Summary: A Modest Proposal For Social Reform

Eighteenth century Ireland was littered with starving families and crime. The overpopulation there was largely due to the amount of children each family was having. In Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” Swift tells people to sell their children because of the overpopulation, poverty, and standard of living in Ireland.

He addressed the English by giving them a scenario in the form of a “Proposal” in order to show them their exploiting nature. Swift proposed an idea to help escalate the country’s economic condition and lower its poverty rates. The core of his proposal was the children. He argued that poor parents should no longer bear the burden of children. Instead the children should provide for themselves and their parents by being a commodity. He explained the process similarly to that of raising and selling cattle; mothers should provide their year-old child with nourishment until he or she is fattened, then rich people would buy that child for multiple purposes. Either for feeding or luxurious purposes, those children would eventually provide for the economy. Such proposal intended to camouflage the actual exploitations practiced by the rich English. The reader then was expected to look deeper and untie the knots to discover how in fact he was exploiting the Irish. “The audience is never really let in on the joke - they're supposed to figure it out for themselves that Swift is kidding. Of course, not everybody did.”

In Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” he addresses the problem of extreme poverty and social unrest in Ireland in the early 1700s. He accordingly provides a solution: selling the children of poor men and women to be eaten. He gives this solution in the context of satire. While he may not truly believe that citizens of Ireland should eat children, he does believe that the commoners should take drastic action if the government will not aid them. To show his readers what the purpose of this essay is, he begins by providing many facts, statistics, and estimates about the destitute children and the poverty in the slums of Ireland. He moreover gives many reasons why Ireland desperately needs this, and how it will even solve things past financial difficulties. Lastly, he assures his readers that he will not reap any of the benefits he claims will be available upon use of this practice.

First, Jonathan Swift suggests that the people of Ireland should be taxing their landowner’s absences at five shillings a pound. Swift mentioned that most of the land that was worth owning in Ireland was owned by the people of England. Swift suggests that they should start taxing these owners while they are not using the property which would benefit Ireland’s economy tremendously (Moore). Swift also says that the people of Ireland should not being using clothes or any house-hold furniture that is not of Ireland’s own growth and development and should be rejecting any foreign luxuries. In other words, Swift is telling the people of Ireland to buy from Ireland and to stop contributing to England’s economy by getting goods such as clothes, furniture, and other easy to make goods. He suggests throughout his proposal that Ireland depends on England for

The Progressive community mainly contained Northeastern caucasians, all whom are well educated and middle class. At first, progressivism is more of a social reform movement than a political party, until 1912. The unification of the movement was the ideology of Social Darwinism(that the policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering), was morally and intellectually wrong.

In Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”, he imposes that the impoverished and “unmaintained”(6) children of Ireland are “impossible to provide for”(6) and need to “be made useful members of the commonwealth”(2). He aims to influence readers by using subjective, convoluted language in order to establish his proposal that will “solve” the dystopia throughout the Kingdom.

He tries to make them understand that once this proposal is approved they will be free of the weight of raising these children once they reach a year old. Plus, they’ll have eight shillings per annum. It's very apparent that Mr. Swift has little regard for the Irish peasant, even though Swift seems to include them in this great idea, but this is part of the satire, and he is showing us how the people from Ireland are being

Swift states that because these women kept having children and could not provide food to them, the economy of Ireland and standard of living couldn’t improve. So, he makes a proposal to the public that he thinks would be beneficial for them. His way of thinking and argument is incorrect in what he is proposing as He marks that young healthy children are delicious food to be roasted, stewed and boiled to be served and eaten by rich British people. Similarly, he estimates that twenty thousand kids should be held in reserve for breeding purposes. This brutalizes how children should be treated like animals. Jonathan swift trying to support his argument, in a very sarcastic way states that certain body parts of children are good to eat and on special occasions could be held on demand. furthermore, he advises that healthy and nourished kids could be

Many of the conflicting interests between different parties in the U.S. are what shaped our social welfare laws from the colonial period and after the civil war. When looking at the conflicts we faced back then, it is evident that the greater outlook in society was based off of morals and the Christian view our country was built on. These beliefs are still very prominent in our thinking as a society today although there have been some changes in our social welfare, that go against “the law of our creator”. One of the main conflicts that occurred after the civil war was specific to the growing population of immigrants. The conflict arose when many of the new immigrants began to take jobs in the mines, steel mills, textile factories, and other

As you may or may not have noticed, we have a major problem with poverty in the Irish Community. Women have begun begging on the streets. Many of them have multiple children but are unable to take care of them due to the lack of jobs for women. Starving to death, these children need to become more beneficial to our community. During this current time, these children are not getting the nutrients they need to live a heathy productive life. This can go on no longer, something needs to be done. The brilliant Mr. Swift has a simple solution to this compelling problem; eating children. Yes, you read this proposal correctly. A friend in London just informed him that children who are well nourished are quite delicious

The similar idea that is mentioned in “A modest Proposal and in onion article is. Swift proposes that the babies of all the poor and desolate will “contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands” to improve Ireland’s economy and standard of living. He says this because many women kept having

In the satire piece “A Modern Proposal” (1729), Jonathan Swift suggests that the poor of Ireland should sell their children to be eaten by the rich in order for them to survive and have enough money to provide for the rest of the family. Swift describes anecdotal events first on how much the children are worth at the market and then describing how many people can one child end up feeding.

After the introduction to the problem, Swift describes his solution, with the first paragraphs indicative of the faux panacea he crafts it to be. He proposes that the children of Ireland's poor should be utilized as a food supply and a source of leather products. The body of the essay is devoted to an unflinchingly positive portrayal of this proposal and its benefits. Swift also addresses problems that would arise if his proposal was enacted. He acknowledges that it would slow population growth in Ireland, then disregards that argument: "I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and it was indeed one principal design in offering it to the world" (116).

Ireland in 1729 was a dark and horrific time period for all civilians. Extreme poverty surrounded the country along with overpopulation. Satirist, Jonathan Swift was sincere with his proposal, and continued to approach the problem with creating a solution he thought seemed fit. To begin, he recognized the concern of poverty, the future of young children, and accomplished his proposal on how to decrease the population, backing up his idea with statistics and reason.

Swift is outraged by the savage, inhuman acts of the Irish people and blames the British oppression. The proposal itself is a symbol of the British oppression. The mere fact that anyone would fatten up human beings like livestock and devour them is preposterous, yet the British oppression devours and consumes the Irish people in a different kind of way.