Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is considered one of the best satirical pieces ever written. He famously satirizes how the Irish should fix problems in their country by writing what seems to be a sincere proposal that humans should slaughter their babies and eat them to alleviate overpopulation and the famine that is occurring at the time it was written. He demonstrates the use of pathos, ethos, and logos and why it is so important to have both moral and emotional appeals to persuade the audience of the writer’s argument with his usage of verbal irony, exaggeration, and his serious convincing tone in the piece. Ethos, or moral appeal is very important to the writer in order to persuade the audience of his argument. Swift does not provide …show more content…
Throughout the piece, he is very solid and firm with his ideas about selling babies as food to alleviate the overpopulation problem and the famine. Further he is able to carefully construct his argument as to provide counter arguments that the audience might think of and offer statistics to back up his ideas and information. After telling us his idea of killing the babies for food, he states, “There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas!” Logical information like this is what convinces the audience of Swift’s argument. Later in the text, he states, “There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, How this number shall be reared, and provided for? which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses, (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing till they arrive at six years old.” Swift comes up with statistics and a plan in order to better the country by lowering the population and backs it up with the logic of there will be no work for them so they will resort to crime to feed and clothe themselves which would be bad for the