Swift’s overall purpose for writing the satirical essay “A Modest Proposal” is to draw attention to extreme poverty in Ireland and encourage reform.

Answer: ”Women becoming breeders would be a “loss to the publick.” Explanation: ”Women becoming breeders would be a “loss to the publick” is an example of understatement in this excerpt.

The phrase a modest proposal is often used to suggest something in jest in order to point out a problem by pushing it to its logical extreme.

Which of the following is listed as one of the benefits of the narrator’s modest proposal? The price of other foods in Ireland will go down. The food will bring a great custom to taverns in Ireland. Sanitation in Ireland will be improved.

Swift assumes a hyperbolically heartless tone that mocks those with negative opinions of the Irish poor, namely the Irish rich, politicians, and British officials.

The overarching social problem the clueless narrator addresses in “A Modest Proposal” is the problem of poverty in Ireland. Being of a very analytical frame of mind, the narrator breaks poverty down into a number of other problems he argues will be solved if the poor fatten and sell their babies as food.

The Definition of Satire In this case, Swift used satire as a way to express the issue of poverty in Ireland and to mock the rich’s view towards the poor during the famine.

The tone of the essay “A Modest Proposal” on a literal level is observant and objective. Throughout the essay, Swift shows the readers what he had observe of the poor people in an objective manner. Hence the observant and objective tone. In a satirical level, it denotes a pleading tone.

In “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift uses elements of satire to assess Protestant cruelty of Irish Catholics. The major weapon of a satirist is verbal irony, a figure of speech in which language is used to disrespect an individual or object by conveying an implication that is the contrary of what the words say.

Yes, Swift is a pessimist. He has a pessimistic view of human kind in “Gulliver’s Travels” but not completely. He has a hope of betterment.

Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1.2329–2473) is a masterpiece of satire, employing a range of satiric modes against a wide variety of targets. In Part 1, dealing with Lilliput, the satire is chiefly political. The Lilliputians’ bitter political controversies unmistakably mirror those of the British ruling class.

Swift, in the persona of a learned scientist, attempts to tackle the chronic problem of over-population in Ireland. In turn, this problem leads to lots of other problems, such as poverty, starvation, and an excess number of Roman Catholics.

But he may not have known that cannibalism did exist in Ireland during times of famine in 1588 and 1601. And in 450, famine in Italy led to parents eating their children.

There are numerous supposed benefits to Swift’s “plan.” While it is in reality a horrifying and terrible idea, he sarcastically suggests that it will help several major problems in Ireland. First, it will reduce overpopulation—there is a surplus of people in a very thin economic time.

Parody is primarily making fun of something to create a humorous feel for it. In “A Modest Proposal,” Swift uses parody to make fun of the people and children of Ireland, expressing the children as delicious food to be eaten. Swift has developed a plan to benefit the rich, by using the poor.

The proximate cause of the famine was a potato blight which infected potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, causing an additional 100,000 deaths outside Ireland and influencing much of the unrest in the widespread European Revolutions of 1848.

Things became so bad in “Black 1847” with further famines in 1848 and 1849 that people were reduced to eating putrid pigs, donkeys and dogs. There were also incidents of cannibalism recorded in counties Cork, Kerry, Galway and Mayo.