In Johnathan Swift’s, A Modest Proposal, he is writing an essay towards the rapidly increasing industrialists in 1729 suggesting different ideas on how to help the Irish. He is trying to come up with a solution for getting rid of the children. What bothers me the most is Johnathan thinks it is a good idea to sell and eat the children. The letter is an example of how the attitude towards the Irish had an effect on the people who are living in Britain at the time period.
Johnathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667. Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland although he moved to England for quite some time. He was an Irish author, clergyman, and satirist. Swift’s mother was struggling to provide for him when he was a baby so he was given to his father’s
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brother. Swift fell in love with Esther Johnson. They became lovers for life. It was rumored he still was seeing other girls at the time. Growing up, Swift always was writing. He published most of his works under pseudonyms. At the time The Modest Proposal was released, it was not popular to write sarcastically. In fact, it was very rare to even see people write that way. Swift had a stroke in 1742 and lost the ability to speak. He passed away on October 19, 1745. During the time he was alive, William of Orange invaded England. This started the Glorious Revolution. Swift knew Ireland had a problem with the poor.
Most of the people there were Roman Catholics therefore meaning they were agricultural laborers or farmers. Swift knew something had to be done so he proposed the idea of cannibalism. It had been done before in Ireland. He considered the idea of selling the children who cannot be fed into slavery, but he knew no one would buy them because they were under the age of twelve. His thesis is to have parents raise their children for the sole purpose of being eaten. He certainly does not want people to actually sell their children. He is using this statement to deliver a message. He is reflecting on how terrible and flawed Ireland’s system for the poor …show more content…
is. Swift’s intent on writing this letter to the Pope is to figure out a way to help the Irish community from collapsing from economical destruction.
Speaking for majority of Irish people, Swift comes up with a plan which is to get children out of the streets and away from their begging profession. Swift clearly states in his proposal, “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy Child well Nursed is at a year Old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome Food, whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked, or Boyled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a Fricasie, or Ragoust”. Swift is making fun of the attitude of the British that think of the Irish as not useful in their world of riches. When reading this letter, it is easily mistaken when Swift puts you in the mindset of how Ireland is struggling with their poor and how they are a burden to other people with more money. He then goes to say that the children should be sold into a meat eating industry for the well off, which catches anyone off guard. It isn’t clearly stated that his intentions aren’t exactly true, but coming from the time period in which this letter was written it is easier to understand his attitude and
stance. In the present, we currently have the same issues with the poor and the wealthy people of America. When driving back to Saint Joseph’s from my hometown, there are people begging for money and holding up signs saying that they are in need of money or food and the situation that happened to them. You can barely go a hundred feet without seeing someone begging. In downtown Philadelphia, you see homeless people just laying around because they have nowhere else to go. You never know if you can trust what their sign says on why they are homeless. People are afraid to give money because they could be using it for drugs instead of food or clothing. There is never a way to know if they are telling the truth. Another example, if this was sent to the President of the United States, it would be national headlines. Many people would come to believe that Swift’s words are real instead of it being a sarcastic letter. People in America would cause issues with his words, especially when Swift writes about selling their children for meat. Currently, cannibalism is a crime, and many Americans would want Swift to face the maximum punishment for even suggesting this absurd idea. People would be disgusted and never eat meat again because they will always have the thought of it being a child. In today’s twisted world, someone might enjoy eating human meat. After getting a little bit of a background on the letter and the time period, I have been able to understand his mockery and why this letter is so influential. Around this time, Ireland’s form of government has collapsed, and the British moved in to take over for it to be another British monarchy. Therefore, it is understandable why Swift felt so strongly about his people and how they are treated is left into the British’s, Walpole, hands.
The issue that Swift is addressing is the fact that there are too many poor children in Dublin and that they are becoming such a huge burden for all the poor mothers or parents of the country. Swift then creates his own solution to the problem. He proposes that all poor children who are around one year of age, be cooked and eaten by the people of Dublin, preferably the poor. With this solution, he argues that it will eventually put an end to the overpopulation of the poor young children and it will satisfy the hunger for all the other people. Crazy right?
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...
This was mostly done by his descriptions of preparing the children like they are a chicken, and his list of advantages to eating children. While describing how to prepare a child Swift said, “a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food.” The manner in which he described a human child the same way one would a cow, chicken, or fish. The obvious lack of ethics and morals in this passage cement 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.
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
With all of these 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. He established the use of the children of the poor as a source of food.
Jonathan Swift’s proposal would not make sense ethically to its audience unless the reader had no value for humans. In this case Swift’s proposal would make sense and would be an acceptable proposal to resolve the problems of the poor in Ireland. The following statement, “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will
Jonathan Swift is a well-known author and satirist who graduated from Oxford University in England. He is very educ...
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.
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.
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.
He observed that his country was suffering through a problem at the moment and saw nothing was being done about it. He had to propose the most horrific solution to make others understand that what they are doing is wrong and not helping at all. He had to directly mention those he believed were at fault. His argument may seem like the incorrect way to solve the problem Ireland is facing, but it is logical. The points he makes on how his solution will mostly help the wealthy makes the audience understand that those on top are not helping those at the bottom. Swift could have easily presented the problem and stated the real solutions he believed that Ireland should do, but instead, he called all the Irish to kill and eat babies. By creating this type of solution he allows the audience to comprehend that this is the only way to solve the problem. It allows them to grasp the fact that the problem is a serious matter that needs to be
If you read the essay he talks about how he wants to sell the babies flesh for profit, and put the babies on a platter so he can serve them like a hot pig. This is saying that if you treat the Irish like animals you should eat them like animals. To sum up, Swift is not saying lets eat children; he is saying they need to change the way they treat other colonies, or they should just should eat them because, they going to die out
Swift has an entirely different idea. His use of irony is uncanny. He proposes that to eliminate over-population and decrease the amount of poverty, the poor should sell their children as food for the rich. This establishes just how extreme the conditions in Ireland really are. Swift sets the setting with children all