Connect with Literature
What do you think?
1. What was your first reaction to the proposal offered in this essay?
Comprehension Check
2. What is Swift’s proposal?
3. What problem in Ireland does the proposal pretend to solve?
4. Name a couple advantages that the speaker sees in this solution?
Think Critically
5. What is ironic about the title?
6. Go back through the essay and find at least two places where you think Swift’s satire is particularly powerful. Explain your choices
7. What response do you think swift hoped to get from readers of “A Modest Proposal”?
Extend Interpretations
Connect to life
8. Poverty and starvation in the 18th century Ireland inspired Swift to write. What are some of the social and political issues that might inspire satirist today?
Vocabulary
Irony: the contrast between what is expected and what actually happens
Prodigious: enormous
Deplorable: miserable; woeful; bad
Rudiment: a basic principle
Proficiency: a competence, expertise
Deference: courteous regard or respect
Expedient: a means to an end
Emulation: an effort to equal or out another person; rivalry
Animosity: hostility; hatred
Perpetual: everlasting; continual
