A Recipe for Murder

Swift, Jonathan. He has gone into much detail analyzing how much money it would take to take care of these children for a year before they could be sold to people for food as stated in the following: “I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about shillings per annum, rags included: and I believe no gentleman would repine to give 10 shillings for the carcass of a good fat child…” (175). De-humanizing the children and referring to them as a carcass and later comparing them to cows and other animals further perpetuates the attack. Juvenalian satire has been defined by Robert Harris as follows: ” [A] harsher, more pointed, perhaps intolerant satire…often attacks particular people, sometimes thinly disguised as fictional characters.

In this essay, Swift’s use of Juvenalian satire is at its peak when he starts revealing the actual proposal. ” A Glossary of Literary Terms and a Handbook of Rhetorical Devices. He continues by justifying the benefits of lessening the number of papists; increasing money for the poor; providing fine food for the rich; and would discourage domestic abuse.

Another reason his persona uses to justify this horrible act, is that he feels that many beggars would have rather been sold for food at 1 year of age instead of living like paupers and having to live through all of the misfortunes that were sure to come their way. Swift’s persona continues this attack on these orphan and pauper children as he describes his proposal of fattening up these children and selling them to be eaten. He assumes that those people are unhappy with their lives and also makes the mistake of believing that all of those mothers would rather have the money than have the love of their children.