Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”, and the “Irish Colonial Experience” Blog

 After reading Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”, and the “Irish Colonial Experience”, I thought that it was quite amusing how he proposed that the poor people living in Ireland could start selling their children to be used as food. I was also impressed that there was an actual point to this article and Swift used the subject of cannibalism to try to get across his point so people would actually take Ireland’s well being into prospective. Even though “A Modest Proposal” is a satirical piece, I found it interesting that Swift could easily write about actual positive advantages about selling and eating children, that could work if many of the Irish were cannibals and were willing to take care of their children until a certain age when they can be then sold for a profit, killed and eaten. But if that really was the case then I would see a reason to try and stop the practice since many would probably be opposed to that idea. But in the “Irish Colonial Experience”, the one thing that I was against was that I did not think that it was right for many of the Irish to be killed in 1641, mainly because many were Catholics and the Protestants of England thought that their ways were “barbarous”. I also do not see how it is fair that the Irish Catholic’s had special laws, because the English Protestants did not like them.  

I have never read anything like this before and I find it rather appalling that certain people are killed just because they have a certain religion others, like the English Protestants at that time did not like. I now realize that “A Modest Proposal” was written to inform people that Ireland really did have a problem with beggars and children getting into trouble when they got older. Therefore, I think that the idea of cannibalism was good for getting people’s attention to focus on the important issues and how they need to be solved in Ireland.   

Discussion Questions:

If the English government at that time was not set on having one certain religion would people be able to live in peace or would people with different religions still not get along and would eventually lead to rebellions and massacres?

Was Swift clever in writing “A Modest Proposal” the way that he did, or could Swift have wrote it differently without the use of cannibalism in order to get his point across?