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A Modest Proposal
The speaker uses logos, or appeals to his readers' logic, in his arguments for eating babies. He offers his calculations that of 120,000 children, it would be appropriate to reserve 20,000 "for...
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A Modest Proposal
First, Swift employs dramatic irony: this is when the audience or reader knows something that a character does not. Swift does not actually want anyone to eat babies; however, the speaker—a...
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A Modest Proposal
Let's first define irony and see if there is dramatic irony in this particular writing. Irony is what is known as a "figure of speech," which means that words are said, but you cannot take their...
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A Modest Proposal
Dramatic irony occurs when the audience or reader knows more than the character. Some might find it difficult to argue for the existence of dramatic irony in this essay, but if you were going to...
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A Modest Proposal
Irony exists when there is a discrepancy between what we expect to happen and what actually happens. In "A Modest Proposal," it is certainly ironic that, though the speaker purports to have been...
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A Modest Proposal
Satire is an important political tool, and an essential component of any free nation. Citizens must be allowed to criticize, mock, and even make fun of their leaders if we are to retain a...
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A Modest Proposal
The question asks for three examples of either sarcasm, hyperbole or understatement in "A Modest Proposal." I have chosen three examples of sarcasm. Sarcasm means saying the opposite of what you...
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A Modest Proposal
The speaker in "A Modest Proposal" is desirous to solve the problems associated with the poor Irish: families become so big -- even when the parents are poor -- that the children cannot be...
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A Modest Proposal
"A Modest Proposal" is one of Jonathan Swift's most brilliant satirical works, and the essay deftly uses irony in hilarious (and shocking) ways. As a reminder, irony is a reversal of our...
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A Modest Proposal
One example of irony is in the title: "A Modest Proposal." The narrator goes on to propose that the Irish sell their babies to the English as a food source so that the Irish can make a profit,...
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A Modest Proposal
Among many definitions of "satire" the following is the most compelling regarding "A Modest Proposal": the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity...
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A Modest Proposal
Swift's essayist (and it is important to remember that he adopts a different persona from his own in "A Modest Proposal") is an enlightened, educated man. He portrays himself as thoroughly familiar...
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A Modest Proposal
The tone with which the speaker makes his proposal is fairly matter-of-fact. He does not sense the irony of calling such a proposal -- one in which he suggests that the poor Irish acquire an...
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A Modest Proposal
The first thing to note is that "A Modest Proposal" is a satire which operates by means of a type of argument known as a "reductio ad absurdum", something which disproves an assumption or policy by...
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A Modest Proposal
The proposal being made by the narrator is that the poor Irish sell their babies to the wealthy English as a food source. The narrator suggests that this would rid Ireland of many ills as well as...
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A Modest Proposal
This depends on whether you are taking it literally (which is a fairly obvious genre mistake) or not. On a literal level, one could start by suggesting that eating babies is morally wrong. Next,...
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A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift, himself originally Irish, was Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin and thus a member of the Church of England as well as a distinguished writer. Ireland at this time was...
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A Modest Proposal
The major proposition behind the "modest proposal" is that Ireland's travails under English rule, namely the dreadful poverty that plagued the island, can be remedied by a simple solution. This...
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A Modest Proposal
In discussing his ironic proposal--that people should solve their social and economic woes by eating the children of the poor--the speaker alludes to several countries: First, he addresses the...
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A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is a satiric exposition that proposes the people of Ireland eat their children as a way to end the country’s mass starvation. Since the nature of his...
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A Modest Proposal
Pathos is emotional appeal, and Swift's narrator spends the opening paragraphs of "A Modest Proposal" painting a heart-rending picture of the plight of the Irish poor. The narrator appears quite...
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A Modest Proposal
According to the speaker in Swift's "Modest Proposal," the children of Ireland, if they are fortunate enough to reach adulthood, will become mercenaries, "fighting for the Pretender in Spain,"...
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A Modest Proposal
Conditions in Ireland in 1729 are incredibly bad for the Irish. For many years, wealthy English had been purchasing land in Ireland so that, by the time "A Modest Proposal" is published, 90% of...
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A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is an eighteenth-century satirical exposition that advocates for the eating and skinning of young children to alleviate Ireland’s poverty crisis....
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A Modest Proposal
This appears to be a description of a fairly long paper. Your key to completing it successfully will be to discover two issues that are addressed by the very different works by Swift and Goldsmith....
