Carl Sagan And Swifts A Modest Proposal :: essays research papers

"Carl Sagan would be pleased. It is his The Demon-Haunted World that opens with a story concerning a taxi safarir The driver, once realizing it is Carl Sagan, that scientist guy, in his rides backseat, proceeds to bombard Sagan with questions about truly scientific issues in the vein of channeling, Nostradamus, astrology, the shroud of Turin. And the driver presents each of these subjects with a buoyant enthusiasm. moreover Sagan disappoints him. With a list of facts, Sagan tells the man why there is a 99% chance each of his pseudoscientific theses are not true or why some(prenominal)times there is serious a much simpler write up which Occams Razor dictates we take. This respectful and modest logical deconstruction of anomalous ideas is a compelling aspect of Sagans writing style. Enter Jonathan alert Jonathan actives essay A Modest Proposal parallels Sagans style in its logical, mathematical, and unpretentious tone. However instead of Sagans deconstructing of plastere d ideas, Swift constructs one. A second difference is purpose Sagans is knowledge Swifts, satire.Swift lets us know right off the thrash about that the fictitious author of his essay is a cultured man. One finds the get-go evidence of Swifts authors formal background in the title, A Modest Proposal For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public. Swift then continues to drive the point home by using complex sentences throughout the rest of the essay, as well as maintaining a relatively high aim of diction (theres not a contraction to be bring in his essay). Swift uses sustenance in instead of food and grandiloquent instead of large to help accomplish the writers status as sophisticated. With some knowledge of the time period this essay was written in, one realizes that Swifts fictitious author satires the way the English treated the brusk during Irelands potato famine. It is t he complex sentences and formal diction which are hypothetical to indicate that the author is one of Irelands English Occupiers.Only a few lines in the essay begins to stress its logical approach by describing babies and their mothers in the most scientific of ways It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year. First, one may note the connotation Swifts phrase dropped from its dam gives. This phrase does refer to birth but is commonly reserved for farm animals, which is how Swift shows the authors feelings towards the Irish ugly (or lack there of).