A Modest Proposal Satire

“A Modest Proposal,” by Dr. Jonathan Swift is a poem of seven paragraphs which describes a proposal “to prevent children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden to their parents and country and making them beneficial to the public” (Swift 430). Swift uses satire throughout the whole poem to emphasize the problem of overpopulation. He uses irony, reversal, understatement, incongruity and other techniques to get an emotional reaction from the audience, prompting a political or social change. This poem dramatizes the conflict between humanity and reality. Through this poem he demonstrates his anger and frustration towards the situation of his country. However, Swift’s proposal have a higher meaning than just being sarcastics. First,

At the Reformation in England the poor had been made a charge on the parish in which they resided and forbidden to wander beyond it. In Ireland there was no such universal provision, and the poor often wandered the country looking for work or begging. Attempts were made to distinguish between the worthy and unworthy beggar by a system of badging (“Social Problems”). The Foundling Hospital to provide for orphan and destitute children until they were of an age to be apprenticed. Many died before they reached this age. Contemporaries, though accustomed to high infant mortality, were appalled; during the twelve years 1784–96, 25,253 children were entered on the hospital's admission records and 11,253 of these died (“Social

If more men would take care of their wives and children there wouldn’t be many beggars in the streets. “There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortion, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children” (Swift 435)! If there was a law or punishment to men who have leave their children or have affairs it would stop men of reproducing somewhere else than their home. “This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards, or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers towards their children, when they were sure of settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public, to their annual profit instead of expense. We should soon see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market. Men would become as fond of their wives, during the time of their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, or sow when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage” (Swift