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Modest Proposal

In: English and Literature

Submitted By beaver289
Words 496
Pages 2
Humanities:
Culture, Continuity, and Change
Monday Night
Week Four Assignment
Marcia Robinson, Adjunct Professor

In this assignment we were asked to pick from three stories with surprise endings and give our opinion on the story. I chose “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift. With hunger, poverty, and other problems plaguing the country, Swift, suggests that they start cannibalizing those in the lower classes. He very sarcastically states that beggars should offer themselves as food for the rich, so two problems may be resolved; beggary and hunger. People are not going to begin eating one another, it’s just preposterous. It’s unthinkable for someone to offer themselves as food. Swift in his own way lashes out at the government for allowing people to starve. His story does grab the attention at the end with his “bright idea” to end hunger. In his own way, he’s attracting attention to a government that is not offering the basic needs to its citizens who cannot provide for themselves, most of no fault of their own. Economic downturns have and always will plague this planet and all civilizations on it. Eating one another is not going to solve the problem, as horrific and stomach-turning as it seems. The point where the story took the hard curve to the satire was when he suggests a child at the age of one be sold to the English as one would a steer, sheep, or swine. Then going over the top of that by saying his wife “is past child bearing age” and all he has to offer is “my youngest being nine years old.” Funny if you ask me, his wit and sarcasm just explodes when you don’t really see it coming. The author’s attempt a believable surprise ending was the next question asked. The author fails miserably at this. Not to make it sound like it was a bad ending, just an unbelievable one. There have been many trying times worse than then where

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