A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift's - Essay Example

Because of their (useless) children, these women are forced to become underproductive citizens of the society and are “forced to employ all their time” to look for their food. The children, meanwhile, are forced to grow up fast and, because they lack funds to go to school to learn, they grow up to become thieves and be unproductive members of society as well. This rather outlandish idea is actually Swift’s outrage toward the Irish and English governments. The authoritative voice is akin to that of an economist who seeks solutions to the two countries’ problems about overpopulation.

The proposal contains a lot of metaphors and supporting details that can actually convince the reader to be supportive with his ideas. At the time, Ireland was impoverished. Controlled by England for many years, it has seen inequality, especially economically. Swift’s reaction is the hyperbolic idea that would serve as a solution to the problem of poverty. It is actually two-pronged as Swift suggests as it would alleviate poverty and at the same time, alleviate the hardships that the children and mothers experience because of poverty.

He has several points, but his essay firmly advocates the idea that the problem of overpopulation can easily also be a solution to the problem. . re were many poor families in Ireland (and England) then and that they were too poor to keep their children well-fed and clothed, hence, Swift’s idea. To fully support his theory, Swift offers statistical data and numbers and he freely drops them in the essay. He suggests prices in relation to the weights of children. He also projected the consumption of these children in terms of ages, as per his computations.

He suggested recipes and believes that chefs, especially the creative and innovative ones, would be able to generate more of these recipes. He also believes that this practice of selling and eating the children would have a lot of positive effects on morality, especially on family morals. Swift suggests that if this were to happen, then husbands would treat their wives with a lot more respect. Then parents would also value their children more. Thus, Swift’s theory and suggestion is not only good for the problem of overpopulation but also solve Ireland’s moral and social problems.

It is actually an all in one solution. Taken literally, this is really a plausible idea. That the unwanted children, or those children living in subhuman conditions, would be actually spared of hardships when they are sold to be fed. Swift assures the readers that they would be treated (or slaughtered) in the most humane way as possible, so no worries about possible human rights violations in that ground. It can be taken euthanasia, at some point in the argument. However, this whole essay, as we have mentioned earlier, is a metaphor against the imperialism of England, or at the least, the rich people versus the poor people.

The fact that letting the innocent children be fed to the rich people is actually synonymous to letting the poor people of Ireland being used and manipulated