Techniques used in "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift

Essay by sanaa622High School, 12th gradeA-, July 2007

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Swift uses logical appeal to support his suggestion about what to do regarding the poverty. He calculates the number of babies "the number of souls in Ireland being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couples whose wives are breeders from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples, who are able to maintain their own children….there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those who miscarry, or whose children die by accident, or disease within the year. There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born." Swift performs all the calculations which make you think how many people are born and how many stay alive and even with all those subtractions there is still large number of babies who are alive and are in need of necessities to survive, and Irish people being poor and hard to find jobs that pay enough to feel their babies, one should wonder how hard it would be to raise their children with such financial problems.

This is effective because you see that poverty increases and instead of doing something about it, Irish people were being exploited and making their work harder.

We see the use of ethical appeal when he says "I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection". He is talking as if his proposal is good and logical when its not. He also uses an ethical appeal at the end when he says "I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my...