Yo Reads Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” with Utmost Condescension in Her Poshest Accent

“A modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public” is one of the most widely acclaimed and emblematic pieces of satire ever written. 

Author Dr. Jonathan Swift published the work anonymously in 1729 to little fanfare at first, but in the weeks and months subsequent to its publication, the essay created an increasing stir and eventually inspired outrage, primarily among the aristocracy. 

The piece is written in a bombastically elevated and hyperbolic style, parodying the diction and rhetorical attitudes of the ruling class, in order to highlight their self-righteousness and moral equivocation, while simultaneously referring to the poverty-stricken Irish using especially dismissive, condescending, bestial language in order to indicate that they are of no more value than livestock—quite literally. 

I first read Swift’s original when I was a student in high school, and I was just as shocked when I read it again, almost 25 years later, as I was when I first encountered the essay as a teenager.

Swift’s essay has certainly stood the test of time, and my sense is that it’s more relevant than ever, especially seeing as we seem to have mostly lost our capacity, as a culture, to appreciate that so many policies that should be relegated to the realm of satire, are actually being passed and implemented.