Written by Jonathan Swift, “A Description of a City Shower” is a poem that portrays London city experiencing heavy rain. Nonetheless, the rain is just an excuse to show the city’s underside. Swift depicts contemporary London as an overly filthy and unpleasant place, satirizing urban life. Eventually, the rain turned into a flood, and the resulting deluge exposed even more dirt. The scene and circumstances portray urban life, blatant unsanitary conditions, and excessive artificiality, expressing Swift’s lack of sympathy for modern London and its selfish dwellers. This essay will dwell upon the stylistical tools used by the author in the intention to express all characteristics of London.
Swift’s contemporary London is supposed to be a civilized, progressive, and prosperous city, but the poet reveals what is hidden underneath. The poet criticizes the city and tries to show the reality, which appears to be the opposite of assumptions. Swift highlights the foul smell in the bathroom as the rain prediction: “you’ll find the Sink / Strike your offended Sense with double Stink” (Swift, lines 5-6). At the end of the poem, Swift refers to smell again, stating that odor may tell where particular garbage floats from (Swift, lines 55-56). The occurred flood exposes the contents of the London sewers: “Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts and Blood, / Drown’d Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench’d in Mud, / Dead Cats and Turnep-Tops come tumbling down the Flood” (Swift, lines 61-64). Thus, the author depicts the city as it is, describing all its smells, dirt, and dust in order to ruin the overly idealistic picture he does not consider fair.
Swift’s descriptions succeed in creating impressive imagery that facilitates imagining the picture. Descriptions aim to reveal the accurate view of the city and its inhabitants. The city is portrayed as a dumping ground for human waste, which becomes evident under particular circumstances. The values of its inhabitants are also veiled under the descriptions of London. The rain washes away embellishments and reveals dwellers’ true nature. People are self-centered, cowardly, and not loyal to their principles: dwellers forget their social and financial state or political preferences.
Work Cited
Swift, Jonathan. “A Description of a City Shower.” Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, edited by David Fairer and Christine Gerrard, 3rd ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, pp. 80-81.