During the 18th century, a majority of the Irish population has suffered through poverty and famine due to the exploitation of the British government. In hopes to find social reformation of his nation’s crisis, Jonathan Swift uses one of the most efficient protests of his time: satire. In his satirical treatise A Modest Proposal, Swift grotesquely proposes an impractical solution of cannibalism, making the audience question their own morality. In addition, he consistently uses statistics and numbers throughout his pamphlet to mimic the pseudo-scientific style of his time. Furthermore, Swift’s fusion of his outrageous solution and what seems like accurate statistics allows his audience to reevaluate not only the severity of Ireland’s crisis, …show more content…
but also their own morality. Using statistics and numbers makes Swift’s satirical proposals appear more degenerate, allowing the audience to have a better moral judgement on Ireland’s predicament.
Throughout the treatise, Swift cites multiple statistics: how much it costs to raise an infant up to one year, Ireland’s total population and the percentage of women who are old enough to give birth, the number of families who are able to provide for their children, the average number of miscarriages, and how much money a child could make if sold as a slave. Evidently, these statistics support his cannibalistic proposal, for it provides a logical construction throughout the essay. He proposes that Irish peasants who cannot afford to provide for their child should butcher their children, thus providing income for the poor of Ireland. The statistics make this proposal appear more authentic, and because the proposal is absurd, the audience will deeply question its ethicality. Obviously, the reader will understand that Swift’s argument is illogical, leading them to analyze the more modest proposals of Swift’s essay. At the end of the essay, hopefully, the actual modest proposals—taxing absentees, rejecting materials that promote foreign luxury, teaching landlords to have mercy toward their tenants, etc.—would appeal to the reader. This would give them a better judgement of solutions that are more appropriate for Ireland’s
predicament. Swift mimics other reformers that have used statistics in their proposals in order to demonstrate its result of dehumanization. For instance, Swift dehumanizes the Irish population by referring to them solely in economic terms. By constantly referring to the population as numbers, that is all we may see them as: statistics. Eventually, the reader does not see them as human beings anymore, which is a point that Swift is trying to convey. With numbers, the individual lives of poverty and wretched living conditions are overlooked, and the entire proposal would essentially become meaningless. Even in modern times, it is important that we do not overuse these statistics because it has the power of dehumanizing, which could essentially defeat its purpose of making a statement. Swift must have wanted reformers to understand that rather than looking at the issue in numbers, it would be more efficient if the actual details of the problem and solution were addressed more. In addition, if other reformers addressed individual crises, the entire proposal would appear more humanistic and less quantitative. In his satirical treatise, Swift uses statistics and numbers to support his satirical proposals. The numbers added logical construction to his cannibalistic proposal, making his argument appear more profound. Part of the effect of Swift’s essay will have the audience see the contrast between solutions that are most beneficial to Ireland’s crisis and solutions that are simply inefficient. Another part of the effect will have other reformers understand the fault in utilizing too many statistics in their proposals. Swift’s multiple usage of satire will ultimately lead his audience a step closer to Enlightenment aspirations.
“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.
The obvious lack of ethics and morals in this passage cements that this essay is satirical and should not be understood as a legitimate solution to the starvation issue. He later listed the advantages of a system that breeds children for food, these advantages are all very unethical simply based off the fact that they are benefits of eating infants. Swift mentioned ideas including the murder of Catholic babies, eating humans as a fun custom, and giving the poor something of value (their own children). His use of ethos shows the audience that the essay is satirical and emphasizes the extreme ridiculousness of his ideas. Swift’s use of these three devices created a captivating and somewhat humorous satire.
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
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.
His solution is paradoxical in that eating children is beneficial for economic reasons, of which he lists in points of order with numerical calculations, yet raises further moral problems. Swift utilizes verbal irony in his writings to demonstrate a contradiction in his sarcastic proposal of eating children by dehumanizing certain people to achieve a constant expression of his own opinions. Swift’s proposal appears to be anything but “modest” as consuming children is irrational and absurd, adding to the sarcastic and humorous aspect of the work. He dehumanizes women by saying that they act as “breeders” and they can only pay for their children by “[getting] the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging.” Rather than utilizing language on how parents should be able to have plentiful food, he states they “contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands.”
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.
