A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift
Contains spoilers for the entire book.
Discussion topics
Topic 01 of 08
A reasonable voice
How did your response to the speaker change between his opening description of poverty and his proposal to sell children as food?
Keep the conversation going
- Which early details now seem different in light of what follows?
- What does his calm manner add to your reaction?
There is no single right answer. Bring your own reading.
Discussion topics
How did your response to the speaker change between his opening description of poverty and his proposal to sell children as food?
Keep the conversation going
- Which early details now seem different in light of what follows?
- What does his calm manner add to your reaction?
What happens to the families in the essay when the speaker describes them through numbers, costs, and profits?
Keep the conversation going
- Where does the language make it easiest to forget that he is discussing people?
- How might the argument change if one of the mothers were allowed to speak?
How do the details about recipes, clothing, and fashionable dinners shape the satire?
Keep the conversation going
- What did you make of the suggestion that landlords have already devoured the parents?
- When did the elaborate practical details make you laugh, recoil, or feel both at once?
What do the claimed benefits of the proposal reveal about the society the speaker wants to satisfy?
Keep the conversation going
- How does the promise to reduce the Catholic population affect your understanding of his idea of public good?
- What is troubling about his claim that selling children would make husbands and wives treat one another better?
How do you read the list of other measures the speaker insists nobody should suggest to him?
Keep the conversation going
- Which alternative most changes your understanding of the problem he began with?
- What mixture of hope and frustration do you hear in his demand for a sincere attempt to put those measures into practice?
What does the closing claim that the speaker cannot profit from the scheme do to the argument?
Keep the conversation going
- How does his explanation about the age of his child affect the tone of the ending?
- What is missing from his definition of having no personal interest?
What can this extreme proposal make a reader see that a direct appeal against poverty might miss?
Keep the conversation going
- Where might the shock distract a reader from the people whose suffering is at stake?
- How does the essay ask us to judge an argument that sounds efficient and disinterested?
What would a modest proposal look like if someone wrote one about a problem of our own time?
Keep the conversation going
- Why does satire so often get taken literally, then and now?
- Is there a line that satire should not cross, and does Swift cross it?
There is no single right answer. Bring your own reading.