A Comparison Of A Modest Proposal And Angela's Ashes

For many years the people of Ireland endured a predicament of poverty. In Jonathan Swift's satirical masterpiece, "A Modest Proposal" he proposes a solution to help those who are impoverished and in Angela's Ashes, a memoir by Frank McCourt, Frankie and his family are poverty-stricken. In both writings the narrators are disclosed to the perceptions of poverty from an adult's view and a child's view. Swift writes about poverty as he recognizes the struggle of the poor and McCourt writes about his life as an indigent boy. Swift wants the poor to benefit from his proposal as he says, "But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the

Swift describes Ireland to be full of poor begging for food for their children, as he says, "when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms" (Swift 1). Swift describes these mothers begging for donations such as food or money through the streets of Ireland with children wearing scraps of clothes. Frankie McCourt is the beggar, growing up with a large family never having enough food and a father that opposes begging. Mam has yet another child and still there is no food but the baby has a benefit, "Michael entitles us to a few extra shillings on the dole but Mam says it isn't enough and now she has to go to the St. Vincent de Paul Society for food" (McCourt 103). As McCourt grows he still finds his Mam begging for food and shelter. Even though one author is proposing to the beggars and the other is a beggar, Swift and McCourt share similar sense of poverty in

Swift's proposal is to prevent children of the poor from being a burden. At the beginning of his proposal he states, "For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland, From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public" (McCourt). Swift wants to help the poor people benefit from their children and he found them to be the solution for starvation in Ireland. In Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt is living during the Great Depression he is only a child who is starving because his dad has no job or money to put food on the table he says, "Dad sits at the table reading the paper. He says that President Roosevelt is a good man and everyone in America will soon have a job" (McCourt 33). After moving to Ireland Mam would beg for dole, food, and shelter for her children and Dad still had no job. In both "A Modest Proposal" and Angela's Ashes Ireland suffered poverty and starvation for