The selfish behaviors displayed the character Belinda, a woman who has had a piece of hair taken without her consent, comes from a true story. Pope used the title of his story as a way to compare a real tragedy with an incident that was not so tragic. He uses elements of writing normally viewed in serious tragedies.
The poem is structured as an epic, which signifies straightaway that the author is making fun of the entire situation-and he does so to help others see how silly it was to get so upset over something so very trivial. People do not usually see how they truly act, until it is brought to their attention, this is usually the case with children. Pope uses the dramatic word, “rape” and the style of poetry to influence human behaviors, in this particular instance it is the selfish behavior of the wealthy women Pope hopes to change.
When a person has everything they desire, whether that is in the form of wealth, power, prestige or material items, it does not make the person truly, “happy.” What Samuel Johnson's poem rasselas tried to achieve by The moral theme in Samuel Johnson's, Rasselas, is for people to understand that happiness steams from inside of a person, it is also an emotion that can be easily masked with ones surroundings.
Being thankful for the things one has in life is hard if all they have ever been surround by is luxury. When the old man tells the prince, “"Sir," said he, "if you had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present state." this is exactly what he is referring too. In the story, the prince agrees and decides to look for the un peasantries in the world, hoping this would help him to find the happiness he longs for. "Now," said the Prince, "you have given me something to desire. I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness." This statement says a lot about why Johnson wrote the commentary.
After many adventures in the real world, the prince learns that happiness does not come from mere surroundings or from taking journeys throughout the world, it happens on the inside. The moral of the story being that true happiness cannot be search for maybe not even on Earth. It can be felt, but only if a person gives in to the ways of the world, its miseries, faults, and desires that are never granted.
Johnson wrote the piece for “all” man, a morality instruction guide more or less on the how to of finding happiness. To become humble is not something that can be purchased, or found, it is something that takes work, patients, and understanding. Being happy develops over the course of our lives. This is true happiness, something that the prince did not have, at least not until he understood what it meant. The behaviors Johnson is trying to change with this text could be greed, selfishness, and selfishness. The idea of happiness is often associated with a person's wealth, power, or title in society, and in the Prince's utopian world, he points out that even a man who has everything he needs or wants, will still desire more, if they are not “happy” on the inside, where it matters the most.
In the Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift, the reasoning behind the article was to promote a foreseeable solution to the economic crises of Irish families. The proposal to this solution was that children should be cared for only until the age of one, it was at that time they would be sold to the wealthy as food. This solution would provide food for the wealthy, and income for the poor, not to mention a way for the poor to afford the cost of living since they were going to have much smaller households.
Of course Swift had no real intention for this article to be taken so seriously, he did however write it in the form of a real argument. Swift created the satire hoping to change the behaviors of the English society how they treated the Irish people. By incorporating research data such as percentages, formulas and so on, it was his hope that the article would appear as serious as possible. As it has been said, the data in the article was inaccurate in many places which signified the unreliable nature of his theses. The response Swift received after the article was published was quite shocking, some community members took the article as a “literal” form, and not as sarcasm which was the intention.
When comparing Samuel Johnson's article with The Rape of Locke it is odious which of the two pieces of literature would be more affective in changing behaviors. It is my guess that The Rape of Locke, would promote change within a small group of people, where as, A Modest Proposal may have little affect in a small community, but a major affect at an international and governmental level. His article was written for the politicians, the well educated and for the people who he felt would understand the literary devices he had implored within the article. When comparing the element of emotion each author used to change behaviors, A Modest Proposal used the emotion of, “SHOCK!” The emotion used to promote change in, The Rape of Lock is definitely, humor.
