A Brazen Proposal

By Jonathan Swift [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A Brazen Proposal

            Jonathan Swifts’ “A Modest Proposal” was anything but modest. The story was revolting, nauseating, and deplorable: a wretched manifesto by a man who holds nothing back.  Swift’s proposal was meant to shock and awe his audience, but I found it very difficult to read past his initial proposal. Swifts attempts and shaming the Protestant land owners and the English Gentry living in Ireland into treating their employees with dignity, thoughtfulness, and compassion.  “A Modest Proposal” is excessively satirical; readers that are not familiar with him would think that maybe he was serious.

Charles Jervas [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

            Jonathon Swift describes 1729 Ireland as a time filled with famine, over population, prejudices, and Ireland being in a state of unrest due to England’s occupation. Swift describes women, who cannot work, begging on the streets. Children growing up to be criminals, selling themselves to slavery, or joining a foreign army to survive the harshness of the difficult times. Swift’s proposal is to take children, at the age of a year old, from their mother and raising them as if they were cattle to feed the rich and prosperous. He believes his idea would prevent hunger, overpopulation, control Catholic inhabitants and voluntary abortions. If the children were delicacies then they would be fed, valued, and treated as precious commodities. Swift also said that women would be respected, and coveted, because they are capable of baring children.

Sébastien Bourdon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

            Swifts tone was serious and contemplating throughout his proposal. His purpose was to satirically appall the Irish society into making a change in the treatment of the poor, starving citizens. As well as, opening the eyes of the rich landowners who are mistreating their highly needed workers. This solution may seem logical to the Jeffery Dahmer populous, but we are not cattle. We are intelligent, caring, thoughtful, human beings and shouldn’t be treated in such a heinous, cannibalistic fashion. Swift offers extensive evidence about why his proposal would be beneficial to the Irish plight of 1729. The paper is so thoroughly written with explanation, descriptions, and arguments that it would be difficult for some people to know he meant the paper to be satirical. I began to wonder if “A modest Proposal” led to Dahmers obsession with cannibalism. I feel mortified and sad that Ireland was such in a state that Swift had to write “A Modest Proposal” to expose the heartless English, and ruthless Landowners and guilt them into submission.