A shocking, reprehensible book. In these days of fuel poverty, it seems reckless to encourage eating of children when we could be using them as a fuel source instead.

When I first read this almost four years ago for my sophomore English class in high school, when we were learning to write satire, I was utterly disgusted that something like this would even be suggested, even in a solely satirical manner. I never managed to look at the writing, or look past the idea of, this guy is suggesting we eat children?

Now I am a freshman in college. A few weeks ago I watched an episode of a sitcom with my college friends about a guy who goes to a "cooking lesson," only to find out that the guy's actual objective was to cook and eat him, but only with his consent. They chalk it up to a misunderstanding, but there is a lot of discussion later about this cannibal, and whether it's okay if he's trying to eat people as long as he kills and eats them with their consent.

This episode got me thinking once again about [b:A Modest Proposal|5206937|A Modest Proposal|Jonathan Swift|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348659670l/5206937._SX50_.jpg|6627040], and about the ramifications of the way we treat humans in a society like today's.

In the past week, I have reread [a:Jonathan Swift|1831|Jonathan Swift|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1183238507p2/1831.jpg]'s essay four or five times, and I have decided to write a near-future novel where cannibalism is not only legal, it is the only sufficient source of protein. I'm taking a lot from Swift's satirical essay to write this. I think it's really interesting that nobody has ever expanded on the ideas brought forth in [b:A Modest Proposal|5206937|A Modest Proposal|Jonathan Swift|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348659670l/5206937._SX50_.jpg|6627040]. I read someone else's review from six years ago claiming that somebody should, and I have a serious plan to write a novel based on Swift's "proposal," which is still appreciated, and possibly more universally understood, three hundred years later.

After two world wars, an arms race, the impending threat of climate change, we have a world that, in general, doesn't care about people or life. This is what Swift criticized three hundred years ago, and this is what we are experiencing today.

this was a great book to explain how satires work. i read this for class. it was definitely a book that makes you think about how bad conditions were in the past, but i'll be real, all that was going on in my head as i read this was "eat your young" by hozier. over and over. so that made reading and annotating this book marginally better. definitely recommend reading if you want to--i don't have a specific time for you to read this book, but definitely read it. 4.25 ⭐️.

A short, tastefully snarky commentary about government and authority failures and the drawbacks of living on a planet full of imperfect, often idiotic humans.

It is disappointing that a satirical essay written over 300 years ago is still dejectedly relevant today.