Modest Proposal

The historical context of the 18th century significantly impacts the literature that was created during the time period. The 18th century brought a scientific, agricultural, and industrial revolution. This brings a time where people begin to trust what they think. People also believe they are smarter than they are. This brought the idea of satire which is the use of humor to criticize something or someone. In The Rape of the Lock, by Alexander Pope, shows the opposite of a heroic story. One of the main characters, Belinda, does not want to lose her lock of hair but during the card game she realizes the lock has gone missing and it becomes a big deal. Belinda creates a lot of drama due to a lock of hair which shows the satirical side of the story. Another satirical piece is by Jonathan Swift. He wrote a Modest …show more content…
In this piece Swift gives a way to fix the problem many poor people were being troubled with in this time period. Swift explained that many poor people view new children as burdens. The satirical side of the peace is when Swift gives his proposal on how to solve the problem. Swift’s proposal was to allow the people to eat the children. This shows a reversal of what the reader would expect because it is a very barberic thing. Swift then goes on to write that he only created this proposal to get attention because he was not getting any attention with his other proposals. Jonathan Swift also started believing his thoughts and wrote many of them in his Various Thoughts on Various Subjects. One of his thoughts says, “We have enough religion to hate, but not to love eachother,” (Swift). This is a reversal of what the time period brings because it brings the thoughts of the previous time period which was largely controlled by a