An Essay on the Principle of Population Literary Elements

An Essay on the Principle of Population Literary Elements

Genre

Essay

Setting and Context

The essay is written in the context of the economic law of wages.

Narrator and Point of View

Third-person narrative

Tone and Mood

Informative and heartening

Protagonist and Antagonist

The protagonist is William Godwin.

Major Conflict

The major conflict is the principle of populations which states that when population increases, wages decline and vice versa.

Climax

The climax is the advocacy for the control of the human population to reduce pressure on the available resources.

Foreshadowing

The principle of population foreshadowed the economic decisions made in the modern world by Thomas Malthus.

Understatement

The impact of the influx in human population on the world is understated. Despite putting pressure on the available resources, the increased population leads to malnutrition because as the population increases, the agricultural lands remain stagnant.

Allusions

The story alludes to the significance of controlling the human population to sustainable levels.

Imagery

The imagery of resource scarcity depicts sight to readers to help them see how the increase in the human population puts pressure on the earth. Since the available resources remain stagnant, there is a need to control the human population.

Paradox

The main satire in the essay is that planet earth does not rely on humans for its survival. On the contrary, human beings depend on the earth to survive. Ironically, the same human beings are in the front line in destroying the earth they depend on for their survival.

Parallelism

N/A

Metonymy and Synecdoche

Natural selection is a metonymy for survival of the fittest on planet Earth.

Personification

N/A

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