1. I think that the real thesis in this essay is ”I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ...” Yes I think that there are other thesis', because he also focused a lot about the other ways on improving Ireland and how to solve their poverty situation, and he also discussed the reasons as to why Ireland was the that it was, like when he talked about the mothers and children begging.
2. In the paragraphs 4, 6, and 7 the appeals to logic are put into mathematical terms like when they says "at most not above the value of 2s., which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands." Or "I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed." Or "I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the exchange;" All these paragraphs are statics and numbers that describe and explain the idea that he was trying to present.
3. When I realized that essay was ironic it was in paragraph 6 when he said "The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture;" and I found all this before I got to paragraph 10.
4. The people that were singled out by swift were, basically the poor, and mainly women and children living in poverty, in the essay the Irish were presented as the victims of vicious treatment by the English, but in my opinion were also to blame for some of their own misfortunes. I think this, because in one of the paragraphs before he proposes eating children, Swift discusses how they'd had so many different proposals, but none them were being put into action so that to me also put them in the situation that they were in.
5.I think that the essay does function as a merely a satirical attack, and no Swift does not propose any serious proposals for improving conditions.
6. The purpose of the last paragraph was to state how he wasn't really making an actual proposal, but he was just writing it for awareness and to get some money.
7. The other techniques I spotted were appealing emotionally, and a little bit of humor. Yes, I have a job and I had a job two summers ago, and no I never resisted my employer or did anything that I wasn't supposed to be doing. I believe that there is a link between humor, anger, other emotional states, and resistance. I think this because usually we resist to or act upon things out of emotions or based on the way were feeling. Things that I've done to vent my frustrations is screaming into a pillow, punching lockers, wall, etc. counting to 10, crying, and sometimes laughing.
8. If I was, conversely, given the job of marketing babies, I don't think that it could be done, because I wouldn't know how to market them without feeling sick inside, plus I would need statistics and numbers, and evidence that would show people that I knew what I was talking about. I wouldn't know if the first step would be giving the baby a French name or by processing the baby to non-recognition, because to me the idea of the whole thing is just in humane, and disgusting.
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