英国文学作品 A Modest Proposal.读后感

I could not believe how graphic and gripping satire can be until I read Jonathan Swift's works, especially A Modest Proposal. When I read this particular satire I was simultaneously shocked, enraged, and sickened. How could such a short piece of fiction affect a person so drastically? I suppose it has much to do with Swift's skillful use of metaphor and irony. The underlining metaphor of Swift's A Modest Proposal is England as a devourer of the Irish people. At this time, England was economically exploiting Ireland for its own profit and in the process, impoverishing the Irish people and condemning them to a despairing existence.

Jonathan Swift uses this disturbing metaphor to shock his readers and to show them the true brutality of the condition of Ireland because of England and indirectly because of the Irish people themselves. However, Swift carefully crafted A Modest Proposal with its savage irony and horrific metaphors to strike the sleeping world in the face and make all see this sickening state of Ireland.

It is quite obvious that he did not intend that his solution be taken literally (He, among other things, is satirizing the fact that the deplorable conditions make it his erroneous proposal seem somewhat plausible; this was intended as a catalyst for change as people would realize how far things had fallen). I simply have to lead a half hour discussion tomorrow and any help would be appreciated. To give you an idea of the depth I am looking for, I will give you a question that I have come up with:

- Swift wrote this essay with a clear purpose and skill. However, it was not well received, and as a general rule his true intent was overlooked. Keeping this in mind, is the burden placed on the author to create a piece that clearly conveys his point, or is it on the reader to properly understand it. Considering your conclusions to this question, was Swift's essay a model piece of literature? I'm looking for open ended, time consuming question.

In the end, Jonathan Swift "proposes" in A Modest Proposal that poor Irish babies be used as a food source because it could be profitable to both the English and the Irish. On one hand, the English would profit from the growing market of this new "delicacy." The poor of Ireland, though, could rid themselves of the unwanted children that they cannot afford to feed and get paid handsomely for "breeding." Ultimately, Swift uses this revolting proposal to condemn both the English for taking such advantage of the poor people of

Ireland and the Irish for not doing anything to lessen their plight or to rid their country of English dominion. But above all else, Jonathan Swift did not want any of his readers to ever forget the cruelty the Irish poor faced every day under the ravenous hand of England so the world would do something to rid Ireland and the rest of the earth of this immoral and ghastly treatment.