Topic
A Modest Proposal
Instructions
After reading Chapter 14 of Argument Today, read Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and watch Colbert’s address to a congressional hearing on migrant labor found below. Many of the pieces that we’ve read deal with modern issues, use modern media and engage with us as modern readers. Swift’s essay, however, is a historical example of how satire in form and content can use a proposal to attack the ideas that it appears to support. Your assignment, after reading the texts and viewing the video is to post a 300-400 word analysis of how Swift’s writing and Colbert’s presentation both employ the strategies from Chapter 14 of Argument Today. Are there any instances in each that are similar or that apply the ideas in sections 14.2-14.4 of the text?
Answer Preview
The writing and the presentation employ the aspect of satire by presenting the ideas in a rhetorical manner. While tissues being discussed remain important social issues in the general public, the presenters of the ideas trivialize the issues in seeking to gain an audience. They make proposals in a satirical manner of selling children for human consumption and stopping consuming vegetables. These proposals are practically impossible but are made as an indication of what the problem seems to be doing to the affected individuals. In the case of Swift, the mistreatment of the people can be compared to killing them, and hence he makes a proposal to just offer them as meat to potential buyers, who are their tormentors (Swift, n.d.).
Word Count; 350