A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift, is a satirical pamphlet that was published to the public in 1729. Its purpose was to shock the citizens of Ireland with an appalling solution to their economic troubles at the time. Swift’s purpose for A Modest Proposal was to present a horrific solution for an ever growing problem in Ireland. He adopts an aloof but eerily serious tone to grab the attention of the lower and middle class. The issue in Ireland was the economy and the lack of efficiency from the system. People were poor, hungry, and the increase of births created a high demand to feed more mouths. Swift realizing that a change was needed, wrote and published many literary works to get his opinions and ideas to the public. But A Modest Proposal was the most ground breaking and shocking literary work for its time. At the end of A Modest Proposal Swift reveals that his intentions were pure and that his desire was to help the citizens of Ireland. The main point Swift writes about is the lack of food and the hungry mouths to feed. He uses his satirical charm by stating a solution to eat babies. This is an absolutely appalling and horrific idea but it does its job by capturing the reader’s attention. He starts off A Modest Proposal with this idea then later goes into detail expressing the pros and cons of the solution. Swift then reveals the true problem that Ireland’s society faces and expresses an urge to change the system. He then ends by showing that his words can be backed by his true intentions, thus creating a sense of trust to what Swift is saying. Swift’s goal was to capture Ireland’s attention in hopes that they will realize that they need to fix their situation or be forced to find a different food source. When the reader ... ... middle of paper ... ...ir heart stings by giving them hope. Swift presents the idea that children can be a great help to solving their situation. This further interests the reader to continue on and find out what Swift is proposing. Swift realizes that there may be some opposition. So he finds the weak point in the opposing argument. This idea might cut the population in half, but what of it? Why should the idea be shot down when there seems to be no other hope? Swift takes this chance by truly showing the reader the real problem. The government, taxes, and any other greedy force that has brought society to the point of starvation. The only problem with this argument, or “proposal”, is that no one in their right mind would be able to kill and eat babies. Unless people throw away their values and humanity just to survive. But people always find a way to survive and still remain human.
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Show More“A Modest Proposal” was written in 1729 by a satirical author by the name of Jonathan Swift. Swift studied at the University of Oxford and was also know for his popular writing in Gulliver’s Travel. The purpose for his satire “A Modest Proposal” was to enlighten the citizens of Ireland about their hardship and suffering. He informed them about their scares of food, money, and property, but provided a possible solution to their problem. To persuade the people Swift adopts a comforting and friendly tone to his audience for the people to react to his solution.
In the time frame that Swifts’ A Modest Proposal was written Ireland was going through political, economic, and religious struggles. In 1729 England had contrived, with the help of Irish venality, to wreck Ireland’s merchant marine, agriculture, and wool industry. Prostitutes in Swift’s paper are having kids like senseless people, but yet they can’t afford to feed them. Jonathan Swift proposes that his people should sell the babies and eat them. He thinks this would help solve the problem of over population. Swift tried to give his people pamphlets on how to fix the problem that was plaguing their country, but they ignored them. Swift says “These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants.”(1) Swift proposes that the mothers sell the babies for 8 shillings; the rich would find the child to be a delicacy and the extra money would go to the landlord. So everyone would benefit from this proposal. He does this as a way of making his people aware of what is going on in their
A Modest Proposal, written by Jonathan Swift, proposes both an outrageous idea and real solutions for helping Ireland manage their overpopulated country and eliminate poverty in 1729. Swift incorporates this idea to capture the attention of the people in Ireland and England, and prove to them they need to take action. He adopts a serious yet sarcastic tone in order to convince the citizens and readers their country needs change.
Swift's message to the English government in "A Modest Proposal" deals with the disgusting state of the English-Irish common people. Swift, as the narrator expresses pity for the poor and oppressed, while maintaining his social status far above them. The poor and oppressed that he refers to are Catholics, peasants, and the poor homeless men, women, and children of the kingdom. This is what Swift is trying to make the English government, in particular the Parliament aware of; the great socioeconomic distance between the increasing number of peasants and the aristocracy, and the effects thereof. Swift conveys his message in a brilliant essay, in which he uses satire, humor and shock value.
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.
