A Modest Proposal

I was disgusted by the ideas that were presented in A Modest Proposal by JonathanSwift. In this satire he proposes that to solve the issue of children being a burden to their parents in poor families we should fatten up the undernourished children and feed them to the rich Irish land owners. Who does this? Who in their right mind would ever think that this is okay?!?!?! Swift goes on to propose that children of poor men should be sold into the meat market at a year old. Sweeney Todd much? I think that even just these two ideas alone are disturbing.

Swift goes on to say that his proposal will combat overpopulation and unemployment, sparing families and the expense of child bearing. He also says that selling children into the meat market will help give these poor families a little extra money. To me this is awful, he is promoting cannibalism and he is promoting selling children for money. How is this a good practice? How is this promoting a good life style? He is encouraging people to eat the children and sell them! We abolished the selling of humans when we abolished slavery, and we thought it was bad then, but swift is saying it should be okay, and that if a person needs to that they can sell their own children.

The author also thinks that this will help family mortality, that husbands will love their wives more. Uhhhh this man had a child with his wife and then sold it, how is this going to make him love her more? I really don't get that. Swift also states that this will help the families to value their children, they are selling the kids because they can't afford them, and then are going to eat them. How does this create value? I mean I guess it gives these children a monetary value if their parents were to sell them, but how would it make them feel valued as a person? It really won't. It will make the children fear for their lives if the family ever falls below or near the poverty line. To me the proposals will stir up fear in these children rather than value.

Overall this really upset me and got me really heated, my boyfriend and I even had a huge conversation over this and how crazy it is.