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

whole number of infants at a certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who demand our charity in the streets" (Swift 3). His intention is to help the beggars by proposing a solution to their poverty by selling their children for the wealthy to eat, but he is stating his proposal full of irony and sarcasm which is also seen in Angela's Ashes. In Angela's Ashes, McCourt is narrating his life in the perspective of the young naive child he portrays himself to be. As the novel progresses Frankie matures in age and begins to take matters into his own hands, he says, "It's hard to sleep when you know the next day you're fourteen and starting your first job as a man" (McCourt 309). The narrator, Frankie, tells his life as a poor boy becoming a man who is just trying to make a living. Both narrators have different views on poverty but correlate one another with satire.
As melancholy as poverty is in Ireland both Swift and McCourt find humor and sarcasm in the sense of it all. Swift proposes to the impoverished that selling their children will help them benefit as the child is being sold as a meal. Swift's tone is satirical as he proposes, "The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders..." (Swift 6). The author uses diction such as breeders to dehumanize women and refer to them as livestock as he proposes that children will be a new source of food and that the poor will benefit from the children. McCourt writes with such innocence yet sarcasm when he writes of adultery such as "the kneetrembler" which is how he described the act of sex. He writes of the time he is in the library on a rainy day reading Lives of the Saints looking up in the dictionary what a virgin is but he says, "Now I have to look up inviolate and chastity and all I can find here is that inviolate means not violated and chastity means chaste and that means pure from unlawful sexual intercourse. Now I have to look up intercourse and that leads to intromission, which leads to intromittent, the copulatory organ of any male animal. Copulatory leads to copulation, the union of the sexes in the art of generation and I don't know what that means and I'm too weary going from one word to another in this heavy dictionary which leads me on a wild goose chase from this word to that word and all because the people who wrote the dictionary don't want the likes of me to know anything" (McCourt 286). Frankie's curiosity from one word made him go on what he says to be a "wild goose chase" for he is just a child expanding his vocabulary with limitless amounts of words. McCourt writes this in child's perspective making it more humorous because children are clueless. Swift and McCourt write with comparable sarcasm the only difference is that Swift proposes a solution to benefit the poor and end starvation as McCourt writes about his youth as a poor Catholic child.
Swift and McCourt see poverty being a dilemma as one describes the beggar and the other is the beggar.

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

Ireland.
Ireland suffered of poverty for many years, when "A Modest Proposal" was proposed in 1729 and during Frank McCourt's life throughout the Great Depression and WWII.

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

years.
Jonathan Swift and Frank McCourt both write of poverty from their views but in different shoes. The major difference between the two is that one is the proposer and the other is the one who the proposal is for. Swift and McCourt have the same visions of Irish poverty, although Swift's proposal makes McCourt the roasted piece of meat on a silver platter.