Modest proposal

Think of a political or social issue, preferably something relevant to your own place and time. If you choose school uniforms, for example, the next step is to come up with your idea of the problem that is supposedly being solved. Then, decide where you stand on the issue: do school uniforms solve the problem or not? Next, think of a way of expressing this solution that would be extreme (like eating babies in “A Modest Proposal”). For example, if the idea of uniforms is uniformity and you do not think this is a good enough reason for school uniforms, then you could make fun of it by arguing that the students should go to school naked. Your essay will then be in the voice of someone who believes the opposite, arguing for attending school naked for the sake of uniformity (just like Swift’s narrator argued that Ireland should eat its young, but Swift didn’t actually believe this, and like Swift made those in favor of repealing the Test Act seem to be anti-Christianity in “An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity”). Now, choose a method of literary parody. Maybe you will pretend that this is an opinion piece in the school newspaper. This helps establish your audience and the kind of writing you will make fun of. Now comes the hardest part of all: telling all the jokes in the way that Swift does. As you think of the reasons that your extreme solution might be purportedly a good idea, imagine what different people might be thinking—parents, teachers, politicians, prudes, nudists. These reasons can be as silly as you want to make them, and if you have some extra joke to make about these kinds of people, fold them into the arguments. You could say, for example, that going to school naked would mean that parents wouldn’t have to pay for their students’ clothes, which is an expensive thing because students are always trying to get their parents to pay for the latest faddish designers. Or you could say that going to school naked would keep students from developing tan lines, or reduce the need for “sexting” because everyone would already know what each other looks like naked. The more different levels of satire you can get to work at the same time, the more it will be in the style of Swift.