Literary Essay: "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift wrote the essay "A Modest Proposal" in 1729. The essay suggests that the disadvantaged Irish can solve their economic woes by selling their youngsters as food to the rich. Throughout the story, the author mocks the heartless attitude the poor Irish received and the detrimental policy that the British government had toward Ireland as a country. The immoral political and economic policies by the British and Irish governments is what annoys and inspires Swift to write this essay. Through an indirect way and use sarcasm, the author manages to highlight how England continually oppressed Ireland during his time.

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Moreover, Swifts' story has been recognized as an unmatched work of rhetorical brilliance, and it still inspires many readers even in the modern day. The author in "A Modest Proposal" Jonathan Swift manages to write a realistic and emotive essay by use of techniques such as sarcasm, satire, and irony to mock the Irish and British government which oppressed the poor. He uses irony to demonstrate that people should not devour children from low-income families. He also uses satire by claiming rich people have the power and purpose to fulfill their wishes no matter the conditions. Finally, he uses sarcasm all over the poem to mock the oppressors of the poor in Ireland.

One technique Swift widely utilizes in his essay is irony. When the narrator in Swift's essay is grieving due to the poor living conditions in Dublin, he says "It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms" (Swift 1). In reaction to these poor conditions people live in, he suggests that young children be nurtured as moneymaking products that will later be sold for a profit. Prudently calculating statistical data and population figures, he shows the benefits his proposal would bring to the economy. Moreover, he claims his plan would be much useful in controlling the growing population, increase the country's standard of living, and give the poor something they can call their own as they sell their children.

Additionally, the narrator proposes that the mothers will not have the burden of raising their young ones and this gives them a chance to have a better life. The narrator suggests that child raising should be similar to animal farming where he says "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 sows when they are ready to farrow" (Swift 6). Swift uses irony here with a ubiquitous tone of lessening, demining humans to the level of monsters. In reality, Swift is entirely against these ideas and would not want anyone to go through what he suggests. However, to relay his message, the author encompasses irony to reach his audience in a better way. Swift was against belittling of any human being most especially from a society perspective (Phiddian 77).

Additionally, when the narrator is using statistical calculations and acting as an economist who quantifies human beings as numbers, the author is using irony to send a message to the authorities who saw people as being commodities. In the eighteenth-century, economics and politics assumed people to be calculable statistical data which could be turned into revenue for the nation any time (Moore 686). Human beings were valued according to how much they were contributing to a nation's wealth and their rights to live were tied to their productivity (Moore 687). This is why the narrator ironically offers a solution to improve the nation's wealth by selling the children of the poor and also making them work at a tender age. Swift uses the narrator to express his anger towards how the Irish and English government treated people by use of irony, and if one is not careful, they might think he supports what was happening during his time.

The second technique Swift widely uses in his essay is satire. He uses satire to assess the cruelty the poor Irish Catholics faced from the wealthy landlords in Ireland and from the British government. Through his narrator, the author states "The skin of which artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen" (Swift). The author is using satire to show how rich people have the power and purpose to fulfill their wishes no matter the conditions and life is all about the status one has in the society. The rich should, therefore, use the bodies or the skin of the poor to beautify themselves since they are the most important people in the society. The poor only bring a burden to the government since they contribute less wealth to the national regime. However, Swift is advocating for equal treatment of people regardless of their social status regardless of him using satire.

Swift's essay, "A Modest Proposal" is considered a perfect example of how satire can be applied in literature and the type of satire utilized in this story is Juvenalian satire (Phiddian 80). Swift manages to use satire to highlight the problems the poor Irish were facing and continued ignorance from the government. The narrator says "For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation as well as our dangerous enemies ..." (Swift 5).

The main argument from this statement is that when the Irish children who are mostly Catholic are eliminated or "eaten", the government will have fewer Catholics to deal with. The "papist" in this scenario are Catholics who followed the teaching and believed in the reign of their pope. By perfectly using satire, Swift offers a solution to the oppressors on how they can reduce the increasing numbers of the papist or the Catholics.

