Analysis of Swift’s A Modest Proposal

Swift begins A Modest Proposal with the goal of “preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public” (Swift, 2466). Sounds great to me! Where can I sign up? These were my original thoughts when I began reading this piece. In fact I though this would just be another boring lecture on what is going wrong, in which Swift would bring up ideas which sounded wonderful and poetic but could not be feasibly carried out. I even began to question the reason for A Modest Proposal’s place in a text book. I had no idea what was in store for me.
A Modest Proposal is satirical writing at its finest. It describes in detail Swift’s “modest” idea that to help to ease the suffering of the poor, and to stimulate Ireland’s floundering economy, Ireland should turn babies into a commodity. Swift suggests that if babies were to be eaten there would not only be a...