The English well-known biologist Charles Darwin states that “if the misery of the poor caused not by the laws of nature, but by our initiations, great is our sin” (Voyage of the Beagle). The primary problem that threatens the existence of mankind is a vast number of issues and conflicts that have political and ideological substructure. During the seventieth century, Ireland was a country that had been effectively dominated by England for nearly five hundred years, and certain kinds of legal and law types of legislation in the place that was established by them were hurting immensely the Irish people. Likewise, Stuart kingship established a Protestant governing aristocracy in Ireland amid the country’s comparatively poor Catholic population.
Those needy citizens were suffering from starvation and much other poverty-related difficulties. In addition to their squalor, England decided to do the truly unthinkable; they raised the tariff on Ireland people that an overwhelming majority of whom were already destitute. Meanwhile, the famous potato famine occurred when potato crops all started dying; therefore, an enormous number of people in Ireland had nothing to consume. Jonathan Swift, who was an Anglo Irish, essayist, and political, traveled to Ireland, Dublin, where he was born in 1677, observed the horrific condition in his native country. Irish parents were giving away their six- or seven-year daughters for prostitution, so they can get money. In process of that, the young children that were being sold would be later murdered. Others were abandoning their children because they were not able to feed them. Tens of thousands of children were begging on the streets, facing their unknown fates.
When Swift saw this devastating situation, he could not believe it. To wake up the conscience of the upper-class society who was overseeing on those poor people’s destiny, he found a way to express his notions wittily by writing and publishing his modest proposal that presents a rational solution for the poverty of a tremendous quantity of unwanted children in Ireland. Therefore, he panned that to solve the misery, let us serve the poor Irish children as delicious dishes for the tables of wealthy families, let us use their skin to generate boots and gloves. In fact, he conveyed the idea of exporting the fat, healthy Irish children overseas. Although some rivals of his modest proposal condemns him by saying the proposal is fictional, inhumane, immoral, radical, and beyond all of these, swift is contradicting himself because he provides solutions for poor Irish children and their families, but he denies his plan to apply on his nine-year-old son and his wife, Swift’s modest proposal contains a certain persona, accountant, impersonal voices, and outrageous facts and statistics without an assiduous attention to some forge, moral consideration; his modest proposal uses very dark satire that addresses ongoing tragedy, provides a solution, attacks the greedy, malevolent, selfish, wealthy individuals in England and Ireland, and produce a theory that is flawless and is answering the question that what are we going to do with a hundred and twenty thousand of undesirable, homeless children every year in Ireland.
Swift was one of the few true psychological of the time that debates for morally correct issues and his vague irony writing was utterly the most effective way to project his desire to display the issue facing Ireland. Notably, before digging into his claim, which gives a logical solution for the difficulty in Ireland, the intelligent man prepared his audience to endorse that there is unsolvable distress in Ireland, and he just witnessed it. Similar to several professional commerce advertisements nowadays, swift was advertising his plan, and how it will be truly beneficial for commonwealth class to pay their attention, which was his primary objective. Thereafter, he alluded that if someone figures out a solution for the homeless children in Ireland, that person would deserve a monument in downtown London. “The number of souls in this Kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders, from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples, who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the Kingdom, but this being granted, there will remain a hundred and seventy thousand breeders” (A modest proposal, Swift, par. 6).
Cleverly, he provided the factual numbers; however, as he begins his computations, it sounds very much that he is expounding the issue regarding the flock of sheep or litter of pigs or drove of cattle but definitely not a group of human beings. Swift used a mask such a person who is interested in statistics and quantities solely. Notably, he called the mothers of those poor children breeders, which is conspicuously called an animal mother. He simply said those needy people are animals, so they are worthless. That was a major part of his dark irony because approximately everyone knew what was going on in Ireland at that era; nobody, however, wanted to do anything about it. As a matter of fact, England continued to enforce laws that were caucusing great poverty. At this point, his radical proposal was ready to be provided.
Swift chose to address the issue of poverty in Ireland through satire, while other authors strived to address conditions in a more exact manner, and his modest proposal embodies his method to approach his native country issue. He evaluated the condition of a hundred and twenty thousand of homeless children that were encountering multiple life trudges in Ireland whom nobody wanted to take care of them, and he generated a solution. He said that one of his American colleges informed him that across the Atlantic, individuals love to eat their children at the age of one, and they prepare them for their tables in many methods of Cooking (A modest proposal, Swift, par. 9). Hence, Swift made a point here by saying that the idea of eating children is not his exclusive idea, nor does not a new one. The proposal is not only to solve the horrific condition of those expanding numbers of children every year; no, it is a decent plan for the commonwealth convenient, too. Furthermore, he clarified that certain body parts of a child are superb to eat and that on a certain occasion, the body parts will be on demand. In like manner, he propounded the idea that healthy children will be skinned, and that process will allow people to utilize their skin to make quality gloves for ladies and stylish boots for gentlemen, who can obviously afford them (A modest proposal, Swift, par.15).
