Curtis Zhang
6/10/20
A Modest Proposal
The short story “A Modest Proposal” by Dr. Jonathan Swift is a story where the author proposes to help end hunger in Ireland by proposing that they should sell their children to earn money since the reason that there is a food shortage is because there are too many people in Ireland. Then he proposes that once the children are sold, the children should be cooked and eaten, at which point he goes on to calculate how many women will have kids and how much the child will weigh if they nurse it for a year. This story, though disgusting, actually has a few themes that are actually not in favor of eating children, but are showing something completely different.
The first theme that the story is showing is that benefitting the majority of society is not always the best option. In the story, it is for the benefit of the majority of society that the author proposes his idea of cannibalism of infants, and that is not a good idea. He is telling us that benefitting the majority of society is not always the best idea since cannibalism of infants, though improving the lives of many citizens, is not the best path you could take, instead you could just boost the economy of Ireland so that you can have more food for the population.
The second theme that is in the story is telling you that you need to try to understand the people you are affecting if you are in a position of power. The author says that his youngest child is 9, way outside of the range where you can be affected, that his wife was old and could not bear any more children, and that he is in the higher class of society. This is contradictory because this proposal is affecting the poor people who have children who are younger than 1 year old, which is not affecting him at all. He is proposing this only because he will not be affected by this proposal, which is not a good idea since he will not know what the poor people of the country will face if this proposal is passed. In the story, the person proposing the proposal does not really care about the babies getting killed and eaten or the parents of the babies, which is only because of the complete lack of sympathy and empathy that he has, since he is not going to be affected and cannot relate to the poor people. If he had empathy and could relate to the poorer people, then he would almost certainly not have proposed this proposal.
This short story is showing how having empathy and being able to relate to the people you are affecting with your actions are important, along with the fact that the benefit of the majority is not always the correct decision. Without empathy, you would probably make a proposal like this one.