HUM 112 Assignment 1 – Essay

Essay

HUM 112: World Cultures II

Essay

The reading that I chose to analyze was the proposal that was written by Johnathan Swift. The title of this article was A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick, written in 1729. After reading and re-reading this proposal I was able to come to the conclusion of what Swift was really talking about, cannibalism.

In the proposal, Swift calculated the number of children that were born to parents that could take care of their children and the number of children that were born to parents that were unable to take care of their children. The proposal came from a friend of his that believed in cannibalism and professed to him that this was method that was used in his country to keep down the amount of poor people and beggars in the kingdom in which he lived.

In the proposal that Swift wrote, he gives six reasons as to why he feels that this should be a practice that should be taken up within the kingdom. He also shares within the proposal different ways that the children can be seasoned and cooked so that it will taste good. The surprise ending of this proposal did not come at the end and after reading back over the proposal. The author did not do a very good job of convincing me that was he was talking about was not what the ending was going to be about. He gave most of what his proposal was about more so in the middle of the proposal that he wanted people to partake in.