A Modest Proposal by Swift - Book Report/Review Example

The writer computes the number of newborns in Ireland and questions what must be done to them. He summits out that they are weak for any employment, too immature to steal and neither will merchants sell or buy children. However, the ending in “A Modest Proposal” qualifies to be surprising. Swift proposes that deprived Irish babies can be used as a source of food since it could be lucrative to both Irish and England. The pitiable land of Irish could rid themselves of the unnecessary children whom they cannot feed and get compensated handsomely for procreating ultimately.

He professes that he has no other intention but solitarily wants best for his country, via advancing trade, caring for infants, mitigating poverty, and providing some gratification to the rich. It would be surprising to find out that a rational man, Swift, proposes this work and contributes to the beating of another man’s child. In reading, it is evident that the ending would be different from the beginning when Swift states that “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 210).

In other words, Swift shows how the breeders are the determinant factor of a deteriorating nation. The author seems to be convincing of his verdict as he states that he has no individual economic pledge in his idea since he has no children, thus; could not gain by the children’s selling. In conclusion, Swift is incredibly rational and cold, regardless of his somewhat sympathetic beginning portrayal of the poverty he had witnessed in Ireland. This narration is the main to the presence of irony and satire in “A Modest Proposal”.