Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift is in the middle of a corrupt society driven by the rich and there desire for money along with the poor and there struggles to survive. Swift would like for the wealthy to show mercy toward the lower class and the people of his country come together and help each other to better there kingdom.

The poor population is plagued by the sin of sexual immorality, theft, and hunger. The women widowed or married, sale themselves physically as a payment or for food to feed there children. This in return leads to them getting pregnant again and adding to there despair. Most women could not find work due to the large population. And the children learned how to make ends meet at an early age by stealing what ever they could to profit from or to feed themselves. The poor where to weak to work and put in a full day’s labor due to malnutrition. The women and children of this time had very little chance to make anything of there lives except to stay in the lifestyle they were born into.

The rich treated them like cattle leaving them in the streets and expecting them to survive like cattle in a pasture.

Swift came up this very imaginative way of speaking his mind and expressing his thoughts. He mentions the idea of cannibalism, allowing babies to be sold by there mothers for payment for rent or for food and in return the wealthy would be getting prime meat. This would allow the mothers to quit selling themselves as sexual objects. But doesn’t that sound more like cattle than human beings! Breed them and then take the young to the sale. By doing this, the over populated country would become less crowded and women would have a means of income. Home life would become less violent and a family would be considered more valuable. Swift says “We should see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market.