Examining Pieces of Fiction

For example, Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is a piece of satire which makes sense only when we know that Swift was writing about a problem which was happening in the early 18th century---the English oppression of the Irish. The problem also included the British view that the poor Irish were having too many children and creating an overpopulation problem. This also meant that the British would have to support those children of the poor Irish.

Swift's satire makes the suggestion that these problems could all be solved if there was a simple change in public policy. He suggested that the children be eaten:

I have been assured by a very knowing American . . . that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout (Swift 410).

Swift's satire was aimed at a particular problem taking place at a particular place and a particular time. It is not meant to actually argue for eating children, but was meant to show the anti-Irish British just how their bigotry would sound if it was taken to its logical extreme.

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Jews of his time to take, because they had been taught that they were superior to their non-Jewish "neighbors." Franz Kafka's story "In the Penal Colony" was written in the early years of the 20th century when industrialization and other social, economic and political forces were taking away the freedoms of the individual. The story includes a long description of a torture device which is a product of industrialization. The torture device is made to be as impersonal as possible. It is meant to be a symbol of technology as it destroys the humanity of the individual: "On this cotton wool the condemned man is laid, face down, quite naked, of course; here are the straps for the hands, here for the feet, and here for the neck, to bind him fast" (Kafka 143). The prisoner is first turned into an animal: "The condemned man looked so like a submissive dog that one might have thought he could be left to run free on the surrounding hills and would only need to be whistled for when the execution was due to begin" (Kafka 140). All of this is symbolic of the main theme of Kafka's---the individual human being destroyed by the forces of machines, industry, and huge impersonal institutions. It was a theme which Kafka repeated again and again as
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1463
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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