Pamphlets were often used to spread ideas throughout Ireland in the late 1600s, however, many were discarded and ignored. “A Modest Proposal,” by Jonathan Swift, uses the pamphlets to his advantage by proposing a ridiculous idea to show how messed up the state of Ireland was. Swift proposed that the babies of all the poor would “contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands” or in other words, improve Ireland 's economic problems and standard of living (Swift). His main reason for proposing this drastic idea was because women continued to have children they could not provide food or anything for in some cases and Swift’s idea would make the children “beneficial to the public” (Swift). For these reasons, Swift looks at not only the politicians to blame for the poor conditions but the citizens of Ireland as well. In “A Modest Proposal”, Swift uses harsh
In Jonathan Swift’s satire, “A Modest Proposal”, Swift writes about the starving people of Ireland in the early 1700’s. He makes a wild and absurd proposal to help remedy the problems of overpopulation and poverty. Swift wants to make a political statement by using the “children” as satire to grasp the attention of the audience - the English people, the Irish politicians and the rich – and make them aware of the political, moral, and social problems. In “A Modest Proposal”, Swift’s arguments are presented effectively by using pathos (emotional appeal), ethos (ethics and values), and logos (logic reasoning and facts).
Swift explains not only do one year old needy infants taste good, bring home “Ten Shillings”, but sharp decrease in the Irish mouths that need feeding (Swift). Swift also provides a logical example of an invalid counter argument to his proposal. Swift in return asks any author of contradiction to consider the debt 100,000 infants will soon bring the country in addition to the lack of resources available to feed these many souls. Throughout Swift’s logical argument he leaves no doubt that his proposal is the answer to Ireland’s
A Modern Proposal is a satirical essay written by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift was unhappy with the way that the Irish politicians were running the country, and the poverty that ensued. The Irish nation was in a hopeless state with a great amount of poor women and children strewn throughout the streets. These poor single mothers were not only unable to care for themselves, but their children as well. With no other way to bring attention to this problem, Swift creates an amusing argument for selling children, in hopes to create a solution for the poor.
The entire proposal stands as a satire in itself; an analogy paralleling the tyrannical attitude of the British toward their Irish counterparts. In short, Swift suggests that parents of Ireland 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 throughout to show the British that their despotic reign in Ireland has left the miserable nation in poverty and disarray without any type of sustainable economy. Swift writes, “Some persons of a desponding nature are in great concern.” This is not simply a concern over the number of poor and malnourished in the country as Swift writes in the text; rather it is an ironic illustration of the Irish nation in shambles. The British have reigned over the Irish so long and so cruelly that they have left Ireland in a state of dependence psychologically, politically, and economically. In other words, the “ideology of Protestant consumption” has “actually eroded” the self-confidence and sense of worth of the Irish so badly that it has left Ireland unable to sustain itself (Mahoney). The “young heal...
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.
Having “maturely weighted the several schemes of other projectors”(1288), Swift’s narrator asserts that other plans proposed to take care of the poor are inherently flawed as those children will still be a plague on society until they mature to working age. He goes on to describe the details of his plan, calculating that one hundred and twenty thousand poor children would be available to sell for food. Of this group it is proposed that twenty thousand of these be saved for breeding, and furthermore one fourth would be male “more than we [Irish society] allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine” (1289). Swift uses this line to let his piercing irony shine through for the first time in the pamphlet in dehumanizing the impoverished people of Ireland by speaking of them as strictly statistics and treating them as livestock. This ironic comparison brilliantly plays on the sad fact that, at the time, poor families were treated worse as humans than the livestock throughout the country. This dehumanization continues as Swift advises that mothers of poor children should receive payment of ten shillings, or roughly $65.38 in today’s money. The further irony here is that this amount of
During the eighteenth century, Jonathan Swift was distributing pamphlets around Ireland in hopes of promoting intellectual growth in his homeland. As he noticed this was not making an impact, he decided to address the problems in Ireland with a different approach. Jonathan Swift took to paper and constructed “A Modest Proposal”, a satirical piece that proposes a humorous solution to the social, economic, and political problems in Ireland. Swift’s proposal suggests that babies who are born to poor families become a source of food for public, which benefits Ireland by reducing the overpopulation and adding to the food supply. In “A Modest Proposal”, Jonathan Swift uses satire to draw attention to his argument that the problems in Ireland are greatly affecting his homeland; in doing so, he portrays the themes of class division, suffering, and greed.