Essay on "a Modest Proposal"

Essay on "A Modest Proposal"

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A MODEST PROPOSAL

A Modest Proposal: How Can We Fight Injustice?

Gabriele Sorice

Tepeyac Institute Campus Xcaret

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A Modest Proposal: How Can We Fight Injustice?

A Modest Proposal is a satirical essay written by Jonathan Swift in 1729. The essay proposes to solve the problem in Ireland of peasant tenants who couldn’t feed their children. Many of Swift's contemporaries did not understand the satirical intention of Swift's essay and he received criticism for his "bad taste" writing.

The aim of the author is to confront the Irish society about the deplorable conditions of the laborers and peasants of his country. His vehicles of transmission were sarcasm, irony and dark humor.

His criticism is based on the state of misery the inhabitants of the kingdom lived and the lack of guarantees of the state for their most disadvantaged fellow citizens. His especially ironic proposal is that children of poor Irish, could be sold as meat to improve the diet of the rich. This would benefit all social sectors. With an ironic letter, intensely satirical, of an energetic social critic, Jonathan Swift, tries to give a strong slap to the society of his time.

The essay proposes to solve the problem in Ireland, which due to the shortage of products of first necessity, bad harvests and the overpopulation of mothers and children beggars, literally starved them to death and peasant tenants could not feed their children, because the owners were exploiters and inflexible about the cost of the lease. After discussing the problem, Swift suggests a new solution: parents should sell their children to wealthy landlords for them to eat; with this, the income of the country would be improved, and the papists who wanted the largest number in the nation would take advantage of each of these creatures, and the price of each child would increase the nation's capital, and thus the claimant of the kingdom would be relieved, because so many Good Protestants against the reign who would leave the country in search of better opportunities. Many people at that time did not understand the message the true satirical intention of the essay and obtained criticism for his black humor writing "bad taste" with his arguments that dictate that three aspects of the condition of poor children: one moral; another economic; and another anthropological one. The moral aspect produces "melancholy" and it relates to the condition of children and their mothers; the second aspect, the economic aspect, consists of being able to maintain their families and themselves producing wealth for Ireland; and the third aspect is that of the transformation of human beings into a commodity.

In conclusion, the author's objective is to confront the Irish