Jonathan Swift was considered one of the greatest satirists of the 17th century. This author was not shy about ironizing religion, politics, and various topics that were taboo in society. For this reason, a current, untouchable topic of human orientation was taken as the subject of satire. Nowadays, the issue of gender predisposition and sexual preference is considered sensitive, so imitating the great satirist, this theme was chosen. Throughout the work, a technique called coup d’Ă©tat is traced. Its essence is to change this or that position.
Referring to the work “Modest Proposal,” which is built entirely on the coup, irony, and evil satire of the contemporaries of the time, work was done on a similar pattern. The work depicted a world where homosexual relationships are considered the norm and heterosexual preferences are considered obscene and wrong (Kelting). A similar point was made in Swift’s work, in the part where the author tries to reassure the reader that children under the age of 12 are not a saleable commodity to eat. The work used techniques of exaggeration, such as in the part where the parents began a serious conversation with the main character after he kissed the girl.
The device of irony, which Jonathan Swift was so fond of, is noticed in the part where the girl scratched her knee and began to cry, while the other one urged her on with the words, “Come on, come on up! Girls don’t cry.” (Swift). Usually, these phrases refer to boys who risk expressing their displeasure or pain through tears (Swift). At the same time, the satire mocks a moment about society’s non-acceptance of a different orientation, in a moment where Molly’s character had to run around six bakeries to find an establishment that agreed to put a male and female figure on a cake. The mockery here is not intended as malicious mockery but rather as an occasion to draw attention to a problem that, in reality, does not negatively affect society in any way. The aim of the piece is to show how silly gender prejudice is about a person’s orientation looks (Swift, “A Modest Proposal, by Dr. Jonathan Swift”). After all, the community would not become dramatically “perverted” or “wrong” if gay marriage were legalized in most countries of the world.
Because the work is written in the style of Swift, it is not without a mockery of religion. In the part where the main character accepts Molly’s heterosexuality, he is willing to associate with her until she sins. If Molly is not acting impulsively, then it is not a sin. At this point in the work, the “illogicality” technique was used, the point of which is to combine incongruent things. Because heterosexuality is something wrong in this world, religion can interpret attraction to the opposite sex as a sin. Although satire seems to be a rather cruel genre in relation to what it mocks, it is a necessary genre. Through satire, one can draw attention to apparent problems, taboos that one is used to turning a blind eye to, and cruel topics that, unfortunately, are the norm in our lives. In the end, even if it doesn’t solve the problem, satire allows us to laugh at it to our heart’s content, which makes life a little easier.
Works Cited
Kelting, Edward. “Am I the Ibis or the Snake? Totemism, Satire, and Community in Juvenal Satire 15.” TAPA, vol. 149, no. 2, 2019, pp. 419–53.
Swift, Jonathan. A Modest Proposal and Other Writings. Alma Classics, 2019.
“A Modest Proposal, by Dr. Jonathan Swift.”Gutenberg.org, 1729, Web.