A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift was written in 1729. It was written as satire, to ridicule the English aristocracy’s view towards the impoverished people of Ireland, specifically mothers and children. This text is a satirical marketing essay basically. Swift tells how selling children will help the economy grow, and killing children will also help the economy because there won’t be so many people to feed and take care of. Selling the children would be for food or to have as pets of some sort. Swift makes a lot of comparisons of young children’s flesh to delicacies. One part that stuck out to me during this was him describing flesh as venison, because all of the rich hunters had killed all the deer on their lands. He also talks of using flesh for gloves/boots. Another big underlying theme throughout this is the battle between Catholics and Protestants during this time, and a stereotype that has been probably fueled by this is the stereotype of Catholics having a lot of children. Swift’s views and the way he states things in this text really resonate with how we think of the rich people feeling, they don’t care about these people’s lives they just want to get something out of it which is why this was perfect satire because half of them probably wouldn’t even think twice. Some themes in this text also relate to issues happening now, such as abortion. The point was selling kids would stop the abortion from happening and I think that abortion from a rich person’s view back then and now have very similar ideas. Overall, I really liked this text and found it very amusing and very well written, it expressed a lot of problems happening back then that I had no idea about until now.