A Modest Proposal Analysis

Historically, Ireland has suffered from problems of famine and overpopulation during the eighteenth century due to British parliament obtaining the right to legislate Ireland. The British parliament’s right to legislate in turn created and made way for a great deal of poverty for those who lived in Ireland. During this time in the eighteenth century, many individuals would have believed that overpopulation and poverty, or people and the economy, were one in the same; that it was only natural for people to become part of the economy. In modern society, however, the traditional mode of thought is that individuals and the economy are to be separated. Jonathan Swift, however, proses a contrary and satirical solution to these problems. Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish satirist, writes a juvenalian satire that provides a British approach by proposing to solve the fate of the poverty-stricken Irelands by selling poor children as food for the wealthy in his essay, “A Modest Proposal.” Swift’s essay is a manifestation of the idea that Irish citizens were denied their natural human rights by England by dehumanizing them and viewing them as a simple form of commodity. He focuses on how England policy exhausts Ireland’s resources and exploits the individuals living there. Through Swift’s proposal, he complicates the notion of political and economic issues of the time by introducing our modern idea about human rights through making the absurdity of his proposal literal so that we feel repulsed by it. At the core, he is suggesting that the English and the wealthy landowners of Ireland are causing the poverty and misery of the population.

During this period in the eighteenth century when Swift wrote his proposal, it was very common for society t...

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... allowing to happen in Ireland with exploitation, poverty, overpopulation and the lack of human rights to the citizens of Ireland. He uses several satirical and persuasive devices in his piece to show the cultural and historical motive behind what was happening in the century. Although his essay was written many years ago, it is one that modern society can come to an understanding with after digging beneath the surface. We are made to feel repulsed by what he writes about because it touches on the political climate and the history that we derived from, allowing us to form our own opinions about what is moral and immoral to propose for the problems over poverty and overpopulation during this period. Although Swift titled his essay A Modest Proposal, it was indeed an immodest proposal that brought to light the dire situations that needed to be addressed and changed.