Modest Proposal

Swift's Modest Proposal lulls us into a sense of security of the truth and sincerity of the article if we aren't aware of what we are reading. The first time I read this piece, I was a sophomore in high school and while I realized how abhorrent eating babies was, on a logical level, a logos level, this argument makes perfect sense. I was very into the whole thinking logically not emotionally movement of sorts. This particular piece however emblazons upons one's mind forever how utterly unappealing and devoid of real power a completely logical, but emotionally devoid or abhorrent argument is.
My teacher back then, sophomore year in high school, did not warn us that this was a piece of satire, that Swift was not advocating eating babies as a response to overwhelming poverty, but rather was advocating the opposite, namely finding a good way to keep these children alive and thriving. Of course, an intelligent person deduces after that first fateful paragraph on the second full page (in our edition in Laughing Matters) where he suggests eating babies. I made a double take when I read this. First, I wanted to make sure I read it right. Second, I wanted to make sure he was not serious (because as we all know there are a lot of loons out there). Taking into account that this was Swift however, whom I knew to have written Gullivers Travels and did not have any mental illness or extreme radicalist ideas of such that I knew of, I deduced that no, he was not really suggesting eating babies.
What he was suggesting, as a subsidary to his main argument (a very serious argument about how poverty is treated) is that both pathos, ethos, and logos must be considered in an argument. An argument out of wack with one or two of these, as the baby eating argument is, is lacking an essential persuasiveness. It is comical even that someone would suggest something like this because it is so completely out of line with the standards of ethos and pathos, although, as I have mentioned, this particular argument is completely logical. The comicness of the article undercuts the prima facsia argument (i.e. eating babies) and adds to the power of the opposing argument. The things that we are told not to do, then in turn seem to be the best ones to do. This is the power that humor has in an argument.