Rebellion and Conformity in the Rhetoric of Swift and King
Introduction to the texts
Authorial 'position'
Outsiders
Leaders/literary stylists
Authorial Intent
Satire
Polemic
Authorial Style
Similarities and differences in use of indirect address
Intentions
Concluding Similarities
Jonathan Swift's 1729 "A Modest Proposal" and Martin Luther King's 1963 "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" are both works written in protest by authors who were social critics of the contemporary mores of their society. Swift used satire to condemn the callousness exhibited by English society towards the Irish and Irish children. Martin Luther King used direct and forceful polemical prose to attack the conformist ministers of the state of Birmingham where King had come to engage in acts of civil disobedience, in the name of advancing the larger cause of civil rights in America.
King's verbal techniques strike the contemporary reader as entirely different in their presentation. The activist attempted to move the reader through calm, measured, and forceful truths, underlining how again and again, African-Americans had been denied their political rights throughout American history. His vocabulary was not simply different in comparison to Swift's because King was a 20th century American, rather than a 18th century British essayist. King attempted to move his readers through direct speech, rather than through more indirect techniques of humor. "But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statements in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms." (King, 1963)
However, both authors addressed conformists in their…
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