Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is a satire written about the economics during this time period in Ireland. Swift’s biggest problem with his society is the poor. With beggars all over and each of these people have four, five, or six children each. He talks about these children growing up to be thieves, or to go fight for the Spanish. He highly dislikes this behavior because he thinks that these beggars simple become “breeders” which makes them beg for more money because they continue to have more and more mouths to feed. Swift proposes that they should just eat the babies. He tries to convey this as a profitable way of doing things. Since each baby can live off its mothers milk for one solar year with little other sustenance, raising them to one year old should be cheap. And after they turn one, they should be sold for meat which would net an eight shilling profit.
Swift is not serious about this proposal. The essay is written as a satire. The purpose of this suggestion is to get people to look more deeply at the state of poverty in Ireland and how it is seemingly perpetual. He tries to get across the point that how the poor are acting and being treated is violent and morally wrong. He goes as far as saying that the actions of the Irish is borderline cannibalistic. Overall he is making fun of how nothing beneficial is being done for the massive amount of poverty stricken people in Ireland.
Swift’s proposal for eating the children was not at all logical. He did not mean it to be taken as a serious or logical argument. The majority of the evidence that Swift puts out for this not being a serious and or logical proposal is his tone through out the essay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift
Sam,
ReplyDeleteAs sick and disgusting this proposal was, I believe Swift satire was well thought out and written in such a matter of fact tone that it could shock others into thinking of a humanitarian solution; rather than sitting by and watching the poor die of starvation. Swift may not have been serious about the solution to Irelands plight, but he was really serious about in public awareness and finding a solution to the multitude of problems the Irish were facing in 1729. I agree with your belief that Swift found the population problem perpetual, and the treatment of the poor was morally wrong. Thank you for your blog response to "A Modest Proposal". It is nice to know how others perceived this essay.
Imagine if his proposal was to be real what would happen then. I mean at some point the people would start beliving that eating babies was the right and best thing to do in other to help their society. I really enjoy reading your comments in regards to how you felt.
ReplyDeleteYes his solutions to beggars was preposterous but the way he presented his solution, I think, was logical. Swift laid out his hypothetical arguments and even threw out some numbers. He used a combination of logical and ethical arguments.
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