Preview

How Does Swift Create A Satire In 'A Tale Of A Tub'?

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
233 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Does Swift Create A Satire In 'A Tale Of A Tub'?
A Tale of a Tub is a satire written by Jonathan Swift. He attacks and criticizes the corruption of churches and schools through a persona of his own. The tub refers to the large tubs sailors would throw overboard to distract a whale from running into their boat. In this satire, the whale is Leviathan-- another satire written by Thomas Hobbes-- a political whale created from Descartes’s mathematical philosophy. The ship represents institutional Christianity that might be sunk by the whale.

The book is an analogy of church history. A father gives suits of clothes to his three sons, with instructions that the suits should never be changed. The brothers Peter, Martin, and Jack represent Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans. Peter changes his suit

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In his novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses satire to criticize different aspects of society. The book follows an unruly boy named Huck and a slave named Jim throughout their adventures. During one episode, Huck lives with a wealthy family called the Grangerfords. While living with them, Huck is informed of a feud between the Grangerford family and the Shepardson family that had been going on for some 30 years. Over that time, many people from each family had been killed in the name of the feud. Shortly after Huck learns of this feud, Sophia Grangerford runs off to elope with Harney Shepherdson. After both families heard about this, they engage in a gunfight in which Huck escapes back to the raft with Jim. In this episode, Twain uses multiple satirical devices to criticize “civilized” society.…

    • 714 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    III. Interpretation: What was the main point the author wanted you to get from this book?…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tub is presented as an overweight man with a gland problem. Later we learn he is overweight because he enjoys eating. Direct and indirect presentation plays a huge role in the reader getting to know Tub.…

    • 610 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In his renowned pamphlet, “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift brings attention to the poor conditions in Ireland. Being a native of Ireland, Swift remained loyal to his country. Upon noticing the terrible conditions in Ireland, he took it upon himself to address the issues at hand. Among these issues, involves the sickly and insufficient children in his homeland. Incorporating statistics to support his claim, Swift attempts to persuade his readers to support his outrageous plan to solve a dire situation. As a result his “logical” and preposterous plan created mixed reactions in both the past and the present.…

    • 98 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Swift's Modest Proposal for the Preventing the Children of Poor People from being a burden to their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public is a satire of the English opinion of the Irish, barbarians. Though this is a satire, Swift has a good point about eating children. In the world today there are approximately 6 billion people, many being children. By the year 2050, according to the World Population Profile: 1998, the population will reach 9.3 billion. Consumption of children would help this and many other problems that afflict our society as a whole.…

    • 1208 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The adage says that “history repeats itself.” Criticisms of today’s society apply to societies that came centuries before. Satires from the 18th century criticize political events happening in the 20th Century. Many techniques of satire also transcend time. Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” which many accept as the first modern satire, is laden with irony. Irony is “the expression of meaning using language that normally expresses the opposite” (Brown 1417). Although Jonathan Swift and Flannery O’Connor lived and wrote in different time periods, they both criticized their societies using irony.…

    • 1336 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the world-renowned novel of Huckleberry Finn, one can argue that religious satire plays an instrumental role for the overall plot. This satire does not only make the book more humorous but is the main way Twain can convey his message about conventional religion. Through out the first chapters, one can conclude that Twain disagrees with traditional religious views. This becomes critically clear to the reader through Twain’s comical inferences of satire in the first chapter that run the gamut from disregarding the authenticity of the Bible to plainly mocking the common core beliefs of Catholicism. After reading the novel, one can agree that Twain completely communicates his message through humorous satire.…

    • 641 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The narrator in this story is a very inhumane character. He is portrayed as a very snobbish man who cares more about himself and the sociopolitical aspect of his status. Also, one could argue that the whole context of the story must be taken into account. First of all, one must take into account the environment in which the story was written. During this time period, the beggars that Swift describes could not read, much less afford to buy one of Swifts works. Swift was well aware that his audience was the well-to-do upper class. He could write proposal like this knowing that there would be no repercussions since the upper class would treat this as a comedy. Actually, the lower class could have revolted fearing that their children were in danger if they knew of the story. In effect, it is a combination of both propaganda and humor aimed for the educated audience. Secondly, if Swift did want to help the lower class, he would not have created an exemption for himself in the last paragraph. If he wanted to initiate this plan to help the lower class, then he should have been the one to start it all.…

    • 594 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the story the mother and the father are in conflict, even opposes, the most significant is the way they raises there kids. The mother believe her children her should be brought up the same way she was, following the same tradition he had, living a similar life she did and would not be satisfied otherwise. She sees the fathers love for literature has a huge waste of time and becomes extremely angry at her children for following in their fathers foot stapes. ““Take your nose out of that trash and come do your work,” she would say, and once I saw her slap my youngest sister so hard that the print of her hand was scarletly emblazoned upon her daughter’s cheek while the broken-spined paperback…

    • 747 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Riding the Black Cockatoo

    • 2557 Words
    • 11 Pages

    1.  The author foreshadows his ‘family secret’ with which simile? Why is this an effective comparison?…

    • 2557 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Mo Essay

    • 826 Words
    • 4 Pages

    (Student sample 1) Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a suspenseful book about a group of boys that crashes on a deserted island during a war. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding may or may not be trying to show us a comparison between some of the objects and characters to something or someone else. There are many different symbols in the book including the characters and objects that are talked about in the novel. Ralph, Jack, and Simon symbolize different things. Golding uses Ralph, Jack, and Simon as different traits of human nature.…

    • 826 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the year of 1729, an Irish satirist named Jonathan Swift wrote a political and satirical pamphlet called A Modest proposal. This pamphlet was written to promote Swift’s ideas about how they should improve the economy of Ireland and solve the problem of poverty in their country. In this pamphlet, Swift suggests that the children of the poor should continue raising as many children as they can so that they can be sold for clothing and food which is a ridiculed plan that will benefit the community. He also states that this plan would help the improvement of the economy and the standard of living. Jonathan Swift uses powerful rhetorical devices such as pathos, logos, ethos and satire to put focus…

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Lord Bryon once said, “Fools are my theme, let satire be my song”. A satire is a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision,or ridicule (dic.com). A well recognized satire is George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Orwell wrote this allegorical novella in England when the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union was at its height and Stalin was held in highest esteem in Britain both among the people and government. George Orwell wrote Animal Farm to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole, thus addressing the downfall of the Russian Revolution which was caused by its corrupt leaders and ignorant citizens.…

    • 1605 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    To expound on A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift begins with his use of sarcasm in the first sentence. “It is melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the road and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms” (Swift 431). Swift asserts it is a “great town” but then he continues on to imply it is not by saying “the road and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex” (Swift 431). The 1720s were a time of general economic difficulty in Ireland, marked by three periods of particular crisis. The first, initiated by the Mississippi crash and South Sea Bubble in 1720, gave birth to proposals for a national bank, initially accepted –though ultimately rejected –by the Irish parliament.…

    • 1462 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Question 1 (continued) Text two — Nonfiction extract from Like My Father, My Brother . . . I have this dream sometimes, that I am small and standing at a door. The door is orange and has a window above it. Through this window, which is slanted open, I can hear my brother and my father. I am outside the door. They are playing a game on the other side. I am calling out, trying to get their attention, but the door remains closed. My brother often sold me his old clothes. He would dangle them in front of me and offer them at a price. There was never any negotiation. If I refused to pay the price, he threw them out with a mocking, regretful expression. I bought many of his clothes but they never sat on me properly. I was…

    • 2134 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays