Surprise Ending - Essay Example

A Modest Proposal: Surprise Ending. “A Modest Proposal” is a scathing satire written by Jonathan Swift in 1729 and published as a pamphlet. It condemns the ruthless indifference of the ruling Protestant aristocracy to the sufferings of Ireland’s poor Catholic population. The writer begins by regretting the prevalence of beggars and impoverished children on the streets of Dublin and proposes to submit a “cheap and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the common-wealth” (Swift, 1729, para.2). Starting on this apparently straightforward note, Swift adopts a tone of practical economics and moral righteousness, which prompts the reader to expect him to list some realistic solution through which these children would “contribute to the feeding, and partly to the cloathing of many thousand” (para.4). Swift asserts that his suggestion will have the added advantage of putting an end to the abortion and murder of infants, and ensure that poor children will not be a drain on the resources of their parents and the parish, but contribute to the economy.

Swift couches his proposal in terms of apparent objectivity, economic calculation and statistical data. However, Swift succeeds in hiding his real agenda. As the reader is lulled by his argumentative tone, the “surprise ending” of Swift’s proposal comes as an unexpected jolt: he proposes that poor children be sold on the market as food for wealthy landlords. Swift continues with his deliberate, argumentative tone. He quotes statistical data to compute the number of poor children with all seriousness.

However, the reader begins to be a little uncertain about the writer’s true motivation, and there is a suspicious undertone of irony in the passage where Swift declares “we neither build houses --- nor cultivate land” (para 6). This suspicion is further strengthened when he goes on to speak of young children in terms of a “saleable commodity” (para.7) and calculates the selling price at which they would be cost-effective. At this point, the reader is alerted to the irony in Swift’s discourse.

Swift now shocks the reader with the claim that “a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled” (p. 9). He goes on to devise a plan by which “20,000 may be reserved for breed” (para. 10), in the manner of sheep, cattle and swine, and the remainder may be sold on the market as food for wealthy landlords. He analyzes the sale of poor children and discusses various ways to convert the flesh of these children into delectable dishes and their skin into “admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen” (para.15). In the continued tone of a balanced mathematician, Swift calculates the price of the children’s flesh and its availability.

The reader is now aware that Swift’s tone of objectivity and moral righteousness, and his discussion of economic terms and statistics, is satirical. Swift rejects the suggestions to ‘refine’ his scheme by compensating for the lack of venison in Ireland through the flesh of youth below fourteen years, saying that the flesh of the males would taste disagreeable and be too “tough and lean,” while the killing of the females may be considered by some “as a little bordering upon cruelty” (para. 17). Swift goes on to list the advantages of his proposal: reduction in the population of the Catholics; a means of income for the poor; contribution