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
