For every buzz worthy event to happen to a nation there will always be serious literature and comical writing concerning the event. While the serious are more factual, many people enjoy getting their news from places like the Colbert Report or even Saturday Night Live. People would rather get their information this way because it takes a very serious topic and puts a lighthearted twist on it while still addressing the issues at hand. Jonathon Swift and Wendy Molyneux are able to address serious problems by putting a satirical spin on it in their articles "A Modest Proposal" and "I Am Sorry I Didn't Write a Comedy Piece", respectively. The authors' use of language, the time period it was written in, and how they go about addressing the problem help the reader understand what they as authors want to say without having to confront the problem. This style of writing helps both the author and the reader confront mainstream issues in a more thought provoking way.

 If satire is not conveyed in the right tone, it is very easy for it to translate to something completely different than the author originally intended. Swift uses satire in a subtle way. If one were to read his "Modest Proposal", they might take Swift as being serious about his proposal to eat the babies in order to solve the over-population in Ireland. While in Molyneux's article "I Am Sorry I Didn't Write a Comedy Piece", it is easy to tell that she is writing this piece to mock Christopher Hitchens' article in Vanity Fair, in which he claims that women cannot be funny. The reason that Swift's piece comes off as serious is because of the language he uses. The opening sentence of his proposal is, "for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from becoming a burden on their parents or country, and for making it beneficial to the publick", which seems to indicate that Swift is going to offer a legitimate solution to the problem that Ireland as a nation was facing but that was not the case (Swift 409). Throughout the first couple of paragraphs, the reader can still find Swift's proposal to be legitimate; it is not until he states that his plan is to eat the infants of beggars that it becomes clear that he is writing a satirical piece. Even then it can still come across as being serious to some people because Swift keeps a very serious tone throughout the piece and makes a very convincing argument as to why the poor should give up their babies and why the rich should eat them. It is not until the end of the article that Swift tells the reader that he is not actually interested in eating children.  At the end he says "I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work" (Swift 415). Swift's piece takes a lot of thought to be able to decipher what he is trying to get at while Molyneux's article is very easy to follow and know what she is trying to say. 

Although the title suggests that Molyneux is not writing a comical piece, it becomes clear within the first couple of sentences that she is addressing the reasons why men do not think that women are funny. This article is clearly satirical because she takes the stereotypes of women to the extremes. In one sentence she says, "anyway, twelve hours later after I had cooked, baked, cried, sewn a blanket for my hope chest, called a telephone psychic, had all of my favorite Cathy comic strips laminated, and then stayed up all night trying on all of my clothes and shoes again, I finally felt ready to write my comedy piece" (Molyneux 417). Throughout the article she keeps reminding the reader how she does not have time to write the comedy piece because she is too busy doing household chores or trying on her clothes (Molyneux 417). By claiming she was not writing a comedy piece, she wrote a comedy piece. Her style of writing is a lot more relatable to the reader because of the language she uses. Molyneux uses lighthearted sarcasm and makes fun of herself in a way. The different time periods that the pieces were written in effected the way that the authors used satire in their writing. Her language throughout the article is very laid back and informal. For example, at one point in the article she says that she has "to go report to my regular day job of knitting a tampon cozies and being best friends with everybody" (Molyneux 418). In comparison, Swift's sarcasm is very harsh and can isolate people due to the harsh nature of what he is proposing. 

"A Modest Proposal" was written in the 1700s while "I Am Sorry I Didn't Write a Comedy Piece" was written in 2009. Swift's style of writing was very uncommon back in the 1700s. In his writing he has a very sardonic tone which is more common in today's writing. People in Swifts time were not used to reading the type of articles that he produced. This had a bigger shock factor on the readers during that time than it has on readers in today's culture.  "I Am Sorry I Didn't Write a Comedy Piece" was written within the past ten years and people are accustomed to reading satirical pieces. Swift had to take a formal approach to his article in order for it to be taken somewhat seriously and to be respected by the public, but Molyneux could take a more laid back approach to hers because of the culture we live in today. In today's culture, you can criticize or make fun of political events without a huge backlash. In the 1700s, there were more rules on what you could and could not say, especially when it came to speaking out against the government. Swift had to get creative in how he talked about the over-population problem.  While both pieces were written in separate time periods, they are both trying to achieve the same thing. When Molyneux was writing her piece in 2009, the feminism movement was starting up again and with that came many negative connotations with the word. Many people think of feminists as being man haters or the extreme bra burning type. In order to address it without coming off too harsh she had to take a lighthearted stance on the subject. If it were the 60s or 70s she may have been able to take a different approach to writing her piece but in 2009 she had to take the social climate into consideration. Even though these pieces were written in different time periods the effect is not lost; satiric pieces are still effective in today's culture because of their ability to address problems that are hard to talk about in everyday life. 

Both articles are discussing much bigger problems than it seems and they are able to do that because of their use of satire. "A Modest Proposal" addresses the problem of over-population in Ireland in the 1700s and "I Am Sorry I Didn't Write a Comedy Piece" addresses feminist concerns. The use of satire can either help an author get their point across or hurt them. For example, Swift runs the risk of ostracizing the poor population because his solution is consuming their children. While Molyneux may offend anybody with the traditional views of gender, she is not offending huge part of the population in 2009. She may come off offensive to people because of how she says that the woman is supposed to cook dinner for the family or that she is supposed to have a family before a certain age. In Ireland in the 1700s, an overwhelming portion of the population was poor (Swift 409). In order to address this fact and to show Ireland's indifference to this problem, he proposes the outrageous solution that is eating the half of the children (Swift 409). He is able to validate his claim by stating that this solution would greatly reduce the population, the poor citizens would have something to make money off of, the nations economy would be better, and the marriage rates would increase (Swift 413). While all of these points are valid, they also make it easier to have a debate on what they should do because it is easier to the issue at hand and how they would fix it. Molyneux found a way to speak about feminism by disguising it through the use of stereotypes that women are known for, by making it seem like more of a comedy piece than an article addressing a controversial topic. Molyneux's opening line is "the other day while sounding out the words on a Web site called The Rumpus, I saw this article asking for women to submit more comedy pieces. So I put down my giant chocolate bar, stopped crying, and thought, yes, that is what I will do" (Molyneux 416). In just the first line, she addresses some of the ideas men have about women. Some men believe that women are uneducated and they are emotional and with the emotion comes the binge eating of sweets. She went about addressing feminism in a different way than most people. There are many articles about feminism out there, but many of them come off as offensive and man-hating, which is why the word feminist has such a negative connotation. This article shows feminism in a different light and it allows people to form their own opinion on what feminism is. The author is making fun of herself and women everywhere by talking about how women are supposed to be. Yet at the same time she is saying that women do not conform to this stereotype nor should they be expected to act in that way. By addressing these controversial topics in a humorous way, Swift and Molyneux are able to get a conversation going about overpopulation and feminism without actually talking about them directly in their articles. 

"A Modest Proposal" and "I Am Sorry I Didn't Write a Comedy Piece" were written hundreds of years apart, but they were both able to use satire in order to get a larger message across. This shows that satire is an effective style of writing if Swift's "Modest Proposal" was able to last over 300 years and for people to still find his proposal just as outrageous and funny as people did in the 1700s. Molyneux was able to address an issue that is still being debated and she makes it more relatable to the mass population. Without the authors' clever use of language, people might have never thought about the topics of feminism and overpopulation any differently. 

