modest proposal

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Jonathan Swift offers an outrageous solution to the problem of overpopulation and mistreatment of the people of Ireland. The modest proposal, which Swift offers, is to have year old babies sold for money to sustain their parents and to nourish the affluent members of the society. The “surprise ending” of the story is when the narrator concedes that he did not consider his opinion as final and that he would accept tenable and effectual solution which could be proposed by accountable leaders. Politicians would avail the solution if they understood the misery suffered by the bloated population due to neglect by the state and initiated an internal change in the Irish government. Towards the end of the story, the narrator creates room for an amenable resolution to the problem of vast poverty. The point in the reading where I realized that the ending would be different from what the beginning suggests is where the narrator labors to give a list of measures which could be adopted to solve the problem. These measures are presented in the penultimate stages of the story, after the narrator ha...

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    Swift begins his argument by stating his view on the situation and displaying his annoyance. He states, "It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country when they see the streets, roads, and cabin 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). He uses melancholic imagery for the readers to sympathize with the suffering children and to understand their situation. Similarly, Swift displays his disgust for the wealthy by stating that "There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children… which would move tears in the most savage and inhumane beast" (1). He talks about abortion and shows how ghastly and disheartening the practice is. Clearly, Swift makes use of pathos to slowly gain the reader’s confidence in preparation for his appalling proposal. He knows that many will be emotionally affected by his proposal because no one would want their own c...

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    By being so ridiculous, such as comparing poor woman to dams and promoting carnivorous behaviors not in favor of children, Swift highlights key issues and forces the people of Ireland to see that there are, indeed, simpler solutions. At one point, Jonathan suggests that only the rich can eat the children because the meal would be quite expensive. In an attempt to expose the wealthy as wrongdoers, he uses irony and satire. Ironically, the children would be prepared for the wealthy and not the starving who sacrificed them. Nevertheless, he later divulges his remedy. Swifts speaks of rallying each other to create a sense of national pride, to industrialize Ireland, decrease importing luxurious items and dispel the want of them, boost the local economy,

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    During the 18th century Ireland was on a very serious crisis. Jonathan Swift decides to write “A Modest Proposal” as a satirical response to this crisis. In that essay he gives a solution for each of the problems that Ireland was having during that time. The main points that he wanted to discuss were domestic abuse, over population, poverty, thieves, and the lack of food. This crisis lead the great nation of Ireland into economical struggles. By all of this problems, the parents couldn’t maintain their children so they needed a solution. Now this incredible man comes with a solution that is going to blow your mind, Swift decides to give them a proposal. It was a really uncommon one but very helpful for them. This proposal is going to stabilize once again the country of Ireland.

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    Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is an attempt to bring attention to horrible the condition in which the poor or destitute people in Ireland are living in. His argument that children of these improvised people should be sold to “the persons of quality and fortune” (A Modest Proposal) for consumption, is Swift’s gruesome way of saying you might as well eat the babies, if no one is going to actually try to fix the problems of the poor in Ireland.

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    The essay, A Modest Proposal, is a proposal to end the economic dilemma in Ireland by selling the poor’s children, at the age of one, for food. The narrator states, “I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their father, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance” (Swift). According to this proposal, by selling the children for food to the wealthy in Ireland many problems will be resolved. The poor mothers will earn money to live on and will not have to raise children, the wealthy will have a new meat source and “an increase in his own popularity among his tenants” (Sparknotes), and the economy will improve because of all of the market action. In the narrator’s eyes, this proposal equals an all around win for the people of Ireland and he cannot see any objection to his plan.

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    During the 1720’s, the Irish people were suffering dearly, due to the oppression by Great Britain. There oppression came in the form of being displaced by wealthy English people who were buying up land in Ireland and then not living there. They would proceed to rent some of their land to the Irish people at extremely high rent, which eventually led to them not being able to pay neither their rent or provide their families with food or clothes. The reason behind Swift’s proposal is simple. He is an Irishman. He has a sense of patriotic duty to attempt to help his fellow Irish people. He wants them to know that it is possible to move forward form poverty and out from under the oppression of the British. He structures his essay through a basic form of presenting an idea and then backing it up with “facts” like the growth in weight of babies or expert accounts on the taste of children from a credible source. Something that Swift just assumes that the audience will take for granted. Additionally he assumes that the audience won’t simply put his article down, taking it as the ramblings of a mad man talking about eating babies like it’s a normal everyday thing.

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    A “Modest Proposal” is written by a man who had been exiled from England and forced to live among Irish citizens for many years during which he observed major problems in Ireland that needed a solution. The writer of this piece is Jonathan Swift, and in his proposal, “The Modest Proposal,” Swift purpose is to offer a possible solution to the growing problem of the homeless and poverty stricken women and children on the streets of Ireland. Swift adopts a caring tone in order to make his proposal sound reasonable to his audience, trying to convince them that he truly cares about the problems facing Ireland’s poor and that making the children of the poor readily available to the rich for entertainment and as a source of food would solve both the economic and social problems facing Ireland.

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