English 2610

Maybe it's my sick sense of humor, or maybe it's the joy I get out of satires, but I wore a smile as I read "A Modest Proposal ". My laughs were not hahaha this story is about eating children; thankfully I'm not that sick. My laughs came from the gumption of Jonathan Swift to tell it like it is. I really wish he was alive today, I think it would benefit our society as well, to hear a few harsh words about how things are done and the limit people put on compassion. I think this is a great example of a man questioning where a society's humanity has gone. Swift, I feel was dealing with many hostile forces: voices that say, well they brought it upon themselves, let them sink or swim, with a let them eat cake kind of attitude. Then he had to deal with other intellectuals who mentioned solutions that would actually treat the Irish like cattle. I believe this is when Swift with raw emotion ridicules the powers that be, and spells out a huge warning of the steps that take us to more barbaric rituals like cannibalism. Like Mr. P and some of the others said, Swift drove this home with such force because he did use children as "wholesome food". I feel he had to use such horrendous visuals because England and others were not just turning a blind eye to the situation it seemed their eyes were made of beads of glass and that it was the only way to shatter their stifled outlook.




I also thought he showed his talent for blunt, but breathtaking truth when he wrote " A Description of a City Shower" For me there was a unity to this poem, a feeling that it doesn't matter what class, station,or how rich or poor you are, we all live under the same sky, we are all going to get poured on and in the end all our crap is going to mingle together in the same sewer.