All though he kept the use of them limited, a use of sympathy for the children by going into detail of how the children will be prepared and eaten. “A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter” (A Modest Proposal). The audience is made to feel Swift’s irritation at the situation and his unyielding attempts to relieve Ireland of the problems of the poor with his statement, But, as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, (A Modest Proposal). Swift was fed up with the rich ignoring the situation he did the only thing he thought he could do, wrote a proposal that would shock his audience into seeing the situation for what it was,
The work is a great example of how a text can have more than one thesis, depending on how it is read, or who reads it. In it’s time, A Modest Proposal was taken as serious by the audience of rich men. It caused some hysteria and confusion in upper class communities. Imagine reading an anonymous work which promotes cannibalism! Swift eventually had to reveal himself and his purpose of his pamphlet, which was to exaggerate the steps necessary to stop the Irish famine and poverty epidemic. A Modest Proposal is almost a scare tactic. It brings attention to the distances people will go to stop hunger and homelessness. The audience of rich, land-owning men were planned to take the text to heart. It should shock them into lowering taxes and decreasing the cost of shelter. Jonathan Swift uses irony and sarcasm to hint at his essay not being serious, and uses his writing skill to try and solve a serious problem. And of course, the solution Swift is actually looking for, is not about eating
The speaker of A Modest Proposal is Jonathan Swift, this piece takes place in Dublin, Ireland, and A Modest Proposal shows how there are many poor unfortunate children out there who live on the streets and he wants to find a way to get them off the streets and away from poverty. Swift's purpose is to try and help the poor and unfortunate kids off the streets who are living on there own without their parents being able to support them. Swift's audience is the people who live in Ireland and also to the parents out there who have kids and have problems being able to support their children and also to the richer families who can come up with conclusions and help deal with foundations to help these poor unfortunate kids, but also while Swift is being satirical he's also addressing the English so they can hopefully see their lack of mortality.
According to the novel, Jonathan Swift believes that the children in Ireland have no purpose in society and they are the ones who are bringing down the economy. A Modest Proposal is essentially an attempt to "find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method" for converting the starving children of Ireland into "sound and useful members of the Commonwealth." Across Ireland poor children are living in filth and destitution because their families are too poor to keep them fed an...
First of all, the title is very under exaggerated and under exaggeration is a characteristic of satire. The proposal the narrator makes is very far from modest. The narrator proposes that eating babies will fix the poverty in society. Swift’s purpose in writing ”A Modest Proposal” was to get the reader to make up their own opinions, without telling them what to believe or talking about morals. The narrator says he has “no other motive than the publick good of my country, by advancing or trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich” when proposing this idea. (Swift) The real purpose in writing this is to get the reader to find real solutions to end poverty and help society unlike this
“A Modest Proposal” is a perfect definition of juvenalian satire. The main focus in the story is to propose a simple way to remove the poor by creating a new dish they could create: babies. What Jonathan Swift proposes is, instead of seeing women with children at their skirts, the women sell their babies before the age of one as a source of food. With this method, Swift says that the poor will have a source of income that any woman can do, and the rich will have a brand new delicacy.
The logic presented in the proposition reflects the darker side of the human consciousness. While normally restricted by a moral barrier, these suggestions for reform compare the poor to simple commodities, and this extreme notion is contributed by a customary, desensitized attitude towards the lower classes.(Swift) However, this problem has intensified to the point in this country where it can no longer be ignored. For instance, the beginning of the proposal states, “that this prodigious number of children...is a great additional grievance.”(Swift) As a result, Swift argues with how such a class has so much potential in benefiting the nation as a whole, and dehumanizes them to exaggerate their depicted worth in the eyes of their own government. For example, he attempts to reason with how cost-effective cannibalism can become, by stating “a good fat child...will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat.”(Swift) Such a barbaric proposition emphasizes the already primitive mindset that the upper class has for the impoverished, as an expendable
Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a strong satirical essay written in 1729. This is easily one of his most famous essays along with Gulliver’s Travels which was written in 1726. In the time that this essay was written, there was a major economic downturn and major overpopulation in Ireland and he informs the readers by saying, “It is a melancholy object to walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and all importuning every passenger for an alms.” This was a major issue in Ireland and Great Britain at the time and this sets up Swift’s “Modest Proposal”. Swift proposed that a profitable
The idea of eating all the youth in the country is obviously self-defeating and is not being seriously suggested by the writer. He is simply trying to show how desperate the lower class is in Ireland. Swift introduces the reforms he is actually suggesting, taxing absentee landlords, of encouraging the domestic economy by buying Irish goods, of discouraging pride, vanity, idleness, by dismissing them in his essay by saying that they are impractical. However, these reforms greatly differ from his ?modest proposal? because instead of the poor sacrificing their children, it would involve the rich sacrificing some of their luxuries. He is trying to point out the fact that reforms that would be practical and beneficial to the people of Ireland are being overlooked for the convenience of the rich.
To start off the full title of Johnathan Swift’s writing is "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for making them Beneficial to the Publick." From just reading the title in the book “A Modest Proposal”, I was thinking it was a story about romance and how a gentleman proposed marriage to his female lover. His proposal, in effect, is to fatten up these undernourished children and feed them to Ireland's rich land-owners. He does this to illustrate how backwards and bad the state of Ireland is and the social classes. For these reasons, he looks at the politicians to blame for the poor conditions because of the apathy they presented while in the decision making process, to resolve the conditions. Jonathan Swift he says that the people, politicians, and English were all to be at fault for the terrible state and poverty of Ireland.