Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” uncovers the laxity of British and Irish Gentry towards the increasing poverty in Ireland and the exploitation of the Irish. With its metaphors that depicts cannibalism as an acceptable solution to hunger, ‘modest’ can only be seen as an euphemism for this egregious suggestion. This satire dictates an economically insightful proposal that alleviate poor parents of their ‘unwanted bastards’. As a result of this proposal, the outcome suggests to hinder children from being an excessive liability to the public, which then will be beneficial. With mathematical and economical reasoning, the dehumanization, devouring and devaluing of human life only speaks to criticize the British’s negligence. Moreover, “A Modest …show more content…
Proposal” seeks to build awareness of increasing poverty and hunger through satire and irony by proclaiming the immoral act of cannibalism to fix social injustices. Acknowledging the impoverish situation, in which encompassed the Irish people, Swift writes an account that serves to demoralize and degrade the self.
An attempt to reflect how the Irish were exploited, Swift uses an analogy of animal husbandry throughout this story. As a result, its effect presents the poor people as a detestable burden to the state. They reproduce an excessive amount of children that they cannot support while begging for sustenance to help themselves and their children; in the end, the children grow up either resorting to begging themselves or take up a life of thievery. The children are compared to animals and teenagers are seen as savages, and more of an encumbrance to the public and that without proper training serves no value. In addition the analogy incorporates economics and numbers to describe this proposal as rational thinking. Nay, it only serves to be irrational to depict human life to be inferior to animals. Swift’s narrator offers families to become capital units for the greater good of the kingdom. With their willingness to corporate with this proposal, it will strengthen and solve the problems of starvation, cultural depletion and economic recession. A part of this solution involves the dehumanization of babies and women. Helpless infants are treated as livestock and as a valuable commodity; a metaphor describing the potential of the British devouring the future of the Irish people. The word devour takes on a figurative and literal …show more content…
meaning, describing the injustice the Irish endures, albeit the act of cannibalism presented in the proposal. As well as, signifying the role of the woman only to rear and give birth to children, the word breeders describes as a dysphemism; an offensive way of describing women only to be useful for their abilities to give birth. Women’s sudden usefulness, because of their special abilities, begin to be treated well by their husbands. In this case, more tender because the precious commodity she carries would be of great use to their lively hoods. Ironically, the institution of marriage is expected to strengthen, because parents have something to live for; yet, not the pride in joy of a baby, but profit gained from producing that child. In addition, to those who engage in “voluntary abortions” will not have to sacrifice their “poor innocent babies”. Indeed, it is ironic that their “bastard children” are only to be used as a part of the consumption; since they will be murdered, it is better that they will be put to some consumer use. Now having children has become more of a profit rather than an expense on the parents to nurture their children. Having children would be more beneficial than to have them die by starvation or become a ward of the public. The projectors uses reason as a device to dehumanize and persuade. This is done, by using empiricism to efficiently think of a feasible equation to supply the demands of hunger within the city of Dublin. Humans as livestock and commodity becomes a part of an economic equation. The whole proposal is an irony, because the projector gives this rational thought to benefit the public in hopes that it assists the whole of Ireland. Be that as it may, he is excluded from his own proposal, because his child is too old to participate in the feeding and his wife has reached the age where she no longer can bear children. The projector thinks he is doing a selfless act that will offer a solution, but his observation proves his selfishness. All things considered, the projector is untrustworthy, proving that this proposal should not be taken seriously and be viewed as a satire. This careless attitude towards human life proves the nature of the British towards Ireland.
The projector offers sarcastic remarks towards the British to agree with this proposal criticizing the English by stating “a country would be glad to eat up our whole nation.” This direct criticism is presented in a way that is not offensive. Not to mention, Swift gives indication of his real life, having sent works to publications—prior to this satire—about the state of Ireland, only not to be taken seriously. Again, as a result to not receiving any attention he satirizes this disregard and mistreatment through this suggestion. The British’s institutionalization of the Irish people by pilfering their lands; destroying their culture and people by indoctrinating their beliefs and enforcing British culture, while implanting high rents and taxes through absentee, negligent landlords and providing little to no sustenance and provisions for the people of Ireland to survive caused the country to grow poor. Henceforth, for poor people, begging becomes a legal occupation to survive. The proposal uses common-wealth as a pun; that is Ireland being a part of the British Commonwealth above all the wealth becoming common if the public is to agree with this suggestion. For the most part, the established British class system does not offer a common-wealth, due to wealth belonging to the aristocracy and the upper
class.
In Swift’s satirical essay he stated the main issue to be the hunger and starvation of Irish country and their lack of money to support oneself. He said the complication was they themselves don’t have food, to many families in poverty, and that the Englishman took their land and charging high prices for rent. Swift makes this argument because he too is an Irish men and he struggles to see his fellow men parish in the streets. He desires his people to stand up against England and take back what’s theirs. He argues that the Irish...
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
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.
Swift supports Puchner’s theme of a lack of individuality which conveys how humans are losing their humanity by using Ireland’s economic issue which forces the poor to conform to the idea of selling their babies. Swift’s story, “A Modest Proposal”, is intriguing due to the fact that he uses Irelands misfortune to suggest a way to bounce back from this economic crisis which so happens to be eating kids from poor parents who couldn’t afford to raise it. In “A Modest Proposal” Swift states that “I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for Landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the Parents, seem to have the best Title to the Children” (Swift 33). For Swift growing up in Ireland, he
In 1729, Jonathan Swift published a pamphlet called “A Modest Proposal”. It is a satirical piece that described a radical and humorous proposal to a very serious problem. The problem Swift was attacking was the poverty and state of destitution that Ireland was in at the time. Swift wanted to bring attention to the seriousness of the problem and does so by satirically proposing to eat the babies of poor families in order to rid Ireland of poverty. Clearly, this proposal is not to be taken seriously, but merely to prompt others to work to better the state of the nation. Swift hoped to reach not only the people of Ireland who he was calling to action, but the British, who were oppressing the poor. He writes with contempt for those who are oppressing the Irish and also dissatisfaction with the people in Ireland themselves to be oppressed.
