The purpose of humorists such as stand-up comics, is to make the audience laugh or satirical writers to make the audience aware and evoke change. Although their job is to be humourous and provide entertainment and awareness to their audience, they also have to be communicators. As communicators, they are able to convey messages that the general public would otherwise keep to themselves. Alain de Botton argues the reason is because of “messages that might be dangerous or impossible to state directly.”
In A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, he uses a satirical writing style to convey to the public about how the Irish should eat their own children because it would not only improve the state of poverty, but also provide food for the rich people in Ireland. Swift’s main proposal of eating children to rid of poverty is outrageous because in his satirical writing, he is making the claim of resorting to cannibalism in order to resolve a poverty increase in the lower class in Ireland. Additionally, he even goes as far as to degrade the Irish by referencing their offsprings with demeaning language that is reserved for animals. The purpose of this humourist and as a satirical writer, is to raise awareness and to evoke change. Thus, while Jonathan Swift makes atrocious claims for the Irish to eat their children, he is actually conveying “with impunity messages that might be dangerous or impossible to state directly.”
It seems unlikely for just anyone to make the statement, “I think the impoverished Irish should start raising babies so that they can make a profit by selling them off to the rich to be eaten!” The statement would be highly impossible to be stated directly because of the possible negative impact it would have on society. Society might dub the person who dare to utter such atrocious words to be insane or even instantly reject such controversial statements. However, when humourists like satirical writer Jonathon Swift come along and share ideas that otherwise would not normally be expressed by others, humourists suddenly not only become entertainers, but also communicators.
While humourists may only be trying to provoke laughters by scandalizing sensitive issues to garner attention for themselves, humourists are actually communicators that are able to serve society by dealing with sensitive subjects such as race, religion, politic, gender or sex. Most of the time, when it comes to these sensitive subjects, the audience will be less likely to be interested in hearing long lectures, sermons or speeches and more likely to pay attention to compelling stand-up comedies, cartoons or satirical writing. When humourists have succeeded in capturing the audience’s attention with an act, a cartoon or piece of writing, then they are able to convey messages straight to the audience.
In a way, humourists have their own special method of communicating with their audience and functioning within a society. Using jokes to alleviate serious and sensitive topics, they are able to voice unspoken thoughts and help raise issues. In A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift was able to capture his audience’s attention with an outrageous proposal instead of outrightly lecturing with a formal essay on how the Irish people are impoverished. He was able to entertain with his proposal with strong and seemingly valid arguments, but yet he also attempted to establish the settings for a parody. While mentioning a rather sensitive subject about the British policy and the heightened state of impoverishment in Ireland, he was able to create a comfortable environment for a serious argument that would have otherwise been off limits under different circumstances. He, like many other satirical writers and humourists, was not only able to entertain, but was able to convey with impunity messages through interesting and creative methods that could really capture the audience’s attention.
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