Jonathan Swift ” A Modest Proposal”

After reading this disturbing proposal, I realize how bad poverty was in Ireland during the 1700s, especially with regards to its next generation of children. Swift asserts that the resolution to the country’s increasingly poor population is to sell one-year-old babies for their meat, though one can infer pretty quickly that his proposal is a satirical attack on Ireland’s lack of efforts to better society. Reform is so desperately needed in Ireland yet so plainly ignored that Swift resorts to a drastic measures to grab people’s attention. Essentially, Swift mockingly proposes that the country should just eliminate part of the impoverished population instead of going to the root of the problem and finding the most effective solution.
To look at young children as an edible commodity instead of potential beneficiaries of society, which they could be through proper nutrition and education, shows that no one in Ireland is taking the problem seriously. I find it quite humorous that Swift ends the piece stating that he has no children of his own to contribute to his plan, nor the want to fix it himself, as it reflects the general opinion of his fellow Irishmen.