No lead blog post? Then blog about whatever!

Unfortunately this week, we did not have a lead blog post to comment on, so instead I'm going to discuss Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland, from Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick". In Swift's satirical piece, he discusses the growing problem of dead beat families in Ireland. In short, the dead beat family cycle goes as follows. The mother has nothing and becomes a beggar, but ends up having three to six children. These children don't grow up in any sort of safe, family atmosphere, so they become thieves, and in turn, restart the cycle of the dead beat family. In the story, Ireland becomes over-run with useless kids that only take up space. Now, the goal is to find something for these kids to do, and to try and turn their life around. Swift claims that instead of trying to make them productive, that the country should turn to eating the spare children laying around. I find this particularly funny because it is such an awful idea, and is something that would never happen. This can be seen as the incongruity theory. It reminds me of when we talked about absurdity in class. This idea that Swift tells the reader about is completely absurd. There is no way that any of the ideas he is talking about can be true. This allows the reader to recognize this and then have some fun using their imagination while reading.