. Angela’s Ashes and “A Modest Proposal” are both written in the first person point of view which highly affect

McCourt uses his diction of what he went through which gives everyone a picture of his reality and his childhood. For example “I pull the bag and its Malachys job to pick up the lumps that fall through the hole and put them back again. Then it starts to rain and we can't stand in a doorway till it passses we have that coal and its leaving a black trail along the pavement and Malachy is turning black from picking up the lumps, pushing them into the bag and wiping the rain from his face with his wet black hands.I tell hes black he tells me i'm black, and a woman in a shop tells us to get away from that door...”(McCourt 100, 13-20). As you can see here McCourts choice of diction also help give that image of irish poverty. As young kids him and his brother had to go through, it is not something people would normally see children doing. The lack of money and materials. It gives off that poor, disgusting image of how the family has to live. Likewise in a modest proposal, although it is not the same having to have lived through it than him just talking about it.This quote was mentioned before but is a great example to show the imagery he used. “It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex followed by three, four, six

Angela’s Ashes is written in the time of the great depression then later what became World War II from the years 1929 to 1945. A modest proposal is written around the times when there were numerous counts of potato famines in the year of 1729. In both cases these were times of poverty. In the beginning of Angela's Ashes McCourts says, “She arrived in New York just in time for the first thanksgiving day of the great depression.” It is clearly said there, they are in the great depression, this has to do with a lot of the problems they go through. That is the main reason why the McCourt family has to live through all of that. As to “A Modest Proposal,” which McCourt himself read as a child, which is Ironic because Swift talks about kids like McCourt and his brothers. The times set all have to do with the Irish poverty, there was obviously greater problems going on around them that created the poverty they lived