Summary Of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal

When a social challenge begins to face a country, it tends to have a negative effect on the individuals residing there. This exact situation happened to Dublin, Ireland during the early 1700s, where poverty was the country’s current downfall. Jonathan Swift, a current resident of the country, attempts to help them recover by writing a proposal to England officials in hopes that it will get them to do something about the situation. When the England officials didn’t take notice of his proposals, Swift decided to take a different, satiric route in which would be an extremely, immodest proclamation. “A Modest Proposal” was a written proclamation created by Jonathan Swift that tries to handle the issue of poverty through an explicit, articulated scheme. Swift uses satirical irony accompanied with ethos, logos, and pathos to create a gruesome but compelling argument of poverty, while also steadily unraveling the actual situation involving Ireland’s current economic struggles to the reader. While justifying his proposal, Swift uses a mellow tone to further support that his scheme could’ve been an actual

“I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds…will increase to 28… I grant this food will be somewhat dear…proper for landlords.”(Swift, Paragraph 11) The use of logos shows how big of a meal these sacrificed children would provide and that they will be a special treat that would be cherished. That would show why people should have accepted Swift's proposal. This is a demonstration and persuasion toward the audience to accept the effectiveness of his proposal. Even though these ideas are crazy, he gives them in such a way that makes people think twice and consider for a moment. Without the details he puts in his speech, his proposal would lose the shocking factor the audience of the time had experiences when reading