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,

he proposes to lessen Catholic religion as they are the principal breeders. Secondly, to help people pay rent to their landlords or landlords to lower the price. Thirdly, to export more goods than importing, so Ireland’s economy can grow. Fourthly, to help parents raise their kids. Fifthly, appealing to the rich, to help the poor. Sixthly, having less wedlock children, men become more responsible of their wives and children.
The eighteenth-century was marked by terrible poverty.

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

Problems”).
With the title we are introduce with his first technique which is understatement. His proposal will be anything, except modest. “ I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objections” (Swift 432). Most people won’t agree with his proposals:
...And besides, it is not improbable that some
scrupulous people might be apt to censure
such a practice...as a little bordering upon
cruelty....(Swift 434)
Eating their own kids would be consider cruelty. Many people would react disgustedly to the idea of cannibalism. His proposal was to try to reason out how overpopulation is affecting the country and its people. Swift says he will accept other proposals to help reduce population, but he knows the other proposals won’t be effective (Swift 437).
He also uses reversal. He proposes to use children as food source, to entertain guests are having food to survive winter.
“A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends,
and when the Family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will
make a reasonable dish, and Seasoned with a little pepper or salt,
will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter” (Swift 433)
This is an example of reversal, because we don’t eat children especially to feed guest or store them for winter.
On his first proposal he suggest to lesson the Roman Catholic. “There are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent, than at any other season, therefore reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore it will have one other collated advantage by lessening the number of papists among us” (Swift 433). Ireland population has a higher rate of Catholics, than Protestants who have a lower rate. In Catholic religion when a man and woman choose to make love, they are to have unprotected sex as they are stopping a creation of life. If they are ready to make that step, then they are ready to have a child. Catholics do not believe in abortion, so women couldn’t choose to end a baby, making Ireland’s population grow.
Secondly, he proposes for the landlords to reduce prices of rent. “As they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like, or greater miseries, upon their breed for ever (Swift 435).’’ If landlords had more sympathy to their workers, parents would be able to provide a roof to their kids and nurse them, so their kids would be able to become a beneficial citizen to their country.
Thirdly, to make Ireland’s economy grow. “Whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children, from two years old, and upwards cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a piece per annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, besides the profit of a new dish, introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods been entirely of our own growth and manufacture” (Swift 435).
Fourthly, help the parents raise their children. If the economy grows, more parents would be able to raise their kids. Since landlords are raising their prices, Ireland’s economy bad, and with no strength to work many parents have no way to raise their kids meaning many children die before becoming productive citizens. “They cannot get work, and consequently pine away from want of nourishment, to a degree, that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength to perform it, and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come (Swift 435 )” Swift say if parents are able to raise their kids there would be so many criminals and poor children in Ireland.
Fifthly, he is appealing to the rich people. “That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a yeard old, be offer to sale to the persons of quality and fortune, through the kingdom always advising the mother let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table”( Swift 435). If the rich instead of trying to gain more profit, they should help more charity which supports poor people.
Lastly, he proposes to reduce wedlock children.

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

435).
This poem ends with a statement from him where he states that he could careless if they accept his proposals as his only intention is to to help his country. “I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing” (Swift 437). With no children of his own, he is not eligible for his own proposals.