Like most pieces of persuasive writing, Jonathon Swift’s A Modest Proposal usefully employs pathos and ethos quite effectively, while also utilizing a perverted form of logos. It is designed to convince English citizens not to try to solve all their problems by exploiting the Irish, but to work to improve their own lot. By comparing the plight of Ireland to that of Englishmen eating Irish babies in a logical and calculating way, one gets to the heart of English morals and emotions.
The gruesome images that Swift nonchalantly talks about are enough to revolt readers, from time to time. Examples include whenever she talks about baby drinking, but a few points in particular come to mind. He says that those who are thrifty “can skin the carcass… [to make] admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen”. In this process he recommends “dressing them hot with the knife” since they are still alive. Scenes like these, which even in modern times no company would attempt to shoot for a movie, must having sickened relatively less sensitized English citizens.In this he draws a parallel with the current atrocities in Ireland, where landlords have “already devoured the parents” through ruthless rules and high rents.
His gory details provoked the emotions he wanted, but it was his appeal to morality that honed his message. He satirically pointed out that England’s failures were caused by England alone, and that the English should feel ashamed of themselves for their treatment of the Irish, because English actions that caused the death and misery of thousands were so far from the idea of feeding on babies? He pointed out to the English that if this idea seems so frightening to them, they should re-examine their policies regarding Ireland.
Swift’s use of satire to achieve her rhetorical goals makes her essay memorable and well known today, while most other pro-Irish activists are lost in obscurity. His satire allowed him to introduce his ethos and pathos into the minds of his compatriots without being outright rejected, in a very different method than Martin Luther King Jr. had used in his letter from a jail in Birmingham.