Northern Ireland Assembly

society, not having enough to support one’s family and struggling to just survive is universal. What if there was a way to fix that? Dr. Jonathan Swift proposes an interesting idea in his pamphlet A Modest Proposal to satiate the impoverished nation of Ireland during the 18th century. He begins by identifying the problem: the massive population of beggars. These beggars have too many children to feed and not enough money to care for them. Then he moves on to his main idea, children are…

During the Civil War times, New York was full of many slums, including Five Points in Manhattan. It was full of gangs, crimes and several bars. It was full of many Irish immigrants trying to escape the Great Famine in Ireland. Five Points was considered one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in New York. This paper will tell you all about the neighborhood of Five Points. Five Points was completely made up of immigrants. Irish people came to escape the Great Famine, and many of them also lived…

Thi Nguyen Kelli Davis English 102 April 13, 2015 The Taste of Children During the late 1720s, Ireland was a country struggling with poverty; beggars and starving children appeared everywhere. It was a period of economic despair as trade deteriorated and poor harvests brought starvation (“Hang up Half a Dozen Bankers ': attitudes to Bankers in Mid-eighteenth-century Ireland”). The English were also tyrannizing the Irish very strongly. All Ireland’s money was shipped off to England and the…

anomie and despair in the people living in rural Ireland. She explains multiple reasons for both their anomie and extremely high rates of mental illness which lie in shrinking economic vitality, culture-bound systems of religious beliefs, folklore and perhaps more importantly, the effects of child-rearing practices. Young men are committed to carrying on the family farm and their name despite the downward spiraling farm economics in rural areas of Ireland like “Ballybran”. Reasons for the drop…

his book called Gulliver’s Travels. However, this is going to be focused on his other popular handiwork called A Modest Proposal, in which we can observe how he is able to see the unseen and critiques the wealthy through it. Swift was born in Ireland in 1667, and thanks to his job as private secretary to Sir William Temple, a retired Whig diplomat, at Moor Park in southern England he could gather information through the Temple's vast library in which he educated himself of politics. In the…

Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” uncovers the laxity of British and Irish Gentry towards the increasing poverty in Ireland and the exploitation of the Irish. With its metaphors that depicts cannibalism as an acceptable solution to hunger, ‘modest’ can only be seen as an euphemism for this egregious suggestion. This satire dictates an economically insightful proposal that alleviate poor parents of their ‘bastard children’. As a result of this proposal, the outcome suggests to hinder children…

But James is not always praised and his criticism is often based on two of his policies: the Irish plantation and the reformation of the Scottish Kirk both, some believe, being major factors in the explosion of the Civil War in the 1640s. It is true that if James was a flexible monarch who favored stability he did tried to pass more revolutionary policies. Notably towards James’s other major source of dislike: the Scottish Kirk. If James did not like the English Parliament he was on the other…

While the Great famine could not have happened without the failure of the potato crop – something beyond the control of the British Government- their subsequent response, or there lack of, to the crisis greatly contributed to the devastation caused by the blight. As evidenced by Tony Blair’s 1997 apology to the Irish people, the British Government’s policies during the Great Famine toward a country it was, on paper at least, in union with, were unforgivable. Although the Conservative government…

in 1907 in Ireland. During that time in Ireland separation talk was very common, but this was 10 years before any form of revolution away from England took place. Lady Gregory was a major supporter of Irish separation and the promotion of Irish culture. Most of her plays reflected this. The rising of the moon was no exception, and even the title comes from a rebel Irish song. The play contains a lot of symbolism, and the character themselves represent her views on the struggle in Ireland. The…

Ezra Pound eloquently highlights the overall impact Thomas MacDonagh had on Irish literature during his short life. Pound states that MacDonagh’s ‘loss is a loss to both Ireland and to literature, and it is a loss bound to be felt as his work becomes more widely known’. He was born in 1878 in Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary to a father from Roscommon and a mother from Dublin, both school teachers. Both his family life and the influence of his parents are key to understanding the shape his life took…