Thursday, March 31, 2016

What is the target of Swift's satire "A Modest Proposal"? How successful is his attack?

Swift wrote this satiric essay in frustration after a series of reasonable ideas he proposed to help the poor were ignored. These ideas are outlined briefly in "A Modest Proposal" and include such things as a modest tax on wealthy absentee landlords. But his main target is the type of person exemplified by his narrator: a person who can't see "the poor" as more than an economic problem to be solved, that treats them as...

Swift wrote this satiric essay in frustration after a series of reasonable ideas he proposed to help the poor were ignored. These ideas are outlined briefly in "A Modest Proposal" and include such things as a modest tax on wealthy absentee landlords. But his main target is the type of person exemplified by his narrator: a person who can't see "the poor" as more than an economic problem to be solved, that treats them as economic widgets, and that denies them their humanity. Behind this lies a more general condemnation of people's hard-heartedness in letting truly horrific poverty exist in Ireland when it could have been relatively easily alleviated. The essay also attacks the hypocrisy that would allow the rich to rationalize "devouring" the poor in "ordinary" ways, such as by charging exorbitant rents, but would react in horror to actually devouring the babies of the poor. Swift, in essence, is saying: you are already, indirectly, "eating" the children of the poor. If that horrifies you, maybe you should try to solve the problem of acute poverty. 


While the essay is "successful" in the sense of becoming a classic example of satire in the English language, it failed to change conditions for the poor in Ireland. Rather than look in the mirror and change their own behavior, the people Swift targeted labeled Swift a "misanthrope." They essentially blamed the messenger for delivering the message rather than asking why such a message needed to be delivered. 

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