Each of the texts have proposes to be their. ‘A Modest Proposal’ was there to indirectly attack the British Government. This pamphlet was against them. He attacks those in power with no regard for the poor. George Orwell does the same but to those who take the power in Russia at this time. At that time, it was Stalin. He criticised poverty and inequality. Both of these texts are very similar although they are about 200 years apart from when each was written. One is whom the authors are attacking and the other is the way they attack them. In these two texts, they are both attacking the political leaders of two different countries. There is one big difference between the two texts. One is that ‘Animal Farm’ was based on a British Farm and was indirectly attacking Stalin, which would have resulted in public death by Stalin if he discovered this. A Modest Proposal was talking indirectly but it was made clear that he was talking about Ireland and the poor. The other is that Jonathon Swift wrote his pamphlet with his own knowledge whereas George Orwell probably read Jonathon Swifts ideas to make his book Animal Farm. This was developing the ideas Jonathon Swift formed using satire and talking about the Soviet Union and what was actually happening in the form of using animals and a farm instead of humans and a major country.
George Orwell was not talking from the book it was a side, which hated the communists that was talking. He personally was not attacking Stalin; he was just the writing, writing in the view of the people. Same with Jonathon Swift, they did not actually mean what they were saying as the text being spoken was not in there view. They write the texts by using irony. This is because the authors meaning are different from what is read by the reader. George Orwell uses characters to put forward his text. He uses animals instead of humans (these are who the animals are referred to), and the animals have different personalities and are arranged into groups of who is in power and who is not. Jonathon Swift writes his pamphlet in a way to show that children are good and healthy to eat (although he does not believe in enjoying eating children as a way to boost the economy). George Orwell was trying to put forward that power should not be taken for granted and if power if put on you then you should use it to help others. Stalin never did this he never listened to the people and did what he wanted. Jonathon Swift was taking the poor children in Ireland and using them to make and argument against the British Government. Swift also uses people as animals. He uses the word such as ‘Dam,’ which means ‘Mother Horse.’ Swift uses sentences to show how children would be good food for the rich,
“I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year if tolerably nursed increaseth to 28 pounds.”
This can make the people who read this pamphlet want to know more for eating children. He makes it sound good like using animals, if we leave the pig for a month it would get larger so there is more to eat.
I think personally that A Modest Proposal was more effective as it was arguing and a smaller basis but showed so much detail in this small pamphlet. He uses all the things that Animal Farm has, irony, characters (animals) and also other items but is smaller and quicker to read. Even though Animal Farm is more like a story book that could be read as normal reading it has background information that you have to realise and you have to really concentrate to work out what this means. Whereas A Modest Proposal is hard to understand but with a dictionary present it is easy to understand if you concentrate only on the text. Animal Farm would be found as more interesting to teenagers whereas A Modest Proposal would be a more of an Adult pamphlet or even for Politicians to read. These texts are two similar and very interesting texts.
