Swift’s The modest Proposal 5 questions
we need at most 15 sentences for each question.
Please refer to the Norton Anthology Worl Literature book for the following 5 questions:
WHAT IS Swift saying about REASON, here? This is REASON carried too far. Does this remind you of Mr. Spock? How is Swift commenting on the use of reason in his culture? Make sure that you review the ideas presented in the PowerPoint to help; you may also want to review the introduction to the European Enlightenment in your textbook
2) Swift begins by stating that since mothers can’t work to feed their children, they are forced to beg, offering animal-like imagery of the poor Irish This imagery continues throughout the essay—what other animal-like imagery do you see? What does the use of animal imagery suggest about the fictional, unnamed narrator of this essay?
3) Below are Swift’s “reasons” for recommending people eat children What problems is he highlighting in these reasons? Reference as many as you choose, but at least two.
1) Eliminate Papists (Catholics), who are the key breeders
2) Give the poorer tenants something valuable, since the landlords have already seized their corn and cattle
3) The country will keep the money paid for the children in its own borders
4) “Breeders” won’t have to feed children after 1 year
5)Be good for taverns and innkeepers, who can charge high prices and have terrific recipes
6)An inducement to marriage (dowry, perhaps) and also good for bragging rights among the women, and too the men would behave better toward their wives since they were bringing in money
4) Finally, Swift basically write, “I’ve cured all the ills, so don’t let anyone else offer any other (less proper) suggestions, like these”:
1) Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound
2) Of using neither clothes, nor household furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture
3) Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury;
4) Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women,
5) Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence, and temperance,
6) Of learning to love our country, wherein we different even from Laplanders and the inhabitants of Topinamboo
7) Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor act any longer like Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken
8) Of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing;
9) Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants
10) Of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shopkeepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it.
Discuss in your own words the meaning of at least three of these suggestions.
5) Swift makes a last jab at England.. What does the narrator specifically suggest that anyone who doesn’t like his proposal do in order to confirm what he has said? How does the narrator explain that he has no personal motives in this modest proposal?
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