Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal - Essay Example

 The power of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” does not stem, in large part, from its irony. Instead, it stems from the swift sentences in paragraphs 28-30, that so clearly point out the injustices of life for those in Ireland in the seventeenth century. While the structure of the essay does follow that of a scientific proposal in Swift’s time, the ostensible structure of the paper does not actually show Swift’s true opinions, until late in the paper. Paragraph 1 talks about how sad it is for the well-to-do to have to go around town or the countryside and see all of the beggars, who have the effrontery to actually come up to those who appear to have some money, and ask for some.

Paragraph 2 continues with the description of this public nuisance, expressing how the children in the streets also are an aggravation, since they apparently wander the streets with nothing to do that would further the well-being of the country. Swift’s ostensible solution is a complex system of purchasing the children of the poor, putting them in facilities that would do a good job of turning them into meat products, and selling that meat to the wealthy, or exporting it out of the country.

He goes into some detail about the culinary benefits of eating a young child, as well as the economic benefits, in terms of the cost saved and the additional tax revenues that would be available to the state. He also points out that there would be fewer “papists” (or Catholics) to aggravate the British public’s sensibilities. As far as feasibility is concerned, Swift does not spend any time discussing whether or not this would be considered a moral outrage, but instead addressed the availability of product markets for this new sort of food.

Paragraph 28 is where this essay takes a sudden turn into sincerity. Using anaphora to drive his points into the reader’s mind, Swift lists, at a blistering pace, solutions that might actually ameliorate the problems associated with the poverty in Swift’s Ireland: measures like taxing the wealthy who have moved overseas, refusing to import foreign goods, eschewing the signs of luxury and materialism, urging women to act more modestly, and asking those who run businesses to treat their customers with more honesty and fairness.

In other words, in Swift’s opinion, the causes of the Irish problem of poverty are nothing other than the tendencies toward greed that reside in every human heart and flower when power or wealth gives one the ability to use that power against others. Swift’s essay is most famous for its ironic use of the structure of the scientific proposal, but it is most incisive in its indictment of the shortcomings of the human animal.