Jonathan Swift on fate of the poverty-stricken Irish
In his modest proposal, Jonathan Swift addressed the sad fate of the poverty-stricken Irish who have to spend their entire time begging in the streets trying to feed their children. Considering the hard-edge economic situations and self-righteous moral stance, Swift advocates that these street families should fatten up their kids and sell them to wealthy British. He argues that children could be sold at the mere age of one, giving low-income families some income, while sparing them the cost of bringing up children. But why would he suggest something as outlandish as this? Swift used satire to make his point. He employed the concept of humor, irony, and exaggeration to ridicule others` ideas. He didn’t support the idea of selling kids as food, but he used the bizarre concept to deliver a moral point that I am going to talk about in this essay.
Swift used shockingly literal ways to illustrate the nation’s self-degradation. His idea of feeding children to the wealthy casts a dismal condemnation on the nature relations in the country. The way he compares people to livestock gets even more ordinary (McBride, 89). The figurative expression shows the economic pragmatism of the idea. It frames a critique of values in Catholic families, who treated marriage and family with less sanctity (Yagan). He draws the perception of the wealthy and ruling class as a barbaric people who took advantage of the less fortunate people and oppressed them.
Several associated implications come into play when Swift introduces the idea of cannibalism. He cultivates an equivalence between ways in which people are devoured and feeding on people (Lowman, 69). The British tyranny amounts to squandering everything that belongs to the Irish people, thus portraying inhumanity and injustice. But native’s involvement in its repression conveys the guilt of cannibalism to a lesser national scale; this is more than humans oppressing fellow humans. It shows a nation gobbling its resources.
Ireland was then ruled by Anglo-Irish, who were mostly the Anglicans. In his writing, Swift identifies himself as one of them. However, his concept of embattled Anglicans who were forced out of the country is ironic. He was talking about the Irish landlords who, on many occasions, governed from overseas. They channeled all the resources that belonged to the Irish people into the English repository hence affecting the economic growth of the country(Beaumont, 167). Their leaders, therefore, caused most of the problems in the country.
Swifts, through his proposal, is disgusted by the failure of the political leaders to protect their people. The rich were irresponsible and greedy. He then starts focusing on the realities of the country’s economic crisis (Palumbo, 259). Swift even exaggerates more when he says that much of the population is better off dead. It is meant as a testimony to the dire federal repercussions of such pervasive neglect of the poor people. He says that it is only in Ireland that a policy of cannibalism could be considered as a way of improving the social development of the nation.
In conclusion, it is evident that I aside with Swift’s proposal idea. He managed to ironically reveal the incompetence and the absolute failure of the Ireland government, the hypocrisy of the wealthy pretending to care about the growth of the nation, the tyranny of the British rule, and misery of the natives. He negatively made his point by putting compiling an appalling set of morally untenable scenario. Swift used satire to reveal the barbaric nature of the wealthy people and extreme poverty of the Ireland natives, especially the Catholics.