Author
Jonathan Swift
Context
written during a period of severe economic crisis and political oppression in Ireland under English colonial rule
- proposals often treated Irish people as economic units, not human beings - this is what he exposes
- uses shocking irony to highlight the cruelty of colonial administration by suggesting impoverished individuals to sell babies as food (cannibalism) and eating children (yum)
Type of Satire
Direct Juvenalian satire (bitter and ironic criticism of contemporary that is filled with personal invective and pessimism - target is explicit and the criticism is direct)
Tone
cold, rational-sounding, horrifyingly calm, dark but ironic (maybe a quote)
Genre
satirical prose (non-poetic form of writing)
Organization
Policy proposal - opens with the problem of Irish poverty (using a homeless mother & kids as an example), sympathy, a “modest proposal” (sell/eat infants), uses economics and advantages, dismisses actually humane ones, and self praise
- mimics Enlightenment “rational policy writing,” - uses their own structure against them to expose failings of colonial admin
Hyperbole
- Eating babies = impossible exaggeration
- an unrealistic and extreme solution, a humanitarian crisis - babies = livestock, exaggerates the way that the Irish are viewed as worthless
- how many pounds they weigh and moms as breeders, how many babies for the entire population
-3. “benefits” = improved cuisine, reduced Catholic populations, and happier marriages
- none are logical or realistic, hence exaggeration
- “reasonable tone” is exaggeration itself
- exaggerated caricature of reason, parodies bureaucratic tone
Juxtaposition
- Calm economic tone vs. horrific proposal
- opens with sympathy ands shifts to monetization of children, “computation,” “profit,” “charge upon the public”, (“a child… may be sold for ten shillings”) - Polite dining imagery vs. cannbialism
“A child will make two dishes at an entertainment.”
- upper class dining
Swift’s narrator treats a human baby like food. A polite dinner party or social gathering among wealthy English landlords.
- Logical structure vs. moral illogic
- Form = rational, step-by-step reasoning
- statistical reasoning
Content = cannibalism
Imagery
Starving mothers “followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags.”
- vivid picture of the problem at the beginning
-creating a visual mass of poverty, rags as symbols
“Carcasses,” cooking babies → graphic, shocking images, uses culinary language like dressing and roasting meat
- served hot from the knife
- “stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled,”
A child’s skin used to make “gloves for ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen.”
- skin like leather
