The Modest Proposal Reflection
This "Modest Proposal" essay was assigned to me by my Honors English 12 teacher; Mrs. Livingston this year. And the assignment was to make a satirical essay about a subject or an idea that would be completely extreme and irrational. We started this unit of satire with a short story called The Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. And the story was about a man’s idea to eat the children of impoverished families during the 18-1900’s. In the story the man would try to justify and support his theory by using data, emotion, and logic to try to persuade the reader. My satirical essay was about trying to rationalize the idea of skinning “out of control” teens in juvenile centers and making them into clothes and shoes. I added this project to my portfolio because it was fun to write and because I enjoyed researching for it. With this essay I had to find a lot of statistics about things like juvenile system budgets, national debt, and much more to support my idea. I have to admit though; it was a bit of a struggle to try to convince the reader of such a crazy idea, even when I myself thought that it was crazy too. But I think that’s what I liked about it- it was a challenge. And it was also fun to brainstorm crazy ideas for my essays with my friends also.