Comparison Essay of A Modest Proposal and Gulliver's Travel

Jonathan Swift was an Irish born in Dublin 30th November, 1667. He came from a family which was diversely known for literary connections. Swift attended Trinity College and later became a vicar in 1700.Among his numerous occupations included: poet, priest, essayist and satirist among others. Swift wrote a lot of beautiful pieces of works for instance A Tale of Tab, A Modest Proposal, Drapiers Letter and Gullivers Travels. Swift engaged in active politics and masterpiece writing was his major specialization. He was known for vividly bringing out satire in his writings and expression of human nature and society at large. This essay seeks to compare and contrast Jonathans works of Gullivers Travels and A Modest Proposal in regard to purpose, structure, reasoning and literary tools.

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First and foremost, Jonathan Swift purpose in A Modest Proposal is largely to draw attention to the situation of life and people in Ireland. This is seen when he expresses his concern by wanting the English to come up with reforms that would change the life of Irish citizenship. The English were in control of Ireland at the time. Similarly, in Gullivers Travel Swift highly advocates for reforms in the English government through artistically penning down the weakness in terms of war, corruption levels and the uncalm social environment. Swift was an Irish Patriot hence advocating for positive reforms through satirizing the social environment and class differences.

The structure in both books is intriguing .Both books keep the readers interest as every detail is a surprise with no point being obvious. They both are a trail of curiosity of the political and social nature in Ireland at the specified moment that the books were written. In a Modest Proposal for instance, Swift uses fascinating statistics and proposals like killing of poor children for meals which gets the reader to anticipate what happens next. Moreover, the use of parody keeps the readers imagination to a whole new level with the unpredictable political allegory to keep up with in both books.

While Gullivers Travel is a narrative based on telling an adventure story by Swift A Modest Proposal is keen on ethical and logical reasoning. Swift writes the proposal with the aim of staring up reactions that would lead to getting solutions in the countrys problems. Additionally, one could feel ethically challenged in the aspect of eating children as crazily expressed by Swift. Contrary, Gullivers Travel is mostly emphasizing of the character like Lilliput and Queen Ann and their input, discoveries hence giving politics a softer touch in the story.

Swift has employed literary tools in both books to help him bring out his messages and themes clearly. In both books Swift uses first person viewpoint. Moreover in A Modest Proposal Swift satirically makes the rich people in Ireland and their greed and the idea of people killing children as horrifying as it may sound. Irony as a literary device has been used in both books to show the societal problem in a lighter tone thus the worst politicians and social planners and bureaucracy in A Modest Proposal and Gullivers Travel respectively.

In all both books have effective structure, reasoning and literary devices that have facilitated specified themes as intended by Swift. The similarities in the books are sticking while the difference very few. One thing for sure is that Swift had the best of the Irish community at large as expressed by his authorship in the books. The use of extensive satire and irony is a captivating style that keeps the reader glued to the amazing pieces of work.