A Modest Proposal Satire

A Modest Proposal by Johnathan Swift is a satirical essay, in which Swift gives a detailed over the top explanation for how to deal with the poor Irish. When Swift wrote this essay, fully titled “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick”, there were many others who were writing pamphlets on how to deal with the growing poverty rate in Britain at the time. Swift used over the top suggestions such as fattening children up and feeding them to the wealthy to show just how unaware some of the other pamphlet’s suggestions were at the time. While reading A Modest Proposal there are two goals, which are to gain sympathy for the poor …show more content…
The persona that Swift uses is the speaker, which mostly identifies with the British upper-class. Swift used this persona to show the ridiculousness of the pamphlets which were circulating at the time with “solutions” on how to solve the poverty crisis. In his essay, there are many times in which we know he is using a persona and not talking as himself such as when he wrote; “...taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound; of using neither clothes nor household furniture, except what is our growth and manufacture, […] of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing” (29). The significance of Swift’s persona was to distance himself from the narrator. Swift uses himself as a sort of calm in a storm of extremely radical ideas, this is exemplified when he states; “I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country…I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old.” (33). Swift shows how his persona has no experience with the poor, and has very little to gain from all of the services that the proposers want to