Continuing the homeschool-literature-to-commentary pipeline
We are working our way through the homeschool-high-school version of English literature, and have spent the last week leaping from Milton to Swift – and next week beginning the Romantics.
So, as a reminder, here’s A Modest Proposal.
Surely you remember reading it in high school?
Swift’s sharp, dark satire “addressing” the “Irish problem” by taking on the persona of the confident Numbers Guy who’s got it all figured out – we’ll just eat all those extra babies.
The satire is, of course, multifaceted. Swift is playing with the subliminal, inviting the reader to consider the possibility if the English are, indeed cannibals of a sort, exploiting the Irish, consuming them for their own gain. He’s satirizing the Expert, the pamphleteer, the activist, and of course the enlightened one who is confident in the perfect solution. He’s pointing fingers all over the place.
It’s worth a read, always, and perhaps especially as we live in a time in which government and corporate solutions are not only proposed and suggested but mandated by our betters who assert that the evidence is sound and settled and who present it all with the highest confidence in their own expertise and the deepest contempt for their skeptics’…skepticism.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, 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 fricasee, or a ragout.
Charlotte was Both 