How Does Swift Use Satire In A Modest Proposal

“A Modest Proposal” by Johnathan Swift is very much what you think of when you read the title. It is a proposal, offering a suggested course of action, influenced by the landscape of the proposal’s environment and timeline. Swift wrote this proposal during the age of Enlightenment. In a nutshell, the Enlightenment valued reason over emotion. That any question that was not philosophical could be answered by science. In Swift’s homeland, Ireland, which was stricken by poverty, famine, and overpopulation especially in the capital of Ireland. Swift directed this proposal to change the turmoil that his country was in. Using elements of the Enlightenment, Swift incorporates satire and logic to make an effective proposal.

In the beginning of the

proposal, Swift’s details the capital’s inners, “…with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms.” (Swift, pg.

315) It is evident that Ireland is struggling with overpopulation, famine, and poverty, just based on that one sentence. Swift uses satire in his proposal to grasp the people of Ireland’s attention. The just of the proposal mentions the idea of eating babies to provide income for the “breeders” (Swift, pg. 319), meat for the wealthy (Swift, pg. 317), and surplus for the nation altogether (Swift, pg. 320). Meanwhile, the satire used in Swift’s proposal is not to be taken literally but to foreshadow the issues causing the turmoil. “I desire the reader will observe that I calculate my remedy for this one individual kingdom of Ireland, and for no other…Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: of using neither clothes nor

household-furniture except what is of our own growth and manufacture:…” (Swift, pg. 319), While eating babies is not particularly realistic, the ideas mentioned in the form expedients could be very beneficial to Ireland not to mention more realistic. The issues are that those expedients are not happening. While Swift could have written a statement blaming England for the misfortunes of Ireland, most people would have just agreed and moved on. Swift took the approach of eating babies to capture the audience’s attention and allude them to actual resolutions for their country. Swift understood that logically the audience thinks more emotionally than with ration. He deduced that he had to “trigger” his audience to make them think.
Using rational thinking and blunt satire, Johnathan Swift made a combative proposal, that without the satire, seems somewhat sane. Without the age of Enlightenment. I do not believe that such a proposal would have existed because of the lack of logical reasoning. The satire would not have been properly used if it had not been for reasoning. The proposal that was written combined the elements of satire and logical elements to make the lower class think and those in power to see the provisional(s) that can forestall the disease plaguing the country.