Question

When swift the narrator suggests that his proposal is modest what rhetorical technique is he using?

Answer 1

Jonathan Swift uses irony in 'A Modest Proposal' when calling his outrageous suggestion 'modest,' challenging conventional expectations to criticize societal issues.

Step-by-step explanation:

When Jonathan Swift suggests that his proposal is modest, he is employing a rhetorical technique known as irony. A Modest Proposal is a satirical work where the narrator soberly proposes that the poor of Ireland could alleviate their financial troubles by selling their children as food to the rich. This shocking suggestion is meant to criticize the heartless attitudes towards the poor and the brutal policies of the time. Swift uses irony to highlight the discrepancy between the term 'modest' and the horrifying content of his proposal, engaging the reader in a deeper consideration of the serious social issues at hand. Furthermore, the use of irony serves to both meet and challenge conventional expectations in a rhetorically effective manner, guiding the audience through a critical examination of the societal context and cultural ideas underlying the narrative.

Answer 2

that Swift's rhetorical style persuades the reader to detest the speaker and pity the Irish. Swift's specific strategy is twofold, using a "trap" to create sympathy for the Irish and a dislike of the narrator who, in the span of one sentence, "details vividly and with rhetorical emphasis the grinding poverty" but feels emotion solely for members of his own class.Swift's use of gripping details of poverty and his narrator's cool approach towards them create "two opposing points of view" that "alienate the reader, perhaps unconsciously, from a narrator who can view with 'melancholy' detachment a subject that Swift has directed us, rhetorically, to see in a much less detached way."a