A Modest Proposal and Other Satires by Jonathan Swift is an accumulation of six of his satirical essays. The six essays that make up this satirical collection are: A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of Books, An Argument Against the Abolition of Christianity, A Modest Proposal, A True and Faithful Narrative, and A Meditation Upon a Broomstick; each dealing with satirical— meaning sarcastic or ironic— views on either political matters or religion or simply society as a whole, often combining some of those aspects in some essays.
A Tale of a Tub is a satire on Christianity, or religion in general, that has digressions in between a story that follows three brothers that represent the three branches of Christianity> The three brothers— Peter (Roman Catholic Church), Jack (Dissenting Protestants), and Martin (Church of England) – are each given coats (which represents Christianity) by their dying father (God). The brothers would then go on to make …show more content…
People begin to donate to charity, pray, and go to church at the last minute despite most not doing any of those regularly in hopes of being saved in the afterlife. When the comet misses the Earth completely on the day it was predicted to strike, the people in the town go back to their regular lives and dismiss any religious activity they did during the panic. In A Meditation Upon a Broomstick, Swift compares describes the “life” of a broomstick and compares it to the lives of people, illustrating these similarities when he states that man is similar to the broomstick in that “[n]ature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered
A Tale of a Tub is a satire on Christianity, or religion in general, that has digressions in between a story that follows three brothers that represent the three branches of Christianity> The three brothers— Peter (Roman Catholic Church), Jack (Dissenting Protestants), and Martin (Church of England) – are each given coats (which represents Christianity) by their dying father (God). The brothers would then go on to make …show more content…
People begin to donate to charity, pray, and go to church at the last minute despite most not doing any of those regularly in hopes of being saved in the afterlife. When the comet misses the Earth completely on the day it was predicted to strike, the people in the town go back to their regular lives and dismiss any religious activity they did during the panic. In A Meditation Upon a Broomstick, Swift compares describes the “life” of a broomstick and compares it to the lives of people, illustrating these similarities when he states that man is similar to the broomstick in that “[n]ature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition, wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left him a withered