A Modest Proposal: Tone By: Derrek Elgarten,Isabella the Enlightened, Marquis Aquino, Sarah Markowitz ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
Tone The literary compound of composition, which shows the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience in a literary piece.
Tones used For the most part, Swift’s proposition is sardonic. Nearing the end he adopts a lecturing tone when he proposes new solutions that juxtaposes the former halves brutality.
Sarcasm: To talk or refer to a certain subject with irony , often tinctured with contempt. Swift proposes the idea of eating Irish babies as the ‘obvious solution’ to fixing the economy, having nobody to talk to him of “other expedients.”
Examples of Swift’s Sarcasm: “I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts… I have been informed… that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food…”
Cont. “Infant’s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March… about nine months after lent than at any other season…”
Cont. “I desire those politicians who dislike my overture...first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not… think it a great happiness to have been sold for food… thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes…”
Didactic: Teaching or intending to teach a moral lesson. This tone becomes apparent as the satiric norm introduces itself. It offers feasible resolutions in place of cannibalism.
Resolutions include, but are not limited to: -”Using neither cloths, nor household furniture l, except from what is our own growth and manufacture.” -”Curing expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women.” -”Ontroducing a vein of parsimony, prudence, and temperance.”
Examples of Swift’s Didactic Tone: “...let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, ‘till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.”
Satiric Norm: Appears in the last paragraph of the second-to-last page As the voice of reason becomes present, Swift takes on a much more serious tone as he reveals the true intentions of his “modest proposal.”
Swift’s Satiric Norm “...let no man talk to me of other expedients: of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: of using neither cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture…”
Tones used: Sarcastic Didactic Tone Overview Tones used: Sarcastic Didactic