By pretending to be on the side of the government, Swift calls the Catholics children "our common enemies" and demonstrates how it would be beneficial to sell and eliminate these young ones. The authors say the one who would undertake such a task is "A very worthy person, a true lover of his country...." (Swift 4). By this, he shows only those individuals who claim to own the country (the rich) or are more entitled to a good life than others and can have such thoughts of selling the children. In reality, Swift did not believe in these ideas, and he knew they were foolish and destructive.

Sarcasm is another technique that Swift widely uses to convey his message. The first form of sarcasm is from the title itself. Reading the title "a modest proposal" one might think he is about to give an honest and direct proposal to the problems he is about to address. However, this is not the case as he only uses this title to introduce a vast exaggeration of ideas. The words in the title are very effective in their application since the proposal he is making is just ridiculous. The author is undoubtedly a master when it comes to using sarcasm to grab the attention of the readers, right from the title. Just from reading the first few lines of the essay, one immediately realizes his article is far from being modest.

By being sarcastic, Swift suggests one-year-old children be sold in the market as food to give the poor mothers some income and at the same time reduce the growing population. This is a ludicrous nature of the entire proposal, and it is possible for the reader to see it clearly. Nevertheless, Swift presents it in a witty and subtle language making the reader agree with what he says. Moreover, to prepare the reader on his position regarding how Irish people were being treated, Swift carefully used words such as "melancholy, tears and pity and grievance" in the beginning of the essay demonstrating that he was feeling sorry for the conditions that people were living in (Wittkowsky 32). Putting these words at the beginning of the essay gave him the freedom to use sarcasm to relay his message.

When writing his proposal on how to decrease Ireland population, he completely focuses on what benefits it would bring even if he knows it is unrealistic and absurd. He pretends to be an economist and by carefully using fabricated figures, statistics and calculations, he makes unrealistic idea seems achievable. All this he does sarcastically to mock the wealthy and influential group in Ireland and Britain that saw people as products which could only be used to bring income or revenue to them.

Additionally, Swift develops and defends his proposal by sarcastically showing how it would be beneficial to everyone involved. He says "A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends and family" (Swift 3). This is concerning his idea of selling children to the wealthiest in the country. Swift wants to highlight how the underprivileged people in his society were seen to be of no value and that is why he creates a ludicrous proposal to showcase these challenges (Wittkowsky 10). Moreover, Swift claims that wives will now be treated with care and kept in good health since they are producing just like "cows, pigs, and chickens." Swift is suggesting that people should be reared just like animals. However, the author is trying using sarcasm to remind the oppressors that the life of each person matter and they should not be treated like animals.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Jonathan Swift in his essay "A Modest Proposal" brilliantly writes something that is both realistic and emotive, yet his intended readers take it seriously. This mainly happens because how he effectively uses and combine various techniques such as irony, satire, and sarcasm to highlight the major problems his society was facing. Swift uses irony to demonstrate that rich people should not devour children from low-income families. He also uses satire by claiming rich people have the power and purpose to fulfill their wishes no matter the conditions but in truth, he is sending a different message altogether. The last technique he uses is sarcasm with the aim of mocking the oppressors of the poor in Ireland and Britain.

Works Cited

Moore, Sean. "Devouring Posterity: A Modest Proposal, Empire, and Ireland's "Debt of the Nation." PMLA 122.3 (2007): 679-695.

Phiddian, Robert. "Political arithmetick: accounting for irony in Swift's A Modest Proposal." Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 9.5 (1996): 71-83.

Swift, Jonathan. "A modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people from being a burthen to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public." Child and Youth Care Forum. Vol. 24. No. 1. Kluwer Academic Publishers-Human Sciences Press, 1995.

Wittkowsky, George. "Swift's modest proposal: The biography of an early Georgian pamphlet." Journal of the History of Ideas (1943): 75-104.