TJonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal is very satiric piece of writing. Swift uses many different tools to achieve his satiric tone, including diction and syntax. Because of the way Swift writes it is very easy to read his proposal and not realize that it is satiric.
             The title of the piece itself is ironic, for what Swift proposes is anything but modest and simple. At first, it seems like any other business proposal or formal argument one might have seen at the time this paper was written. The author states a problem – namely, children are growing up starving and poor - and then proceeds to offer a solution to it as well as other problems in the process.
             For the first half-dozen paragraphs, Swift extrapolates on the problem and gives some facts about the growing number of children that are being raised in desolate homes, with little or no education and with little hope of becoming anything useful to society. Swift gives the figure of about 120,000. Whether this number is accurate or not, it lends a sense of credibility to the passage because it sounds official. The author then discounts several other proposed plans, including selling the children as slaves because the amount they bring would not compensate their parents for the cost of raising them. In discarding the other theories, Swift paves the way for his own proposal, which he hopes "will not be liable to the least objection."
             It is at this point that Swift brings his satire into full swing. He announces that, according to a very reliable source, children make a very delicious and nutritious food. No doubt, such a declaration shocks the reader. But what shocks the audience even more is the manner in which Swift proceeds to calmly and logically lay out his plan for the slaughter of thousands of children for food.
             Swift's main target in this satire is the upper class, those who have more than enough money and do nothing to help while many people starve in the stree...