Satirical Devices in “A Modest Proposal”: Analysis

Swift’s Satirical Expose of Ireland’s Conditions

“A Modest Proposal,” written by Jonathan Swift, uses satire to expose the harsh and grueling conditions of Ireland. During this time period, Ireland was infested with overpopulation and poverty. Swift starts his proposal with the image of the reader walking down the street of this great country as “beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four or six children.” Swarm around, which creates a melancholy and realistic image of what is happening in Ireland.

He started it off with this to instill the conditions as the reader follows the satire. After going into depth about the problems Ireland has, he creates a solution that will supposedly satisfy everyone’s needs.

The Reality of Poverty in 18th Century Ireland

During this time period of the 1800’s Ireland was struck with poverty. The great country was overpopulated, and the commonwealth could barely scrape by as they could “neither build houses nor cultivate land,” so they could not even escape poverty and create a living for themselves and were forced to beg. But vice versa for the rich as the rich became richer because they could do almost whatever they wanted. If they were landlords, they could increase the rent on the commonwealth just because. And so Ireland as a country was dying, as it was not using any of its resources and was forced to panhandle. But Swift offers a solution to solve all the problems that this country was facing. It was to sell the commonwealth’s babies to the rich as food.

The Shocking Proposal: Selling Babies as Food

To a certain degree, everyone reading will be astonished at his proposal. Although he claimed that no one should take offense to it, he then goes further into why this solution is the best. Starting off with statistics about the population of breeders and then using the word breeder on purpose to objectify the females. He goes on to explain that “one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents” are born. Twenty thousand would be kept to populate the population while the rest of the babies were sold off to the rich to be eaten at the age of one. And to support his proposal, he calculates that it would only take 2 shillings to raise the baby, and when sold, “no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass.” He goes further to start listing ways that a baby could be prepared either through being “stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.” 

Swift’s Satirical Message and Social Commentary

He is stating that in this situation, there would be no losers. If the rich buy babies from the commonwealth, it would improve Ireland as a country. As the rich get a delicacy, the poor would be able to create a living for themselves. It would also improve “the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children,” and “Men would become more fond of their wives during pregnancy,” so there wouldn’t be any downside to start selling their babies. It would solve their problems of poverty and overpopulation overnight. Everyone could start enjoying their lives and have prosperity.

But after enjoying his satire of the rich buying babies, this invokes a startling sense of how bad things were getting in Ireland. He states this outrageous proposal to bring attention to what was really happening and the state of how people were living. This also was to make fun of the people who were giving out solutions to try and help the commonwealth that the ideas they were making were, in fact, outrageous and laughable.   

References

1. Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal.” In A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works, edited by Pat Rogers, 87-91. Dover Publications, 1996.

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