Swift Essay

I believe that Jonathan Swift’s goal with this essay was to completely shock the people first and then give his proposal. He was frustrated over many things in Ireland at the time. He was mostly frustrated with how the poor were treated. The landlords did not care that their tenants had not worked and did not care that they had no money for rent. This would put the women out on the streets to beg for a few pennies to help with the rent. Jonathan became tired of the women beggars on the streets because he felt that the poor should be taken care of and given a chance to be part of working society. His article is crude and harsh. For that time period, it was extremely offensive. The message of the article is direct and to the point. I do believe that this satire is very effective. He uses intense sarcasm to draw the reader in and offend them and then the end of the article twists into his proposal. I don’t think that this essay is overly persuasive. There really is no persuasion until the very end of the essay. Even then, it is very well written and hard to tell that it is persuasive. Again very effective though because it makes the person want to protect the poor little babies! The target audience would have been adults. I would assume that for this time, men were more targeted than women and in this case I believe the landowners were the main targets. The landowners would not agree with this article because that would entail them having a heart and caring about their tenants and Ireland really had problems with this because the English had taken over much of the land. Probably a lot of Jonathan’s frustrations were towards the English as well. I’m sure that the response for this article was not well received at all. Jonathan and his family probably had to be very careful after publication though he probably would have been well received among the poor.