Jonathan Swift, well-known for his satirical writing, suggests in his Modest Proposal some very extreme measures that he considers to be necessary in order to alleviate Ireland's many troubles. He presents his work in the form of a political pamphlet, presumably written by a ruling class persona of Protestant denomination. There are many surprises throughout pamphlet that are intended to shock the reader in such a way as to make him think and reflect about the problems Swift is addressing. These little surprises culminate in a plot-twist in the final few paragraphs of the work.
Swift starts off this powerful work of satire by describing his country as riddled with poverty. The streets of Dublin are filled with female beggars who aren't able to find honest work that would provide money needed to take care of their many children. The children themselves are reduced to being thieves, as no other occupation is available to them. The narrator sees this as an added burden on already breaking back of Ireland. He informs us that he has a plan that would take care of not only the children of beggars, but also of any infants born into poverty.
It is when narrator first hints at what his plan entails that we get our first surprise. After professing that he thought about the problem at hand for quite some time and without much success, the narrator states that he has finally come to a viable solution. He figured out a way to use children to feed and even cloth the population of Ireland. This is the first surprise. Although we still don't known what he exactly means by this, the bizarre nature of his proposal is evident. How can one use children to feed and provide clothes for the Irish? We soon find out that what narrator is referring to is literally using infants as clothing and food for the rich.
The most shocking aspect of the pamphlet is narrator's detached pragmatism. He presents his calculations with regard to Ireland's population and deduces that one hundred thousand infants should be murdered and eaten upon reaching their first year (Swift, 1729). This cold reasoning, coupled with the specific vocabulary the narrator uses, referring to women as „breeders“ and comparing the Irish poor with cattle, adds to the caustic satire. He argues his points with eloquence and ostensible knowledge, mimicking and mocking political pamphlets that were so common in Ireland at that time.
The satire of Swift's proposal has several dimensions. He critics England's oppressive attitude toward Ireland, but also the ineptitude of Ireland's own people to do anything that would help them overcome the problems that they could solve themselves. I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children (Swift, 1729). Swift figures that, since the aristocratic ruling class had already devoured the poor figuratively, they might as well feast on them literally. He goes so far as to suggest that children can even be skinned to make fashionable clothes for the rich, saying that there should be no shortage of Dubliners willing to perform such horrible task, thus commenting on both the desperate economic state of his country and the unscrupulous, cold nature of its people.
The real and final “surprise“, however, comes in the final paragraphs of the pamphlet. Here Swift somewhat shifts his overly satirical tone and lists a number of rational, logical proposals to help alleviate the suffering of Ireland's poor. The persona narrating the pamphlet dismisses them as being ineffective, but the reader finally understands the point Swift's proposal was trying to make. The surprise ending, in this context, works as it should.
Surprise, by its nature, is something we don't expect. Being aware that there is one tends to ruin it, so personally I was not surprised in the true sense of the word. However, the author does a great job of capturing reader's attention and shocking him throughout the proposal, only to show him the gist of it in the few closing paragraphs of the work.
Works Cited
Swift, J. (n.d.). Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" Retrieved January 27, 2016, from http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/swift/modest.html
