"A Modest Proposal"

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 mocks heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as Irish policy in general. I think what made me take this work for truth is the fact that is starts out in a very serious and official manner. The title “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” made me feel like this was a serious proposal.  I expected Swift to write something about making these children go to work, or school however because of Swift's style of writing he made this idea of eating children sound so serious! When you can make people 300 years down the road still think you were serious then I’d say it is a pretty well written argument.
Having said that, I would have loved to be around Ireland when this was just released to the public. I think that usually the only problem with satire today is that it may offend some people. But I think it would have been interested to see how the public handled this work when they believed Swift to be serious. I can see those poor Irish children asking their parents if they are going to eat them. It sounds funny to me now, but I feel like this was something that actually frightened a lot of people back then. Swift was incredibly brave writing this piece and I think that recreating a piece like this for the modern day would be much more difficult to do.