A Modest Proposal

Swift's "A Modern Proposal" was in interesting satirical work. He switches his conscious though back and forth between realistic thoughts dealing with real problems, and a sarcastic answer to the problems that if proposed seriously would appall even the most dastardly of characters. He proposes that we eat children, not the children that can be taken care of and raised normally mind you, but the poor ones who would be nothing but a burden to an already burdened people of Ireland. Claiming that the mothers who birthed and raised the youngsters would gain a huge profit that could live off of and take them selves out of poverty, but the youth that would have normally been forced into begging, mugging, thieving, or some other criminal act are now beneficial to society through sustenance. Seriously noting the occurrences of abortions, and other such terrible acts of young mothers he seriously points out a real problem. At the end of his proposal he lists a series of real solutions that deal with the problems in a real way that have been kind of tossed to the side or dismissed when they are much needed to the society. I particularly liked how he went into such detail about the proposal. Swift did not simply just list it as a joke and go half hearted with it, even though that would have most likely gotten a similar point across. He had figures, though where he got them is probably questionable, he had examples and actual calculations and cost. He actually had it figured out that from a purely financial perspective it was a smart idea the mothers made 80% profit while doing nothing more than they were already going to do and suffer for. He showed examples of the older children being used to breed or as hunt game, which he said was a poor idea. It wasn't until the very end of the first time reading the proposal that i realized just how satirical he had been. It almost seems like its a real idea until the actual solutions are presented, which seem mild and far easier to obtain the goal of. Something like this is probably much needed today to speak to the people perhaps suggesting the beheading of congress every 20 years as opposed to term limits, but either way the extreme comparisons to simple solution's make the simple solution seem so very much more obtainable.