Swift writes for several paragraphs before actually making his "modest proposal". Discuss what he attempts to establish prior to revealing his plan.
The blank place in Section One is purposeful, although the author wrote earlier that he lost some of the pages; here, too, he is being satirical. The list of books he has read, with far from accurate descriptions of what those books are actually about, is likewise supposed to be funny; these are not books that one would choose for close examination, and it appears that the narrator has woefully misunderstood those books. This is a central theme: people misunderstand what they read, for a variety of reasons and with a variety of results ranging from the comic to the tragic.
