Jonathan Swift and Piers Paul Read Essay

Cannibalism is the last taboo. In Alive and A Modest final cause Jonathan fast and Piers Paul contain approach the subject with completely diametrical purposes in mind. What do you consider to be the purpose of each author, and learn how he achieves this? A Modest Proposal is a scathing rape on the economic oppression of the Irish by the English. During Swifts lifetime tremendous suffering was caused by English practices in Ireland. However, it is do by(p) to say that cannibalism is the theme of A Modest Proposal. Swift was a Protestant writer in Ireland at the time of The Great Potato Famine.The expression is a clever satirical device to draw attention to the wage of the poor. He infiltrates the opposition, the rich Protestant landlords, in order to put their excruciating ideas to ridicule. Swift attacks his own Protestant, English community by creating a bank clerk who considers himself a reasonable and compassionate timber, but one who combines a offensive anti-Cath olic bigotry, with a modest proposal, that is, sooner, a final solution he, the narrator, advocates cannibalism as a means of countering Irish Catholic poverty abortion, and the high birth rate.The narrator, in a frighteningly rational and level-headed tone condemns the English for being inhumane, the Irish for being passive, the speaker for being morally blind, and the reader for accepting unacceptable situations in the world around him for this piece was accepted and believed by many, at the time. On the other hand, Piers Paul Read, in his biographical novel Alive, rather than indirectly giving answers to a problem, asks questions.He tells of the experiences of the survivors of an Andean matted put in in 1976, who, in the remoteness, and the harshness of their environment, the lack of a consumable line of descent of food, and the quickening exhaustion of their own limited amounts of chocolate and wine, have no where to turn except, in their desperation, to eat the meat from th eir fellow, dead, company. They have only their planes wreckage as shelter, which has come down from 14,000 feet.Both literary pieces, although their purpose, hyphen and audience are different, jolt the reader expose of their complacency, and encourage them to infer of things they thought werent required to be thought about However, it is necessary to understand that the two texts have been written hundreds of years apart, and society, of course, has evolved. Swift has reached out across the religious and ethnic divide to champion the ignorant, impoverished Irish Catholics.The bigotry of Swifts narrative is so convincing and grotesque, that Swift himself is sometimes mistaken as his narrator, an anti-Catholic bigot On the contrary, Swifts act harshly attacks the Christian commitment of Irelands wealthy Protestant absentee landowners, and his unflattering cannibal is made in their image. P. P. Read meanwhile, attacks non the opposition, but gives a balanced and meaningful acco unt of the plane crash and the tales that followed, and examines the human tactual sensation to stay alive, and questions what is civilized and human. Yet, simultaneously, Read, almost in the opposite of Swift, advocates cannibalism. Read turns the views of cannibalism as a taboo on its head. Rather than associating it with savagery and being gross and irrational, he questions logic, and seems to state that the ban is the primitive thing, that is not based on reason. In one paragraph alone, he writes, we grappled with emotions, and we did not think it wrong twice.While Swift attacks the Landlords by linking their greed to their devouring of the Irish Catholics, and satirizes cannibalism to the uttermost that it is no longer seen as ironic, only distasteful, Read, using a character Canessa, reasons cannibalism out. He talks of nourishment and energy, and of course, eventually wins his company. Their decision is based on logic and reason, and the ability to use these makes us civil ized. Although I do not feel that Swifts narrators views are plausible, Read using a variety of effective techniques, convinces the reader.Swift shows how the English communicate their own blame onto their victims- destitute Irish Catholics, that, Swift suggests, have been cannibalized by the rapacious greed of absentee landlords. Swift is hoping to shame them into being more compassionate. However, as what happened when I read it for the first time, because Swift and his narrator are so tightly intertwined, readers often emerge from their reading, confused, perhaps unable to take in the implausibility of his case.