Swift develops a somber tone throughout the essay that contrasts with a cheery or delightful mood. The introduction of his proposal opens with a somber tone of poverty and disparity that is demonstrated by incorporating language such as “melancholy object” and “helpless infants.” He further demonstrates the poverty and issues by alluding to Barbados, a place where the Irish immigrated due to poverty. The citizens are illustrated to live in famine as stated in “wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives.” This example illustrates the situation of the people in the country and raises awareness of the despicable situation with such blunt diction. Ironically, the poverty got worse as Swift describes it as a “deplorable state of affairs.” In addition, irony created in this juxtaposition in describing children as a “prodigious number” which elevates their status and leads the tone to be one of del...
In eighteenth century Ireland, the nation was in a famine and an epidemic of poverty due to the high prices of land and food. Jonathan Swift saw a problem, so h wrote and spread what we call today, A Modest Proposal. Swift’s essay is satirical. He exaggerates and gives inaccurate statistics to deliver a thesis that runs deeper than the explicit one about eating babies. While much of the essay seems to imply that Swift’s persona eats babies, there are some instances where Jonathan hints at the ironic themes of the writing.
It is a great contradiction and absurdity that a husband and father proposes the idea of cannibalism. The narrator does not want the reader to agree that the solution to overpopulation and poverty in Ireland is to eat babies; he wants the reader to see it. needs to be a practical solution. Although something seems one way to the narrator, Jonathan Swift wants. the reader to see it in the opposite light.
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.
Swift explains how selling a marketable child will be profitable and why the people of Dublin are willing butcher children to survive. He does this by saying, “I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs” (585). Swift uses verbal irony in a powerful way to state that Irish people should not be treated like animals killed as food. Swift points out the famine and the terrible living conditions that are threatening the Irish population by stating that children are a good source of food just like real animals do.... ... middle of paper ...
This essay by Jonathan Swift is a brutal satire in which he suggests that the poor Irish families should kill their young children and eat them in order to eliminate the growing number of starving citizens. At this time is Ireland, there was extreme poverty and wide gap between the poor and the rich, the tenements and the landlords, respectively. Throughout the essay Swift uses satire and irony as a way to attack the indifference between classes. Swift is not seriously suggesting cannibalism, he is trying to make known the desperate state of the lower class and the need for a social and moral reform in Ireland.
The entire proposal stands as a satire in itself; an analogy paralleling the tyrannical attitude of the British toward their Irish counterparts and the use of babies as an economic commodity. In short, Swift suggests that Irish parents are owned by the British, and babies are property of their parents, therefore, England has a right to consume the Irish babies. Swift uses this syllogism to show the British that their despotic reign in Ireland has left the miserable nation in poverty and disarray. Historically, it has been evidenced that England first colonized Ireland for security against, at that time, the Irish barbarians that inhabited the land. Thus, England continues to justify their power over Ireland as “restraining the temptation to consume among England's enemies” (Mahoney). Along with “the assurance of English military power to defend the colony from threat,” the degree of “English political and economic control that the colonists deeply resented,” grew exponentially into a full blown autocracy over Ireland (Mahoney). Swift writes, “Some persons of a desponding nature are in great concern.” This is not simply a concern ...
Jonathan Swift, a well-known author, in his essay “A Modest Proposal,” implies that the Irish people should eat children so that they can better their chances of survival. Swift supports his implication by describing how his proposal will have many advantages such as, eliminating papists, bringing great custom to taverns, and inducing marriages. He comes up with an absurd proposal to eat and sell the children to the elite so the Irish can have a brighter future. His purpose is to show that the Irish deserve better treatment from the English. Throughout his essay, Swift uses sarcasm, satire, and irony.
For one, he claims eating the children would end the starvation for those in the town, but his main goal is to kill of the future beggars and systematically lower the overall total of the lower class. Furthermore, he illustrates the upper-class as materialistic and mostly apathetic toward the epidemic stemming outside their comfortable confines. Swift’s description of the wealthy and how they could use the leftovers to make clothes, or painting the picture of a Walmart for carcasses illustrates a society that cares for little else but tangible possessions. Swift’s proposal concretely states that the only use poor children have in their country, is to be turned into shoes or eaten, while the real prospective Irish men, help turn the country’s fortunes
The contrary title juxtaposes the content of being a “modest” proposal, as the anticipation of selling and eating young children in order to benefit Ireland’s economy is not a polite nor considerate gesture. Swift indicates his motive, through the contextual references and visual imagery of the “beggars” and “helpless infants” subjecting the reader to view the reality downfall of the Irish people’s deprivation and oppression. The paradox used to state humanity in Ireland as a “lawful occupation of begging” illustrates the situation they are facing with “labourers” and “farmers” categorised ironically as this “occupation”. The structure flow of this essay is gradually intensified, as the problem of the depressed economic conditions of Ireland, is supported through statistical evidence, which authenticate and reinforce the argument as the ironic “only”, in “there only remain a hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents”, confront the reader as this number is large raising the issue of overabundance within Ireland. Swift’s mock serious tone of voice, is accompanied by a sense of superiority as he “proposes” his own “thoughts”, and “humbly” offers them to the public. This outrageous thought Swift conducts of killing, eating and selling the children