A Modest Proposal Rhetorical Analysis

Irony is a broad term for a literary technique that authors use in stories to convey harsh criticism in a light-hearted way. But it is not only a literary technique, situational irony happens all around us everyday. For example today I saw an ironic sign on the highway. This particular sign said “Don’t Text and Drive” but at the bottom of the sign it said to text a number for more information. Even in history you can even find ironic situations. Right before JFK was shot someone asked him “Mr. President you can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you” to which he responded “That’s very obvious”. Subsequently JFK was assassinated. These situation can occur in our life, history, or in literature. Many of the literary situations in R.K Narayan's “Like the Sun”, “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, and the “Interlopers” by Saki give harsh criticisms towards human nature. In the short story “Like the Sun” by R.K Narayan, he uses irony to convey the underlying message that honesty is not always the best policy. At the start of the day Sekhar’s wife asks him what he thinks of her cooking. Sekhar answers with his truthful opinion that he is “unable to swallow it”. Sekhar could have just told a white lie and would have been in the clear with his wife. Another instance of situational irony is when all of Sekhar’s colleagues are talking about the death of “so and so”. Sekhar walks in and states his honest opinion of the man that he was “mean and a selfish brute”. Sekhar told the truth in this situation even if it was to the amazement of his colleagues. The last example of irony in the story is when the headmaster calls Sekhar into his office. The headmaster invites Sekhar over for his opinion on his singing. Sekhar says he will only do this for a 10 day extension on the papers he has been procrastinating. Later on Sekhar explains to the headmaster that he is not good and shouldn’t continue the lessons, and expresses his thanks for Sekhar's honesty. But in truth the headmaster ironically made 100 papers due the next morning due to his honesty. This all goes to show how …show more content…
At the beginning of the story he uses verbal irony when he says “That selling babies would give the poor families enough money to live off of”. He doesn’t mean this at all, that's why you can tell he is using verbal irony. He is just trying to criticise how the people of ireland do not value their children as much as they should. In the middle of the story Swift uses irony when he says “It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country”. This is ironic because he is talking about babies as objects and this is too much of a serious topic to call “melancholy”. This is also another example of verbal irony and how his idea of eating babies should not be taken serious. In the end of the story he give of solutions that are “not worthy of being considered”. This is the final example of irony in the story because he means the exact opposite of what he says. When he says that these are the ideas that are “not worthy of being considered”, these are all the solutions that he is telling the people of Ireland to consider and eventually put into