Narrator's Point of View

Lauren Gurfein, English 171, Sages, Satirists, and New Journalists, Brown University, 2002

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The narrator thoroughly describes the society and lifestyles of the cannibals. He also admits his admiration for this culture while setting up a dichotomy between the cannibals and his society.

I concieve there is more barbarity in eating a man alive, than when he is dead; in tearing a body limb rom limb by racks and torments, that is yet in perfect sense; in roasting it by degrees; in causing it bo be bitten and worried by dogs and swine, than to roast him and eat him after he is dead.

We may then call these people barbarous, in respect to the rules of reason; but not in respect to ourselves, who in all sorts of barbarity exceed them.

1. Who is the narrator?

2. What is this society he compares to the cannibals, and how are they barbaric?

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Last modified 6 February 2002