A Modest Proposal Rhetorical Analysis

Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a neo- classical satiric parody narrated by a well-to-do English protestant who views the Irish as a poor and begging people who have no money. In this essay the narrator proposes that the Irish should sell their kids for money, and that these kids that are sold should be killed and eaten for a source of food. Since Swift had little confidence in mans ability to use his own reasoning, therefore he turned to the power of persuasion to convince man of there sins and foils and to indicate the right action. “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 cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms…. or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.” (Swift 1) Having a child is one of the most important things to a husband and wife, so it should seem unordinary to have your child sold and killed for food. However, Swift asserts that it would be beneficial to sell you child for money. Strolling mothers are "beggars of the female Sex."(Swift 1) As if speaking of any animal, the narrator comments "It is true a Child, just dropped from …show more content…
Thus, by natural order, the parents-as-animal serves as preparation for the babies-as-animals. It also allows for the larger number of references to the children as animals and food. Swift refers to the children by the best name many times throughout the essay, by the impersonal name many times (lads, maidens, male, young person, girl), and also by the animal comparison many times (venison, flesh, carcass, food, commodity, yearling child). This balance results not from a consecutive order in the essay but from the order in