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A Modest Proposal
In this essay, Swift creates a persona or character, often called the Proposer. It's important to note that Swift is not this narrator. The narrator or Proposer is a clueless man Swift has created...
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A Modest Proposal
Any analysis of Jonathan Swift's “A Modest Proposal” must deal with the fact that the essay is first and foremost a satirical piece. Swift is using the essay to create a farcical situation in...
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A Modest Proposal
It is at paragraph eight that the reader would begin to realize that this essay is satirical. Up until this point, the narrator sounds like a completely reasonable and humane person, concerned with...
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A Modest Proposal
In Swift's "A Modest Proposal," the narrator offers the following four benefits for his plan of having the poor fatten and sell their babies as food: 1. It will bring in money to impoverished...
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A Modest Proposal
Swift's essay satirizes the easy acceptance of rational, "scientific" solutions to social problems in a number of ways. One way is to advocate a solution that, according to cold, rationalistic...
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A Modest Proposal
The verbal irony in this passage turns on the narrator's misinterpretation of what "persons of a desponding Spirit" mean when they express "concern" about the large numbers of older, diseased and...
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A Modest Proposal
The answers to this question can be found in the last paragraph of "A Modest Proposal." Having suggested that Irish children be raised and reared to be food on the tables of Englishmen, and...
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A Modest Proposal
According to A Modest Proposal's narrator, Ireland's poor adults would be able to earn a living if they fattened and sold their one-year-old babies to the rich as gourmet food. The narrator then...
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A Modest Proposal
This assignment, usually after discussing Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” serves to demonstrate the student’s understanding of irony and exaggeration to make an argument. When the student...
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A Modest Proposal
The narrator argues that his plan for the poor to raise and fatten their babies to be sold as food for the tables of the rich will have the positive impact of lowering both the abortion rate and...
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A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift's satirical pamphlet “A Modest Proposal” is a purely ironic attempt to offer a solution to Ireland's hunger and overpopulation problems in the early 18th century. While most of...
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A Modest Proposal
Swift wrote this satiric essay in frustration after a series of reasonable ideas he proposed to help the poor were ignored. These ideas are outlined briefly in "A Modest Proposal" and include such...
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A Modest Proposal
Swift, a clergyman who was appointed the dean of St. Patrick's Church in Dublin, had written several pamphlets suggesting solutions to the horrific problem of poverty in Ireland. Out of deep...
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A Modest Proposal
In a nutshell, the problem in Dublin circa 1700 (and the problem Jonathan Swift wrote about in A Modest Proposal) was extreme poverty. The narrator of the compact Proposal specifically highlights...
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A Modest Proposal
Swift quantifies the number of children it would it take to feed the thousands and calculates the saved expenses by enacting his proposal. He begins by counting the population and the number of...
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A Modest Proposal
It is hard to know how every individual will respond to "A Modest Proposal," but it seems very unlikely that many people in Swift's day would have taken it seriously. Remember that Swift's essay...
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A Modest Proposal
The problem laid out in the first section of "A Modest Proposal" is the severe poverty in Ireland. Swift describes seeing ...the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex,...
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A Modest Proposal
America had a mythical quality to Europeans of the early 18th Century, especially the ones who had never been there. It was a place where a penniless Irishman could go and make his fortune in the...
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A Modest Proposal
In "A Modest Proposal," an unnamed narrator suggests that the poor Irish should begin to sell their babies to the rich English as food. This would provide the Irish with a new source of income,...
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A Modest Proposal
In these paragraphs of "A Modest Proposal," author and satirist Jonathan Swift lists his reasons for his proposal. In each paragraph, a new benefit is presented, and often each paragraph identifies...
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A Modest Proposal
In "A Modest Proposal", the author of the proposal can only think of one serious objection or disadvantage to his proposal, which is that it will significantly decrease the population of the...
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A Modest Proposal
The narrator appears to be an Irishman, as he says in the final paragraph, "I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this...
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A Modest Proposal
Although it's important to understand that these three strategies often overlap--that is, any one sentence or idea within a piece of text could simultaneously demonstrate two or even all three of...
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A Modest Proposal
In “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift proposes, in a satirical way, a solution for the starvation of the poor in his native country, Ireland. Swift says that a perfect solution to this...
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A Modest Proposal
In literature, the "grotesque" refers to that which invokes a feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well as sympathetic pity. It is used to describe anything that is strange, ugly, unpleasant, or...