own proposal

           When people come to the city, they visit a place where broken dreams are more present than anywhere else. The owners of those broken dreams are found at many places, but mostly at public ones like train stations. Some of them are old, some of them are young teenagers, who started escaping from reality early in life. For them, drugs are easy to find and hard to stay away from. Those who are addicted, are found annoying and disturbing for the city life. People who have to pass them on their way to work or school, see these junkies as a danger and disturbance for the rest of the world.
Most of the addicted kids come from hopeless families and homes. They might have experienced violence or have parents that simply not care what their children do. They all have one thing in common: they probably don’t have a future.

           Soldiers fight for their country all over the world. This duty is associated with pride and braveness. For serving men and women it might be an honor represent their country.
But most likely there are sad parts too. Many soldiers have families and friends back home. They have dreams and hopes for the future and are ordinary people.
Some of them might believe that it is the right thing to go to war, an attitude that might be supported by the fact that soldiers that are willing to serve, really are brave. Other people want to be seen as brave heroes too, so they join the army. It’s a steady circle.

           If we just send all the Junkie-kids to war, the Soldiers could go home and live their dreams.
The job as a soldier will lose the good reputation, because you’ll only join the army, if you are when you on the society’s lowest niveau and the government has at least one use from their futureless cases. The streets will be safe again and caring parents will be happy that the bad influence for their children is taken away.

           Of course no war can be fought with a bunch of drugged soldiers. The junkies will be educated like normal Soldiers and will not be able to drop out. They will have no chance to escape, so other people learn, that drugs are a bad thing and the punishment is worse than anything. Since most of them don’t have a future anyways the army  might awake their sense of responsibility for themselves. If they stay unharmed they can go home and to live an ordinary life.

           The whole exchange would be a “make-the-world-a-better-place” program, that helps drug addicted teenagers conquer their hopefully lowest point in life, turning them into ordinary and disciplined people, who have a future and an opportunity in life.
Also, war will be the place where this change takes place, becoming a better place than before. Potential soldiers who want to serve by choice won’t probably not exist a lot and it won’t be an honor to fight for the own country any more.

A modest Proposal Analysis

Demonstrating his Idea of eating Babies to lower the number of needless beggars, in “A modest Proposal”’ Jonathan Swift uses black Comedy, brutal Absurdity and gross Imagery, in order to explain his quite logical, but cruel plan of selling the babies flesh and body parts to have a fair solution for poor people who wold earn money and for rich people who could enjoy the luxus of baby-leather gloves.

Swift writes his Modest Proposal as a black Comedy, explaining his well thought out plan of eating beggars babies seems morbid an grotesque. He starts with simple thoughts of just selling the flesh, calculating how many people could eat from one baby.
“A child will make two dishes at an entertainment with friends and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish”
From there he goes over to the fact the “flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in march, and a little before and after.” He eve mentions his thought of the idea being an option of the skin being a nice tool for luxury accessories for the richer people, like ”gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.”

If someone reads the piece in a serious way, the first thing that seems obvious is the brutal Absurdity, Jonathan Swift uses. The neatness of his plan seems insane, when he writes “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child 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 fricasie, or a ragoust”. Alone the Idea of someone assuring him that children, who lived under certain circumstances until they get eaten, taste the best, shows that the author can’t be completely serious about the subject.

While reading, pictures of Thanksgiving diner flash through the readers mind, the turkey exchanged with a Baby. The family sits around the Table, the father is cuts the Baby and asks “Who wants the leg?”
The Imagery to the Proposal is simply gross. Even though the text is fun to read, nobody can help, imagine the pictures of Babies getting slaughtered, selled and eaten.
With his statement, that “it’s very well known, that they are every day dying, and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as can be reasonable expected .”, the picture of the middle ages is part of the imagery.

In one nutshell, Jonathan Swift has a really good idea for solving the problem of too many begging and “useless” people, that is simply to cruel and unmoral to accomplish.

Kiss and Tell, Alain de Bottom

Creating a comic effect by talking about the embarrassing situation of meeting one's own parents unexpectedly at the theater with the new boyfriend, in "Kiss and Tell", Alain de Botton characterizes the girl's father as a slow reacting, but smart man in order to show that although children think they have nothing in common with their parents, they might actually be pretty similar.

After the girl Isabel can't get out of her parent's way in the theater, they meet at the bar. She tries to introduce her new boyfriend. Already to her "How are you dad?" he doesn't respond right away. She has to asks a second time, and he tells her about the lamps on the ceiling. He knows a lot about those Japanese bulbs, so he seems really smart. To introducing of her boyfriend, only the mother responds and the dad shifts to another topic right away. It doesn't look like he really cares or grasps what his daughter told him. He makes the impression of being a little in his own world and not really in the theater with his family.
Isabel was shocked to see her parents doing the same thing for fun as she did, which relates to the fact, that she is more similar to them than she would ever think, although her social awareness seems to be on a higher level than her parents.