University College Dublin

“Counterparts,” the short story by James Joyce, Farrington is constantly unsatisfied with himself and the people around him. Farrington’s desire to escape from his frustration leads him to the public house, but there he only experiences an increase in anger because he sees everything as an obstacle in his path to comfort. Farrington is trapped in an endless cycle of anger because of his insecurity. To highlight Farrington’s entrapment, Joyce uses his reliance on drinking, his desire for status,…

present in London. Both narratives successfully illustrate a lost sense of identity, not only in the lives of characters, but also in the novel as a whole. Dubliners, written by James Joyce, probes into the everyday life of the people who live in Dublin. The stories that are present in the book speak mainly for the Irish community, in which the characters discern a sense of pressure from the society and exhibit their desire to break free. This seeking for escape from the existing paralyzed…

Nancy Scheper-Hughes paints a vivid picture of the village folk living in “Ballybran”, once vital, now desolate and isolated by lack of economic opportunity and diminishing population growth. As a psychological anthropologist, she seeks deeper answers, attempting to identify psychological and cultural root causes of 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…

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” Words mentioned by the writer Jonathan Swift in 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…

This is done, by using empiricism to efficiently think of a feasible equation to supply the demands of hunger within the city of Dublin. By calculating and estimating efficient production, humans as livestock and commodity becomes a part of an economic equation. The feeding seen as efficient and requires no unnatural resources will offer a cultural renewal to Ireland. Conveniently…

In his satirical essay “A Modest Proposal” Jonathan Swift uses cannibalism as a means to mock the English government. As a whole, his essay is shocking and grotesque at first, but it is also important to the direct critique of those who are in power. When Swift wrote this essay, the population of Ireland was suffering from the effects of British Colonization. Those who were in power neglected to help the disempowered, which included the vast majority of Ireland population (Professor Makdisi).…

Satire is used in literature to criticize and point out society’s flaws. The criticism is usually masked in humour. Irony is commonly used in satires to expose flaws, an effective example is John Smith’s A Modest Proposal, in this essay he effectively uses irony, to communicate his argument about the poverty in Ireland. Similarly, in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale she criticizes the society that women live in. Atwood uses satire to display the oppression of women in political, religious…

Jonathan Swift’s writing reflects his personality in the sense that it is both playful and serious at the same time. This duality of playfulness and seriousness is especially evident in his pamphlet “A Modest Proposal.” The speaker of this text is not Swift, but instead, an anonymous figure that Swift uses as a vehicle to express his political views, poke fun at the British, and reveal his resentment of British policies toward the Irish. Straightforward and poignant in his assertions, the…

Author, as a basic element of the rhetorical situation. The content and style of A Modest Proposal were the result of Jonathan Swift's position, identity, and sensibilities. Swift was not an Englishman, but an Irishman. In addition, he was a man of the cloth, which no doubt afforded him a clear view of the sufferings of his people. He was also wise enough and educated enough to understand the nature of the injustices visited upon his people by the English, as well as the English attitude toward…

In A Modest Proposal, written in 1729, Swift describes the social conditions in Ireland. He explains that the inhabitants of this country are suffering from an increase in poverty, while the English benefit from their profit. Therefore, this brings economic complications to the Irish. One of the most noticeable problems the author perceives in society is the significant growth of beggars living in the streets. Nevertheless, he highlights, the real issue is that children are living in those poor…