Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729) gives an example of the straight-faced satire concerning social illnesses. The author mocks socio-economic situation in Ireland. The narrator offers the solution of overpopulation and the mistreatment of citizens in Ireland. So the poor should sell one year children to the rich as food in order to solve the problem of poverty and starvation in Ireland. Swift, of course, understood that society was and is far from ideal. Therefore, his irony often has such a stunning bright ideas and details that take them as the truth is almost impossible. The purpose of Swift’s pamphlet is not to enforce the proposed projects, but to give the opportunity to Irish people to realize the full extent of their oppression, insult and outrage in order to raise the activity.
The narrator from the beginning seems to be serious with this rational proposal. Nevertheless, the ending surprises with the real solution of the social problems that is an internal change in the Irish government, the only immoral victim of poverty in Ireland. At this point, he offers a list of alternate way-outs that turn to be “vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success” (Swift, 2003, para.30), and neglected by the politicians earlier. The author successfully convinces to accept the validity of the "surprise ending" that the beginning does not suggest clearly. The contrast between the points of view of the narrator and the implied author helps particularly to describe various points of Swift’s satiric vision and to transfer his idea. He attracts the attention of the public by the means of easy style, clarity, wit and ingenuity. He understands that boring and beaten morality will not find a response in hearts of people who need novelty and diversity to be challenged. The force of the irony gives an opportunity to distinguish between the ironical ‘innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual” (Swift, 2003, para.31) solution and the real point of view on the problem. That way the author managed to avoid boring moral story.
“Our understanding of a text is pervaded by our sense of the character, trustworthiness and objectivity of the figure who is narrating.” (Bennett & Royle, 2004, p.56) Swift does not want to spare the feelings of the reader. Unfortunately, very often the public closes eyes to the true meaning of what Swift says. The mask of narrator is extremely cynical and grotesque in A Modest Proposal, but the whole style of this pamphlet, the author's intention, clearly leads to the conclusion that the level of the mask’s dishonesty conforms the morality of those who foredooms Irish children on hopelessly miserable existence.
References
Bennett, A., & Royle, N. (2004) An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (3d ed.). UK: Pearson Education Limited
Swift, J. A Modest Proposal. (2003). The Victorian Web. Retrieved from http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/swift/modest.html.
