The question asks for three examples of either sarcasm, hyperbole or understatement in "A Modest Proposal." I have chosen three examples of sarcasm. Sarcasm means saying the opposite of what you mean. A common example of sarcasm is to say "graceful" or "great job" after somebody stumbles and falls. This is sarcasm because the speaker obviously intends to communicate the opposite of the literal meaning of the words.
Swift, filled with anger over the hard heartedness of the British toward the Irish poor, has created a narrator so clueless and without a moral compass that almost every "compassionate" statement he makes is actually meant by Swift to show the cruelty of treating the Irish as no more than objects that are only useful if they turn a profit.
Three examples of sarcasm are the following:
"Thus the Squire will learn to be a good Landlord, and grow popular among his Tenants." This statement is in praise of a landlord buying and eating the year-old children of his tenants, something that would, in reality, be considered horrible and cruel to do.
"And besides it is not improbable that some scrupulous People might be apt to Censure such a Practice, (although indeed very unjustly) as a little bordering upon Cruelty, which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any Project, how well soever intended."
The narrator makes the above statement about selling 12-year-olds as food for the rich. This statement also includes understatement, as it is far more than bordering upon cruelty to eat a child, but the end of it, in which the narrator says cruelty has always been his strongest objection against any project, is clearly meant by Swift to be sarcastic, for all of the narrator's projects are unspeakably cruel.
Some Persons of a desponding Spirit are in great concern about that vast Number of poor People, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to imploy my thoughts what Course may be taken, to ease the Nation of so grievous an Incumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known, that they are every Day dying, and rotting, by cold, and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the younger Labourers they are now in almost as hopeful a Condition. They cannot get Work, and consequently pine away from want of Nourishment, to a degree, that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common Labour, they have not strength to perform it, and thus the Country and themselves are happily delivered from the Evils to come.
Swift is being sarcastic in having his narrator praise as "hopeful" the fact that the poor, old and young, are dying off in horrible conditions as quickly as possible.
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