A Modest Proposal Literary Devices

Key Examples in A Modest Proposal

Explanation and Analysis—Violence as a Solution:

Throughout "A Modest Proposal," the Proposer repeatedly claims to wish to alleviate human suffering. His claims are clearly unreliable—the reader cannot take him at face value, given the ridiculous prospect of proposing child cannibalism as a solution to famine and poverty. The Proposer seems to have surface-level empathy for the poor, and he wants to advocate for them, but his word choice and the nature of his proposal run counter to this farcical empathy.

This unreliable empathy in the narrator's tone shines through in several places, like when he's addressing accusations of cruelty:

It is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice, (although indeed very unjustly,) as a little bordering upon cruelty; which, I confess, has always been with me the strongest objection against any project, how well soever intended.

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A Modest Proposal: Unreliable Narrator 1 key example

Key Examples in A Modest Proposal