A Modest Proposal is a satirical essay by Jonathan Swift. Swift intentionally uses the essay to draw attention to the horrible economy in Ireland and how oppressed it was by England. Many pamphlets have been handed out during this time regarding the horrible conditions in Ireland, but they were mostly discarded. Taking advantage of this, Swift decides to come up with an absurd proposal to catch the reader's attention. The essay, or proposal, begins with Swift explaining the happenings in Ireland and then makes a pretty smooth transition into the proposal: selling poor Irish women's newborns and eating them. The mock proposal is oddly convincing, but then transitions into an ideal proposal that still has a bit of humor towards the end. Swift uses satire to get his point across, and does a great job at it. .
The whole idea of infanticide and the fact that Swift even mentions different food preparation styles for eating an infant can be considered risky. Cannibalism has and will probably never be the norm in any modern society. In the ninth paragraph of the essay, Swift mentions that an American acquaintance he met in London told him that a well nursed child is the most delicious at age one and then brings the acquaintance back up in the eighth paragraph saying "my American acquaintance assured me, from frequent experience, that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable; and to fatten them would not answer the charge" (Line 3). Honestly, if I was living in 18th century London and read these lines from the pamphlet, I would just automatically think all Americans were horrible cannibals. It's risky in a way because it categorizes a group of people that the people of England do not know too much about. The risk pays off, in a way, because American behaviors during this time were very foreign to people not living in the colonies which probably led to unconscious opinions of the colonists.