Jonathan Swift ("A Modest Proposal")

Swift satirically presents a terrifying solution to the problem of overpopulation, specifically, from the British perspective, the overpopulation of poor Irish who were seen to be having too many children and who would inevitably require British aid to care for those children. Swift suggests a solution: the children should 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 2096).

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.

Swift reflects modern sensibility, or lack thereof, in terms of this era's gross self-centeredness, as well as its tendency to

minimize consciousness of others' suffering in order to achieve some positive-seeming goal. One thinks of the American milit

. . .
demonstrates a modern tendency to observe the world in the same sort of abstract way which Swift satirizes. Just as Swift's satirical persona examines the problem of overpopulation from his bureaucratic office and finds nothing horrible or evil about eating babies, so does Montaigne look at the cannibals' culinary choice and finds nothing hideous. In fact, he praises the cannibals for their lack of a conscience, which he apparently believes to be a modern cultural invention which hinders civilized humans in their activities. One wonders if Swift's satirical persona and Montaigne would feel the same way about eating human beings if they had in front of them bowlsful of human flesh. It is easy for Montaigne to sit in his study far from the cannibals' society and wax romantic about their wonderfully pure lifestyle. It would not be so easy to see the cannibals' way of life as this romantic and pure if he were sitting down around their campfire and sharing their human meal, and it would be even more difficult were they in the midst of preparing to murder and eat him. Both Swift and Montaigne enjoy the luxury of men who at a great distance are able to consider hideous human behavior without themselves becoming infected with the hum
. . .

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Approximate Word count = 1353
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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