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  • Essay / The image of a reasonable man in the concept of clothing in Swift's “Gulliver's Travels”

    In his most famous literary work, Gulliver's Travels, Swift conveys the image of a reasonable man through the concept of clothing. He describes clothing as a projective outer layer of skin, and he uses the same notion in A Modest Proposal. He creates a dichotomy between Gulliver and the Yahoos, suggesting that reason materializes through the adoption of clothing. However, in A Modest Proposal, it is the lack of clothing that evokes the concept. Swift calls the Irish "useless backs" who have "neither house nor clothes to cover them." The language dehumanizes the Irish by dividing their bodies into redundant parts. Furthermore, the lack of clothing reduces these bodies to objects incapable of claiming reason, lacking the necessary equipment to position themselves above the animals. Thus, in need of clothing, the poor of A Modest Proposal become synonymous with the “dirty, harmful, and deformed” Yahoos of Gulliver's Travels. This is important because it shows how skin can be exploited to establish social hierarchy. The nominator also states that "those who are thrifty" can make "admirable ladies' gloves and fine men's summer boots" from the skins of their children, thus establishing a corresponding economic hierarchy, correlating money and wealth. body value. Money allows people to afford the clothes that make reason, and those who are in poverty and cannot afford this outer layer will never be able to acquire the ability to reason. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The nominator's language is economic rather than emotive, and inhumanely "solves a human problem with an economic calculation that ignores human love and treats the poor like cattle", which allowed him to take his distances from his proposal. As a good economist, the author of this proposition specifically appeals to the reader's selfish greed, which, according to Robert Phiddian, constitutes the high point "in the terms of economic discourse." As readers, we are supposed to find this level of greed abhorrent and “reject the terms of economic discourse that regularize tyranny.” Throughout the text, Swift frequently refers to the landlords of London, who "have already devoured most of the parents" and therefore have the best rights over the children, Swift's most explicit attack in the text. Phiddian suggests that landowners constitute the Anglo-Irish elite and therefore the cannibalization of infants represents the rich preying on the poor, as also evidenced in the final paragraph by the author's claims that his proposition " [will] give pleasure to the rich.” References to landowners remind readers of William Petty's "utopianism" when, during Cromwell's reign, he seized Irish land and distributed it to the English elite, resulting in the deaths of many Irish citizens in cause of extreme poverty..