Analysis Of A Modest Proposal By Jonathan Swift

In the Age of Restoration, European authors were experimenting with new styles and had revolutionized writing. One of these authors was Jonathan Swift and his essay A Modest Proposal. Jonathan Swift helped revolutionize writing through his use of satire, logic, and his knowledge of his audience.
Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin Ireland in the year 1667. Swift’s father died before he was born, and his mother left for England soon after. He was left in the care of his uncle, Thomas Swift. His uncle had a passion for writing, he even married the daughter of William Shakespeare’s godson, and sent Swift to school. Swift studied for his Bachelors of Arts until the Glorious Revolution of 1688 forced him to England. (Poetry Foundation) Unsure of
This caused Swift to return to England and enter a period of solitude he returned to writing, but this time for himself. He retained his satirical style and went on to write Drapier's Letters and A Modest Proposal. These were attacks against the English governing class and their inability to improve the conditions of the citizens. Swift’s next big piece was Gulliver’s Travels which was an immense success. It gathered the attention of all classes of readers as it hit points that every class could relate to. Swift did not write any largely successful satiers after this, but continued the job he had since returning to Ireland in 1714. He was the Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and would continue to be until his death in 1745.
One writer who may have drawn inspiration from Swift and his A Modest Proposal was Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein during the Romantic era of literature so she wrote in a different era than Swift did. She drew inspiration from the way Swift used grotesque and unordinary scenarios the describe the horror the monster had caused. An example would be “A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife” (Shelley 145). This mood caused by such writing was similar to the one caused when reading A Modest Proposal. The reader would feel a sense of disgust and disbelief, but had realized that the monster said this would happen, and that Swift backed up his points. Neither was an unexpected turn of events, but both caused a sense of horror and at the level of madness some men had seeped to. Whether it was creating a monster, or proposing to eat the children of the