Animals: and: Food

It’s interesting how authors utilize different strategies and ways to write different and fascinating pieces. Especially, the use of comparison or personification with the qualities of animals in humans.  

So, let’s begin with “Consider the lobster”, Wallace places himself in the position of a lobster and claims, “you or I behave if we were plunged into boiling water” to describe the pain of the lobster when it’s cooked alive. He uses this strategy throughout the essay so the readers can relate themselves to the lobster as we often attempt to dehumanize victims in order to quell our own guilty feelings. But the idea of animals can also be viewed in a different perspective.    

In the “Modest Proposal”, Swift compares “buying the children alive” to “roasting pigs”, he switches the positions around as he places the children to the position of animals to share his feelings about poverty. This really creates an unpleasant feeling in the readers when it comes to eating infants. In this situation, Swift dehumanizes children to animals which comes under negative connotation. But, in the case of Wallace, he “dehumanizes” the readers to take the form of a lobster which can be considered under positive writing.  

Both authors use animals as their key to satire on the society they live. However, I found it intriguing because these two pieces are alike in a way that they both are discuss about food and eating and they are very sophisticated and interesting to read even though they were published during different time periods.