Customer Reviews

A Modest Proposal and Other Essays

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Short and to the point, this is political satire at its best. While some background of Irish history is helpful, what I most like about Mr. Swift's arguments is that they can apply to any society where the group in power frets over what to do with the poor. I was in the middle of a book on the history of the Civil Rights movement in the American South when I read this, and what struck me was how Swift's satire lined up with the events a continent and centuries away from the original subject.

So I have not bought this copy, but I have a few different copies of A Modest Proposal and it is amazing.
Jonathan Swift is really the father of english satire in literature and, along with Gulliver's Travels, this is his magnum opus.
The basic idea is a proposal for economic reform by the export and eating of babies. Now the idea is rather gruesome, but Swift is not meant to be taken literally. The idea was so show how ridiculous people were being, fighting over religion and economics, by showing an idea that, truly could have worked for the time and place if people were okay with child murder. This is nothing short of one of the most hilarious arguments into the problems with governments and economic reform that was ever written.
I highly recommend this short piece for both humor, literature, and a look into the human social mind.

I love this book! It's one of my favorites! However, if you're not used to the vocabulary in it, or your understanding of the turmoil that was going on in this period of history is weak, you might not get the full effect or humor. It's still a worth-while read. Go for it!

When Jonathan Swift published "A Modest Proposal" in October of 1789, he had determined to alleviate what he saw as the unnecessary plight of the starving poor of Ireland. For centuries the Irish had lived under the often harsh thumb of England which placed very many hardships on them. The English Parliament tended to view the Irish as a conquered people who existed only for the benefit of the mother country. Restrictive financial laws guaranteed that most of the revenue produced in Ireland would find its way into the coffers of the English treasury. Restrictive trade laws ensured that goods manufactured in one part of Ireland could not be transported and sold to another. And most egregious of all was the prevailing tendency of wealthy English landowners to hire landlords to run estates, villages, and apartments of all squalid sorts in Ireland while all the while charging exorbitant rents to those who could ill afford those rents. It is against the totality of what Swift saw as a massive wave of a lack of basic human care and sympathy for the downtrodden Irish that convinced him to write a tract that he hoped would draw attention to the inhuman conditions under which the Irish had to live. To accomplish this goal, Swift chose to write in a style with which he had a long familiarity--a mixing of bitter satire with biting irony. In essence, "A Modest Proposal" is an extended use of this mixture to present what would have otherwise been seen as an appalling use of cannibalism under the guise of a misplaced socially acceptable benevolence.

The structure of the essay is more than slightly reminiscent of the tracts that were then current. Authors of such tracts were fond of critiquing what they saw as the sociological issues of the day. Swift must have seen an opportunity to reveal his proposal to feed the starving masses of Ireland in a forum with which readers could instantly identify. However, where the vast majority of these other pamphlets were utterly serious in tone, Swift chose to mask his thesis using tones which range from stark realism to the outrageously ironic. The irony begins with his narrator, one who is at first portrayed as a man of benevolence, intelligence, and in possession of a strong moral conscience. The narrator commences with a grim description of Ireland's poverty-stricken female beggars who have with them numerous bedraggled ragamuffins. This opening leaves the reader to assume that the narrator's sympathies rest unerringly with these unfortunates. Almost immediately, however, Swift undercuts this incipient benevolence with the suggestion that his sympathy is mixed with other and contrasting emotions. His acknowledgment that these beggar children will eventually turn highwaymen or war with England is the first in a long line of hints, modest or otherwise, that his true purpose is an ill-defined series of pokes and retorts at England and surprisingly enough at Ireland itself. As Swift quickly enough gets to his central thesis that the babies of Ireland are to be fattened and slaughtered as food, the reader begins to wonder what he is supposed to make of Swift's narrator. As the narrator uses the soothing and disarming language of sociological rhetoric to advance his proposal to reduce Ireland's excess population by eating its youngest members, there is the initial tendency for the reader to view the narrator as the villain. However, Swift had far more in mind than merely to ridicule one man. Rather, it was his purpose to use the narrator as a sounding board by which he could assail his true targets: the wealthy of England who profit from the collective misery of Ireland and the Irish themselves who could so willingly even eagerly participate in their own degradation and ruination.

