Yao 1

Jerry Yao
Ms. Thompson
AP Language Block 2 Skinny B
9 March 2015
Publish Ready
A Modest Proposal Analysis
Lets eat a baby. Upon hearing such a suggestion, you may feel incredulous, or
revolted, yet this is exactly what Swift proposes in his essay. In the formal essay, A Modest
Proposal, Swift proposes a few unconventional methods as solutions for the declining economy
in Ireland. The opening paragraphs from one to seven offers a starkly realistic, although
uncompassionate, portrait of families in poverty in Ireland. Throughout the beginning of Swifts
essay, he uses appeals to ethos, pathos and logos to make the convincing claim that Irelands
economy has been detracting.
Firstly, Swift utilizes ethos to make substantiated evidence. Ethos is the use of an authors
credibility to accentuate an essays authenticity. Because Swift is a well-known author, people
are more inclined to take him seriously, despite the fact that is proposal is preposterous.
Throughout the essay, other examples of ethos appear as well. For example, he uses an appeal to
authority to support his evidence and overall claim, even though many of his facts seem to be
fictional.
Second, Swift also includes appeals to pathos in the introduction of his essay. Pathos is
using emotion to touch the readers sentimentalities. By revealing the impoverished children as a
commodity in Ireland, readers are moved by reading about the suffering children and be more
inclined to read the rest of the satire proposed. This strategy is repeated throughout the essay

Yao 2
with various portrayals of heartbroken people who have lost everything to the famine.
Particularly, pathos is used when Swift says they might as well eat the children, seeing how
theyve already devoured the parents. This powerful statement evokes such sympathy in the
mind of readers that I would like to call it the pinnacle of pathos.
Lastly, Swift introduces statistical data as the source of logos in his essay. His
background information such as the Ireland population stands at one and a half million citizens
and that each of these citizens; around two thousand are women of childbearing age. Swift
continues his stream of faces by talking about how much money each infant is worth, and how
the pieces of meat can be divided up. He also uses appeal to authority by talking about his
credible source, influencing the readers to regard the proposal more seriously. Statistical data is a
good way of providing evidence because numbers cannot be proven inaccurate. Logos impacts
the readers critical mind.
Overall, Swift uses three main rhetorical strategies: ethos, pathos, and logos to make a
convincing and substantial argument. These methods allow Swift to generate a better argument
for his proposal.