In "A Modest Proposal", Swift suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. This satirical hyperbole fully entitled "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public" mocks heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as British policy toward the Irish in general. In this short satirical essay, the narrator is an ironic character because he is blind to the horrible moral implications of his proposal and favors only economic progress. One important way in which the author engages with the audience is to make them see deeper political, moral, and social truths and problems through his use of irony. The essay is certainly a satire that is aimed at making his contemporary readers recognize the kind of cold, calculating inhumanity of blunt rationalism when used to address social problems such as poverty and overpopulation.
The irony of the narrator of “A Modest Proposal" by Swift though, is that he can go on to criticize the moral weakness of mothers who have immoral abortions or commit infanticide. In one of his most ironic statements, the speaker balks at the idea of eating teenagers because this is “bordering upon cruelty," as if all of his other suggestions were not. Irony reflects the spirit of Enlightenment by causing people to think and reason out a solution to the problem of poverty in Ireland.