Swift's first target are the landlords "who as they have already devoured most of the Parents, seem to have the best Title to the Children." These landlords are symbolic of their masters, the landed English gentry who act like financial vacuum cleaners, sucking up the wealth of Ireland and placing it in the pockets of gentry. His second target is the entire Irish population whom he pictures as willing collaborators to their own moral and spiritual dissolution. It is by no means easy to distinguish which group holds Swift's greatest contempt. If it is true that the English are the original destroyers of the Irish social fabric, then it is probably equally true that the native Irish do not resist with any force the allure that money holds as the means to fatten the tables of the wealthy. Swift makes it clear that his view of the foibles of human weakness is based solely on the monetary. The interest of the English with reference to Ireland is based entirely on the number of pounds and shillings that can be safely extorted to the coffers in London. The only offer that the English make to the Irish is similarly based on the assumption that the Irish are a race with no sense of integrity or shame and can be manipulated by the Almighty Buck.

Toward the end of the essay, Swift's irony drifts into the truly morbid. His narrator is exasperated by the failure of anyone to come up with an alternative that is less bloody. He groans that he has no desire to entertain "other expedients," all of which are the non-ironic commonsense proposals that if given a chance might actually serve to help the Irish without resort to cannibalism. But of course, these proposals were never given the chance. By the end of the essay, the reader realizes that there was nothing "modest" about either the proposal or the narrator. The narrator's closing claim to impartiality is an ironic afterthought that a claim for benevolence does not equate to its actuality. And this may be Swift's ultimate comment on satire.

My review is based on the Penguin Revised Edition of "A Modest Proposal and Other Writings." Jonathan Swift was a seventeenth century Horatio Alger. Swift rose from obscurity to become the famous Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral. He had an earned Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity College in 1702. It is not as an academic or ecclesiastical leader that we remember Swift. It is for his satirical pen warmed up in the flames of seventeenth century controversies from the Tory-Whig disputes (Swift was a torrid Tory supporter) to Anglican-Dissenting Church wrangles to the Irish-English troubles. Swift was a Hibernian hero as he railed against the use of debased English coinage in Eire, the poverty of the Irish and the plights of his countrymen living in an undeveloped land.
In the Penguin Edition a wide ranging selection of writings by Swift are included. There is his famous satirical essay "A Modest Proposal" in which he suggests that the English pay the Irish for cannibalization of Irish babies
and essays on the need to industrialize Ireland. Swift calls on the Irish to refuse to buy English products. A short play is included showing Swift's love of double entendre and the English language. Several letters to "Stella" are included as well as correspondence with such famous authors as Alexander Pope. A 100 plus page glossary, notes and list of Swift's contemporaries makes this Penguin a handsome edition. The writing is over 300 years old and may be hard for some American readers to comprehend. Swift wrote much more than just "Gulliver's Travels" and this book proves he is still worth reading.

Sir Jonathan...Pray tell, what has come over you? It was like looking at a car wreck, I just couldn't look away! Five stars for holding me in your grip!

Swift's treatise lives up to its reputation, hilarious and somewhat offensive. His serious delivery of the prescription of eating Irish children still shocks and amuses, especially in its self-conscious spearing of prescriptive theorists. Change the name of the country and alter the situation a bit and the satire could be a contemporary work, if only we still had talented satirists. It was fun to finally read the essay in its entirety. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys jokes about eating people or who enjoy satire.

A terrific work, if a short one, satirizing treatment of the poor. Luckily, idiots that misunderstood it did not prevent this from becoming as famous as it is.

Honestly, I do not understand this proposal very much although it is a classical satire, because I do not know to whom this proposal is addressed, to poor people, or to politicians, or to religious people.

Therefore, I really do not know what is the author's intention due to the fact that I have little knowledge and background on this topic although I tried to understand this essay by reading Wikipedia.

just a short review. absolutely amazing satire. even if you're not into satire from the 1700's, jonathan swift makes a plausable case for the consumption of useless babies (which i totally agree with). anything that curbs the population explosion is a plus in my book. even gives you recipe ideas along with the proposal, and talks about lazy 15 year old girls. (as an aside was mentioned in a sealab 2021 episode but not explained)