Divay Bhasin

Dr. Lauren McGuire

English 102 – 11:00 am

October 25, 2019

“A Modest Proposal”

Summary/Response

A Modest Proposal written by the author Jonathan Swift is about a proposal which is not

so modest but instead it's shocking. The proposal he is offering is to help the children of the poor

people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country and for also making them

beneficial to the public. The proposal is an ironically conceived attempt to "find out a fair, cheap,

and easy Method" for converting the starving children of Ireland into "sound and useful members

of the Commonwealth." Across the country poor children, predominantly Catholics, are living in

squalor because their families are too poor to keep them fed and clothed. The author argues, by

stubborn economic reasoning as well as from a self-righteous moral stance, for a way to turn this

problem into its own solution. His proposal, in effect, is to fatten up these undernourished

children and feed them to Ireland's rich landowners. Children of the poor could be sold into a

meat market at the age of one, he argues, thus combating overpopulation and unemployment,

sparing families the expense of child-bearing while providing them with a little extra income,

improving the culinary experience of the wealthy, and contributing to the overall economic well-

being of the nation. The author offers statistical support for his assertions and gives specific data

about the number of children to be sold, their weight and price, and the projected consumption

patterns. He suggests some recipes for preparing this delicious new meat, and he feels sure that
innovative cooks will be quick to generate more. He also anticipates that the practice of selling

and eating children will have positive effects on family morality: husbands will treat their wives

with more respect, and parents will value their children in ways hitherto unknown. His

conclusion is that the implementation of this project will do more to solve Ireland's complex

social, political, and economic problems than any other measure that has been proposed.

I began reading Swift’s so-called proposal with a serious and attentive approach. As soon as I

saw what Swift declared as a solution to improve the poor conditions that the poor experienced

in Ireland, I thought that the man was either unethical and immoral or he was simply being

sarcastic. I could not possibly believe that any human being would suggest others to eat children

in the effort to reduce poverty. After completing the reading I determined that this was a

certainly a satirical work, as I originally thought it could possibly be. I believe that Swift wanted

to use such an unheard and inhumane idea to show how some view the poor community and to

what extremes these people would go to remove this ill-favored part of a society.