
Satire is defined as the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity(Google). In “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift and “I Am Sorry That I Didn’t Write a Comedy Piece” by Wendy Molyneux, the use of satire is very prevalent. However, it is used in different ways in that Swift Criticized an entire country of people while Molyneux particularly criticized Christopher Hitchens through the use of satire. Also, Molyneux completely shattered Hitchens opinion of women not being funny while Swift seemed to write his piece simply just for the sake of writing something. Finally, the way that both authors introduce satire is somewhat different as well in that there is a large time gap between when these two pieces were written. Jonathan Swift is known for his work such as “Gulliver’s Travels” and is regarded as the foremost satirist in the English language. Molyneux is a writer for a television show called “Bob’s Burgers” and lives with her family in California.

In “A Modest Proposal”, Swift criticizes the situation in Ireland with all the poverty and hunger and satirizes it by proposing that you could take all the newborn children, fatten them up and sell them to be eaten so that the poor people selling them can make money and it would give people food. Swift is a well-known satirist and many of his pieces contained satire. Even the title itself is satire in that the proposal the Swift suggests is preposterous and yet he calls it modes. The subtitle said that the proposal was to prevent the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents. So, in that sentence and after reading the proposal, Swift is saying that these children should sell infants to be eaten by other people for these kids to not be burdens on their families. Similarly, in “I Am Sorry That I Didn’t Write a Comedy Piece” by Wendy Molyneux, the author seems to give a rebuttal to the late Christopher Hitchens interview that explained his view in that women are not funny. In that he had written sexist books in that Women did not understand comedy. However, Molyneux is a writer for the television show “Bob’s Burgers” and uses copious amounts of comical writing to destroy Hitchens’s opinion. 

Lastly, the way that these two authors introduce their use of satire is completely different. For example, Swift wrote his pieces with a more formal writing style because it was the style of his time period. Also, Swift introduces the use of satire in almost a hidden format in that his writing style makes it more difficult for a reader to catch his use of satire basically until he enters the notion of eating infant children. On the other hand, Molyneux seems to only have satire in her piece. She introduced her use very early when she says that she “put down her giant chocolate bar and stopped crying” (Molyneux 521) in order to write a comedy piece. Also, Molyneux used something that Swift did not in his piece, and that was stereotypes. The stereotypes that Molyneux introduces are that women love John Stamos, giant chocolate bars, are not funny, are immaculate cooks, watch Grey’s Anatomy, sew, and call telephone psychics to hear their future. The use of these stereotypes seems to tie into her use of satire in that if it were not for the stereotypes, then this piece would not be considered satirical in nature. The time period gap between these two pieces is very large, Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” in 1729 while Molyneux probably wrote her piece sometime in the more recent past. 

Though these two pieces use an ample amount of satire, both use it very differently. “A Modest Proposal” uses satire in the way to scrutinize and mock the hunger problem of Ireland; while Molyneaux mocks the gender bias of Christopher Hitchens.
