1. I think that the real thesis of this essay is about how he thinks that the English need to stop making the Irish people their "slaves." He doesn't literally mean that they should start eating their children, he is sending a message that they need to back off.
2. "The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. "
3. I realized that the essay was ironic before paragraph 10 because it is not realistic that people would start eating their children to make money.
4. The irish people are the ones that are the victims in the essay. They were under england's control, so they didn't have a say in what to do so the irish people are definitely not to blame.
5. Swift never presents any serious arguements in his essay, the entire thing is a satire.
6. The purpose of the last paragraph is that he proposed this to help his country, but he can not contribute to the plan because he cannot have any more kids.
8. I do not think this plan could even work out because people don't want to sit down and eat babies for their dinner. I think that if people did actually eat babies, that it would be easier to just not recognize them because it would be easier to eat them without thinking about the fact that you are eating a baby.
