A Modest Proposal

I’ve read this essay a couple of times in various contexts and every time I read it I’m really impressed with Swift’s use of satire to highlight a serious problem going on in his country. I think his satire has less to do with the population problem and more to do with the English treatment of the Irish. The English completely exploited the Irish, and as a result, a vast majority of the Irish population was living in poverty and squalor. Swift bitingly criticizes the English in this essay by shocking them with outrageous and inhumane solutions to the population crisis in an attempt to capture the attention of an audience who has previously been indifferent on the subject of the Irish abuse at the hands of the English.

While I don’t think it was Swift’s main priority to address the population crisis, he does introduce it as a huge problem going on in the world. Today we are still facing that problem. The Earth can only house a finite amount of people and a solution to this problem needs to be found soon. However, I think that Swift’s purpose was not to find a solution, but to propel an apathetic society into action.