The idea is hysterical to an extent that children will not only be served as food, but their body parts will be used to make accessories as well. The Ireland economic problem was not being skipped; swift proposed that if the poor children can be food, this will create a good revenue to the country through exporting the surplus child’s meat to the rich outside Ireland. Mothers or breeders who are in poverty will continue to have children and those children will be treated so well, will be loved, and will be well tended because when it comes time to sell them at age of one or so for an acceptable amount of money, the sealer or the customer in today’s name wants the best, the healthiest product to consume just the same pattern that rancher takes care of the baby, small cattle to ensure that will obtain the best profit. What a dark irony is this. In truth, the proposal of Swift is so objective and very unemotional. All it cares about is the facts and nothing beyond that. Swift went further by suggesting a solution for a young child who is roughly between the age of twelve until fourteen. “A very worthy Person, a true Lover of his country, and whose Virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased, in discoursing on this matter, to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said, that many Gentlemen of this Kingdom, having of late destroyed their Deer, he conceived that the want of Venison might be well supplied by the Bodies of young Lads and Maidens, not exceeding fourteen Years of Age, nor under twelve; so great a Number of both Sexes in every county being now ready to Starve, for want of Work and Service: And these to be disposed of by their parents if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations” (A modest proposal, Swift, par.17).
Instead of killing young age children who all they do is running in the streets and causing havoc and problems for the city; therefore, the best step the elite class can do is to bring them all in the forests, where the wealthy people can hunt and kill them rather than the deer because they have already killed all of the deer in the forests that they own. Religion has been always a powerful tool in the hands of mountebanks to dominate average citizens all over the world. It seems that Swift knew how to play his game to trap those religious people who only concerned with how they can maximize their profits. According to swift that the Catholics are having than the Protectants; therefore, when Protectants start eating all of their children, we are going to observe fewer Catholics running around the island, so that will be brilliant (A modest proposal, Swift, par.21).
Swift was in the position that allowed him to speak and be heard by English people because he was quite much embraced by England and had so much popularity as an author even though he was an Irish. Swift used that privilege to basically write a defense for the Irish people, and he knew that English people would not listen to just any kind of ordinary defense for the Irish tragedies such as famine and homelessness all around the country, just terrible state of life facing the Irish people, especially vulnerable children, so he had to construct an argument that would catch upper-class attention. A Modest Proposal was written in hopes of exposing the increasing issue of poverty in Ireland. Some perspective see that acquaintances failed to notice its true meaning of a modest proposal. In my view, they comprehended the utter aim of it, but they just chose to ignore it. Swift received a letter that has been sent by his friend, Lord Bathurst stating, “Now you must imagine, that a man who has nine children to feed, cannot long afford alienos pascere nummos; but I have four or five, that are very fit for the table” (Bathurst letter). Lord Bathurst indicated his very own children, and he exhibited himself that he fails to acknowledge the reason Swift has written his proposal, just as the rest of the comfortable class did at the time.
Nevertheless, Swift did achieve one of his goals: catching the attention of those generally uninterested in such enormity. Some public opponents have a different perspective of what Swift said. They are arguing that his proposal is immoral, and he retained his family, including his own nine-year-old out of his mythical plan. These points might be true in some sense, however, the moment that any individual asks the question; what we are going to do with these homeless children who they are facing endless griefs, that person is not one of those poor people because underprivileged individuals never ask for solution regarding the overpopulation, poverty, and famine. Sadly, their minds will be contracting on their empty stomach and exhausted bodies. Swift’s proposal asks this question vaguely; that means that he is not one of those hopeless people and it makes sense to not allow his family to be a part in his plan. Furthermore, criticizing his proposal and portraying it as immoral is a poor evaluation of the real condition of the poverty that existed in Ireland. At this point, an arguable question arises, which one is so immoral and inhumane; allowing children to grow up to be homeless, to be sold for salivary out of their lands, to be exposed for rape at age of six and seven on the streets of Dublin or eating them when they are one-year-old, but they have no clue of what is going on because they are still baby? With taking this into the consideration that eating children that Swift’s modest proposal presented was a satire and all other elements were facts were happing to those deprived children in Ireland unpassionately.
As a reader read the swift’s proposal in the present time, it is inevitable to not thinking of this proposal as an affective theory to solve the severe problem of children who live in extreme poverty all over the planet, starving to the death every single day. According to UNICEF, one billion children worldwide are living in poverty, and twenty-two thousand children die each day due to poverty (United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation). In the world of inventions such as internet, iPhones and Galaxies, laptops, high definition televisions, and all luxury and fancy tools that people use to reach information worldwide, millions of indigent children are dying in front of the world. In Iraq that its oil reserves are considered the world’s fifth largest proven, my father, who lives in northern Iraq, enlightened me that thousands of children live in tinplate caravans in landfills collecting their meals from the existing garbage. He added that poverty also puts children at risk for exploitation through sex trafficking, child labor and early marriage. Children living in impoverished areas face increased danger of experiencing violence from armed conflict or even being recruited as child fighters for militias that are acquiring popularity in Iraq. Ahmed al Basheer an Iraqi journalist created with a group of his colleges a T.V show that delivers a misery condition of Iraqi people under the govern of corruption, ethnic segregation, ideological conflict, and chronic poverty, and they called it Al Basheer Show. They began broadcasting the show in 2014 from the capital city of Jordan, Amman through YouTube.
Rapidly, he became one of the most famous comedians in Iraq because Ahmed express the endless problems in Iraq in an ironic way that people truly prefer. He uses impersonal voices to explain the topic that wants to point out. His show promoted from broadcasting on YouTube to having an hour space every week Friday in Germen chancel DW and Iraqi channel NRT. The comic T.V Show received countless threats from militants in Iraq, including ISIS and militant groups who are obligated to the Iranian agenda in Iraq against the liberty that has been transported by the United States in 2003. The show has been terminated from broadcasting on these two channels after some politicians in Iraqi parliament had prosecuted the show for contempt some very supreme religious leaders in Iraq, which is almost in every city in Iraq they have several from these supreme individuals, replacing the constitution and the law of the country.
