Oppression is a problem that every country deals with at some time in their history. Whether it be a power house country like the United States of America, or a small country like Ireland. In the essay “A Modest Proposal” Johnathan Swift talks about the poverty found in Dublin, Ireland during the 1700’s due to the unfair laws made by the British government. In this, he uses satire which was an uncommon eighteenth century writing style. Right away I realized that this text is similar in some ways to a story written by Art Spiegelman called “Maus: A Survivor’s tale”. Spiegelman writes about the holocaust based off an interview with his father. In this, Spiegelman writes with the point of view of mice instead of the Jewish population and cats instead of the Nazi party. When looking at “A Modest Proposal” and “Maus: A Survivors tale” we can see that each author used an uncommon style of writing in their time in order to write about oppression.

Dublin, Ireland went through a lot of change in the 1700’s. They were growing rapidly and the Middle and upper class was thriving. However, the lower class was getting left behind and the amount of people in poverty was growing. At this time the British and King George III were in control and payed little attention to what was happening in the country. The system became corrupt and the English politicians were making loads of money off of these citizens. Soon the streets became overpopulated with beggars. The beggars were made up of citizens who were not born in Dublin and single mothers with many children. People addressed the problem, but nothing was to serious. Then Johnathan Swift, a satirical writer born in Dublin, Ireland decided to give his take on the situation in the form of “A Modest Proposal”. This text claimed that there was a large problem with the excessive amount of kids and single mothers roaming the streets and suggested that the government payed mothers for their children, raise them for a while, and give them to the rich so that the mothers get money and the wealthy get food. This satirical essay didn’t just poke fun at the situation but it shed light on the problem and woke the citizens of Dublin up. People realized that if this seems like a promising solution then something must be done. This lead to a small revolution which gave Dublin more independence from Britain and King George III.

The Holocaust is one of the most known genocides in history. In Art Spiegelman’s story, “Maus: A Survivors Tale”, He writes about the holocaust based completely off of his fathers personal experience. Everyone knows that back in World War II, a crazy man named Hitler came to power in Germany and believed that the Germans were the superior race in the world and that all other races that are inferior should be eliminated. The Jewish population was pretty large in Europe during this time, and after Germany invaded Poland, they began to capture and send all Jewish people to concentration camps where they will either be put to work or killed. Spiegelman’s father was one of the many Jewish people who were put into these camps, but he was not sent to death. This whole book is about his fathers fight to become a free man again and how the aftermath affected Spiegelman.

In both of these texts you see that each author uses a style of writing that is a bit foreign to their time. Swift used satire which was very uncommon in the eighteenth century and Spiegelman used animals instead of people which was also an unusual style of writing. Satire was very uncommon in the 1700’s, so why did Swift use it? Swift claims that it was the most effective way to get his message across to the citizens on Dublin without doing what every other writer had done. Swift’s use of satire was effective because he was able to express his message without being to direct. The thing about satire during this time was that it was uncommon. Many people liked this because it was rare and new which lead to more people paying attention to what Swift had to say. “A Modest Proposal” made Johnathan Swift known more worldwide and set him up for a larger variety of satirical stories. Spiegelman chose to use animals because at the time he was working on a comic book with some other authors called “Funny Aminals”. When thinking of ideas for this short strip, he comes up with the cat and mouse idea. Spiegelman chose these two because he feels that during this time, the Germans saw the Jewish people as rats and made propaganda that mirrored that belief and since everyone knows cats hate rats, he chose to make the Germans’ cats. Using animals instead of actual people allowed him to make his writing more honest since he wasn’t being held back by how people would react to a person being brutally murdered.

Oppression can affect a lot of people. Not only a single person, but a whole country. When Johnathan Swift saw that the amount of people in poverty in Dublin kept increasing, he didn’t want to sit idly by as more and more people kept going to the streets to beg for money. Swift took action. He wrote this essay because he wanted to bring attention to this and bring change. “A Modest Proposal” may not have been the sole reason that Ireland started to protest, but it was definitely a small factor. Spiegelman’s cartoon was made for a different purpose though. When Maus was written, the holocaust was long over so his goal was not to create any change. The purpose of Maus was to tell his father’s story. People look back at the Holocaust and feel bad for the Jewish people, but didn’t really know what they really had to endure. Spiegelman originally wrote a small 3 page story about the holocaust for “Funny Aminals” but once he realized how little people really knew about the events that transpired during this time, he sat down with his father and wrote a story about it.

Oppression is not a topic that can be dealt with easily. When looking at these two texts, you see that both authors had to take different paths in order to make their stories stand out. Swifts satire helped create change in a country and Spiegelman opened people’s eyes to what happened to the jewish community during the holocaust. There may have been many differences seen at first like the type of writing and the events being written about, but looking at the bigger picture of what each essay is about, you can see that both authors are just outsiders writing about oppression in the best way they know how.