A Modest Proposal Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Have you ever thought about resorting to cannibalism in order to solve the problem of poverty? Well, that is exactly what Johnathon Swift suggested in A Modest Proposal. In this work of satire, Johnathon Swift makes a proposal to the wealthy English landowners in Ireland during the eighteenth century. Poverty was a large problem during this time and the wealthy were feeling inconvenienced by the poor families begging for money to feed their children. Swift presents the idea that the poor Irish children should be butchered and sold for meat to feed the wealthy of the country in order to solve their dilemma. In A Modest Proposal, Johnathon Swift utilizes exaggeration, imagery, irony, and appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos in order to present

Overall, A Modest Proposal by Johnathon Swift is a work of satire which is created through many literary tools such as exaggeration, imagery, irony, and appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos. By using these methods Swift was able to make cannibalism both humorous and realistic, ultimately influencing the audience of wealthy landowners to see the real problem of poverty in Ireland and force a sense of guilt which he hopes will encourage them to find a more realistic solution and help others. Swift presents extreme ideas in order to shock his audience, uses animal imagery to make the poor babies seem less than human, and implements lots of irony. The piece also appeals to logic, authority, and emotion. While we, the present day audience, are supposed to find his work funny and ridiculous when he first wrote it, the piece was political and his goal was to be so outrageous it seemed real and would eventually cause change. The more the proposal is analyzed, the more I realize how many different emotions Swift was trying to make the wealthy feel and how neglectful they