A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal

Critical Thinking

Knowledge

After reading the “A Modest Proposal” written by Jonathan Swift, I am able to identify that he constructed a ridiculous proposal by taking advantage of those disregarded brochures, that were disseminated during the late seventeenth century all the way through Ireland for endorsement of the ideas of different laymen and intellectuals. However, those political brochures did not get much concentration and many discarded them (Bromberg, 2010).

He constructed this proposal to highlight how bad and backward the state of Ireland is and the social groups. The proposal by Swift is a atrocious satire in which he efficiently uses disingenuousness, irony and rhetoric overstatement to represent his infuriation of papists, politicians and overall citizens of Ireland suffering with poverty in the late seventeenth century. The aspects that made the proposal of Swift not staid comprise his insincerity, the tone of the writer and absurdity of the proposal.

Comprehension

From reading the proposal of Swift, I comprehend that in his proposal, he does not blame the inadequacies of Ireland on the people. He said that the people, politicians and English all are liable and responsible for such terrible state and poverty of Ireland. Swift tried to make it clear that if infants of the Ireland will left their childhood in poverty, they would leave their state to battle for the Pretender in Spain or either they would be bought as indentured servants to Barbados (Swift,1729).

The proposal revealed to me that Swift tried to reveal a sense of resentment towards Roman Catholics, referred as 'papists' in the proposal. The author exposed enmity towards papists by wanting to condense the number of their children and thus tumbling the number of Catholics. Swift also revealed the confrontations that England had with Ireland. During the late seventeenth century, Ireland was controlled by England, a bordering nation. The confrontations developed due to imposing heavy taxes by England on Irish as well as confiscating their possessions for their own (Swift, 1980).

From the proposal, it is obvious that Swift wants the people of Ireland to position them against the opposition of England, working for Irish 'self-determination' and having on the whole a sense of nationwide pride for solving economic situation that Ireland is facing. Not only Swift held responsible others for the poverty in Ireland; he also overstress how horrible is to reinforce how poor and disgusting Ireland was. In the beginning he tried to make his proposal ...