Question 1
Swift is making a very absurd proposal. In the third paragraph, he perplexes me by proposing that the children of the beggars in Ireland should be sold. He suggests that they should be sold to the willing buyers, not to help their poor parents raise, but to slaughter them for meat. This is really shocking.
Question 2
Swift is making such a satirical proposal in order to help clean his kingdom of the persistent ordeals from the beggars. He says that if all these infants are slaughtered, the streets will be rid off its beggars. For instance, this is confirmed when he asserts that selling 20,000 such children, will help his kingdom to eliminate the same number of carcasses.
Question 3
Swift becomes satirical in the forth paragraph in which he lets his idea known to the readers. While he may be having a good intension for his kingdom, his proposal is so queer given that he does not own any child. He is not justified to claim that humans can be sold as food. Even if they are born by poor parents, amicable steps should be taken to liberate them from such ordeals. "it is very well known that they are dying, and rotting , by cold and famine, and filth, and vermin . . . they cannot get work and consequently pine away for want of nourish" (Swift 199)
Question 4
Swift has a positive and negative attitudes towards the rich and the poor respectively. He blames them for their problems. He believes that they have chosen to be vulnerable. This is proved when he calls them, ‘self-professed beggars.’
Question 5
Some of the expedients Swift mentions at the end of his essay include taxing absentees, use of imported goods, gaming in women, love of the nation, dangers of pride and idleness. These are issues of national interest that should be addressed.
Work Cited:
Swift, Jonathan. A Modest Proposal. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg, 199. Print.
