A Review of Jonathan's Swift's "A Modest Proposal"

I could not believe how graphic and gripping satire can be until I read Jonathan Swift's works, especially A Modest Proposal. When I read this particular satire I was simultaneously shocked, enraged, and sickened. How could such a short piece of fiction affect a person so drastically? I suppose it has much to do with Swift's skillful use of metaphor and irony. The underlining metaphor of Swift's A Modest Proposal is England as a devourer of the Irish people. At this time, England was economically exploiting Ireland for its own profit and in the process, impoverishing the Irish people and condemning them to a despairing existence.

Jonathan Swift uses this disturbing metaphor to shock his readers and to show them the true brutality of the condition of Ireland because of England and indirectly because of the Irish people themselves. Swift already realized that England was only using Ireland for its own gain and turning a blind eye to the countless Irish that were dying because of this inexhaustible greed. However, Swift carefully crafted A Modest Proposal with its savage irony and horrific metaphors to strike the sleeping world in the face and make all see this sickening state of Ireland.

In the end, Jonathan Swift "proposes" in A Modest Proposal that poor Irish babies be used as a food source because it could be profitable to both the English and the Irish. On one hand, the English would profit from the growing market of this new "delicacy." The poor of Ireland, though, could rid themselves of the unwanted children that they cannot afford to feed and get paid handsomely for "breeding." Ultimately, Swift uses this revolting proposal to condemn both the English for taking such advantage of the poor people of Ireland and the Irish for not doing anything to lessen their plight or to rid their country of English dominion. But above all else, Jonathan Swift did not want any of his readers to ever forget the cruelty the Irish poor faced every day under the ravenous hand of England so the world would do something to rid Ireland and the rest of the earth of this immoral and ghastly treatment.