The story “A Modest Proposal” is a about a proposal to solve poverty in Ireland. Jonathan Swift, the writer, claims that selling and eating kids could make it so the parents will earn money and people wouldn’t need to use livestock as food, instead selling beef to earn money. He claims this idea could make it so there will be no poverty in England and the economy would rise as well as population. However, I think this would be the opposite of proactive and is very inhuman.
I feel like this proposal has many flaws in a logical sense and in a ethical sense. He claims that there will be no poverty and poverty is not easily solved. Most likely there will be more poverty because meat sellers might not have enough meat to sell due to the uprising nourishment of children’s meat. At first this might sound it would work, but this idea is just very inhuman and absurd. Do you want to eat somebody’s child for dinner? Or what about your own child? See, normal human beings wouldn’t want that especially since many people sees that as cannibalism, which is illegal in most parts of the world. To kill and eat children just to solve a problem that cannot be solved depends too much on luck and is way to disgusting. But what about population rising? Well he also says that specific people could produce more children that will stay alive, but how long until kids like those stay unaware of their surroundings. Sooner or later the children will know that their friends or siblings are being eaten and how will that damage them psychologically? I can’t even imagine.
Additionally, you, eating children would mean that your eating away at your own population, which is pretty ironic for a solution trying to raise the population. I also don’t agree with the writer because he’s not only said that children should be eaten, but he “wouldn’t mind” if high class women are eaten too. This statement is really bold and I wouldn’t be surprised if he went to jail for saying that in public. His idea of a good society is what he explained in his proposal, a society that eats its own people and treats its own people as mere livestock. Can you bear to live in a society that does just that? To “raise” the population and “solve” poverty? No, I would certainly not do that and I advise you to think so too.
This “modest” proposal of his is nowhere humble and is really absurd. I hope you will agree with me on this, but I still admire about how he dare propose this as an actual solution. Poverty is a global problem that is really devastating. But would you rather keep poverty, or eat your own children for food? I would say no to eating our offsprings and no, to Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal.