When I read Caty Enders’ article, “Why you really should (but really can’t) eat horsemeat,” I could not help but think of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” In response to the overpopulation in Ireland during the 1700s, Swift proposes that one-year old children should, “instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands.”¹ When put in perspective, the idea of eating children in order to solve the problem of overpopulation is ludicrous, which it was meant to be as “A Modest Proposal” is a satire and points to the greater causes of overpopulation.

Many Americans consider eating horses just as ridiculous, but why? One reason, which Enders addresses, is speciesism. Americans are appalled at the idea of eating horses because they have a sentiment attached to this species. Horses are a symbol of the pioneering spirit of America. Americans do not have qualms over eating meat. It is only certain types of meat that are socially acceptable, such as cattle. In 2014, the total beef consumption in the United States was 24.1 billion pounds.²

Horses were “re-introduced to the Americas beginning with Columbus’ second trip to the New World in 1493.”³ Horses had lived in North America before, but “died out between 13,000 and 11,000 years ago.”⁴ Although it is difficult to determine with certainty the cause for prehistoric horses becoming extinct in North America, a leading possibility is over-hunting by humans.⁵ If prehistoric horses were killed off by humans, the current proposal to eat horses may mirror history in which the result was overkill. Horses can be considered a native species because they had lived in North America before the Spaniards brought over horses. But horses can also be an invasive species because they were re-introduced to North America by the Spaniards. If the cause for prehistoric horse extinction was humans, would this wrong be fixed by people bringing horses to North America?

The ecosystem works by having checks and balances on populations of species. When prey species become over-abundant, predator species can keep them in check. Wild horses have predators such as coyotes and mountain lions, but these predators often focus on foals.^{6, 7} Even then, foal kills are considered uncommon because horses are large mammals with powerful legs that are further protected by living in herds.

There are laws in place to protect and control the population of wild horses. One objective of wild horse population is control is to protect the environment. If we are so desirous to protect the environment, why are there no laws to control the population of people?

Although there are not enough predators to check the population of wild horses, another check for population growth is resources. Ender’s article makes it seem like wild horses dying from starvation due to depleted resources is unnatural and should be prevented by human intervention. It is natural for populations to decline when resources have been depleted. Why do people think they should be puppet masters of nature?

1. Swift, Jonathon. “A Modest Proposal.”Accessed on February 27, 2016, http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html.
2. “Statistics & Information.” United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. Accessed February 27, 2016, http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/statistics-information.aspx.
3. E. K. Conant, R. Juras and E. G. Cothran. “A microsatellite analysis of five Colonial Spanish horse populations of the southeastern United States.” Animal Genetics (2012). Accessed February 27, 2016, doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2052.2011.02210.x
4. Jay F. Kirkpatrick and Patricia M. Fazio. “The Surprising History of America’s Wild Horses.” Live Science (2008). Accessed on February 27, 2016, http://www.livescience.com/9589-surprising-history-america-wild-horses.html.
5. Paul L. Koch and Anthony D. Barnosky. “Late Quaternary Extinctions: State of the Debate.” Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics (2006). Accessed February 27, 2016,  http://ecolsys.annualreviews/10.2307/annurev.ecolsys.34.011802.300.
6. Joel Berger and Rebecca Rudman. “Predation and Interactions between Coyotes and Feral Horse Foals.” Journal of Mammalogy (1985). Accessed on February 27, 2016, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1381261.
7. John W. Turner Jr., Michael L. Wolfe, and Jay F. Kirkpatrick. “Seasonal mountain lion predation on a feral horse population.” The Southwestern Nationalist (2001). Accessed February 27, 2016, http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/z92-132.

In Herbert’s “Doomsday,” the first line of every stanza, “Come away,” serves as a calling for all the souls to return to their bodies and come to judgment day. The repetition of “Come away” makes the calling insistent and steady. The only time there is a comma after “Come away,” is on the first line, which is interesting because the subsequent line says to “Make no delay” and a comma provides a pause, a delay (Herbert, 289, ll. 1-2). This pause shows that it takes a moment for the souls to respond to the calling. After this first instance, there are no commas after the first line of the stanzas and so no pause or delay of the souls rising for judgment day.

The “dust to rise” symbolizes the resurrection where the ashes of bodies are being risen for judgment day (l. 3). With the irritation of the eyes in the next line, it is also literal dust being kicked up. The “thy trumpet” is God heralding the souls to judgment day (l. 10). Only this music will cure the soul’s “pains” because it is when the soul will finally know whether it is going to heaven or hell (l. 12).

The “lesson” the souls may have learned is to confess in order to be forgiven (l. 18). When “thy flock doth stray,” it means some souls will be too happy to be back on earth, or know that their judgment will not be good, that they will run away (l. 20). Some souls will be lost when they return to their bodies as the “winds” will scatter their ashes (l. 21). The “friend” could be both fellow ashes as well as living people that will be smothered by the amount of ashes rising (l. 22). The word “vapors” is initially reminiscent of a smell, such as the stink of dead bodies, but it is made concrete into a “plague,” showing that the ashes have become like a plague of locusts (l. 23-4). The “public woe” makes it clear that living people will be extremely bothered by the clouds of ashes being risen (l. 24).

The last stanza shows a large shift from the first stanza, where the action was gradually beginning, to asking God to “Help our decay” (l. 26). This line is calling for an acceleration in action. It can literally mean the decay of dead bodies, which the “parceled out” ashes all over the world would help support (l. 28). However, it could also mean the decay of people’s souls. That Herbert used “Man” instead of dust or bodies, suggests there is something not right with mankind itself (l. 27). It seems mankind’s soul has been split apart because there are different religions all over the world.

If the narrator is speaking about the decay of people’s souls, then the last two lines make more sense as a recognition that people are not united to one religion and that God is ultimately praiseworthy because He will take all of them anyway. If not, the last two lines seem to be abruptly ended because the narrator says how the souls being risen are “broken,” yet God will be praised (l. 29). There is all this confusion going on with souls trying to find their bodies and with the ashes of different people being all mixed together, which makes this judgment day chaotic and disorderly. Yet, the narrator is not questioning this mayhem, but instead has faith in God’s plan.

Herbert, George. “Doomsday.” Seventeenth Century British Poetry. Ed. John P. Rumrich and Gregory Chaplin. New York: Norton, 2006. 289. Print.

Donne’s “Twickenham Garden” plays with references to the Garden of Eden and imagery of liquids, such as tears and wine, to illustrate the conflict the narrator is under by loving a married woman. Since Twickenham Garden was the “home of Lucy, Countess of Bedford, Donne’s patroness and friend,” the unattainable woman that the narrator loves in the poem is Lucy (Rumrich and Chaplin 29). The poem starts with “sighs” and “tears,” which can be both the signs of the coming spring with wind and rain, as well as the narrator’s own lamentation (Donne 29, l. 1). Donne uses “spring” as both the season and a body of water (29, l. 2). Spring is a happy season because it is the time of the fresh plant life, which is also the time of the narrator discovering his love for Lucy. As a body of water, the spring is the source of the water for a river or creek. The narrator is searching for the source of his unhappiness.

The narrator relates the Garden of Eden to Twickenham Garden by calling it “True Paradise,” because like in the story of Adam and Eve where Satan comes to destroy their bliss, a woeful character, the narrator himself, has come to the garden (30, l. 9). The narrator wishes the garden was frozen in “winter” so that the happiness of the garden would not torment him (30, l. 10). In relation to winter, it would have been better for the narrator’s love to be perpetually frozen, and for the rains of spring to not have bloomed his love, because it will always be unrequited. The narrator returns to the imagery of tears by wishing he was a “stone fountain weeping” (30, l. 18). The stone is an inanimate object and thus cannot feel yet is attributed with the action of crying, which is an expression of sadness. This juxtaposition serves to allude that even if the narrator was a “senseless piece,” he would not be able to get rid of his grief over his unrequited love (30, l. 14). Donne uses “senseless” as both not having physical senses, thus not being able to feel pain, and not having any sense or intelligence as to what is going on, being aware that the narrator loves this woman and not being able to do anything about it (30, l. 14).

In using “crystal vials,” the narrator associates his tears with being an alchemical solution to test the trueness of another’s love (30, l. 19). The narrator is elevating his love as the highest standard of true love by which all other loves should be compared. When the narrator says, “hearts do not in eyes shine,” he is saying that one cannot tell if someone’s love is true by looking in their eyes (30, l. 23). By discrediting another possible test of looking into one’s eyes into the window of their soul, the narrator is selling his tears as there is no other gain to be received from his love. Wine is made from fermented grapes, and so in the narrator saying his tears are “love’s wine” shows that his sorrow has festered by being unable to have his love fulfilled (30, l. 20). It is process to create wine, and the same applies to the creation of his tears. Since he has labored in producing his tears, he makes uses of them by selling them in vials. The narrator’s love is unrequited because Lucy is faithful to her husband as “none is true but she” (30, l. 26). Where other women would be unfaithful and have an affair with the narrator, his love is made more painful by Lucy’s trueness.

Donne, John. “Twickenham Garden.” Seventeenth Century British Poetry. Ed. John P. Rumrich and Gregory Chaplin. New York: Norton, 2006. 29-30. Print.

The paragraph in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko detailing Caesar’s killing of the tiger shows the colonialists’ moral rationalization for killing the tiger through property, demonization, sentence structure, and symbols.

From the first sentence, there is a clear divide between the tiger and the colonialists as shown through property. The tiger took “sheep and oxen, and other things that were for the support of those to whom they belonged,” which signals that animals are regarded as objects that are owned by people (Behn, 2342-3). The animals that are property are only owned because they are useful in perpetuating the life of their owners, primarily by being the colonialists’ food. Animals, such as the tiger, that are not property are the colonialists’ enemy. There is no space in the colonialists’ worldview for there to be animals that live autonomously.

The only time the foe is identified as a tiger is in the first sentence, which shows a change from known to unknown. Even within the same sentence, the tiger is called a “beast” and a “devil,” which is a progressive shift to the formidable and unnatural (2343). A tiger is a specific type of animal with known features and attributes. A beast is a vague word to describe any living thing that is threatening and can be applied to human beings. The fact that a beast lacks specific features serves to move the tiger into the unknown. The unknown is more terrifying because a person cannot be prepared with how to deal with it. For example, a tiger is an animal that has physical necessities, such as food, water, and air, to sustain its life. In knowing what a tiger needs to survive, a person can remove the necessary item in order to kill it. With a beast of unknown qualities, a person does not know what to remove in order to cause it to die. The sense that the colonialists do not know how to kill the tiger is strengthened with the accounts that “they had shot her with several bullets” but it was still alive (2343). In the natural world, an animal usually dies when it is shot, especially when it is “through the very heart” (2343). Therefore, the tiger must be something unnatural. The tiger is called a devil, which crosses the threshold into the unnatural and the immortal. Not only is a devil not a part of the natural order of the world, it has an evil intent. There are many constructed images of a devil in Christianity, but commonly it is a mixture of humanoid and animal. The tiger has been made into something greater than a mere animal to make it a worthier foe. The tiger is turned into an embodiment of the greatest conflict in Christianity, God versus the devil in the battle of good and evil. The tiger is amped up into an immortal, evil thing so that it is a more formidable foe for Caesar to conquer. The slaying of the tiger becomes a quest for Caesar because “he should be rewarded” by the colonialists if he succeeds (2343). This reward parallels the Christian doctrine in that if a person is able to decline the devil’s temptations and even vanquish the devil, they will have the eternal reward of joining God in heaven after their earthly demise.

The sentence structure of the paragraph is primarily long independent clauses combined by semi-colons, which gives the effect of a fast pace to mimic the action. Specifically, the sentence beginning, “When they came in view…” is two independent clauses joined by a semi-colon (2343). The first clause addresses Caesar and the colonialists’ perspective of first seeing the tiger. The second clause shifts to the tiger “seeing herself approached” (2343). Both clauses begin with each party encountering the other. The semi-colon serves to bring the two clauses close together to see the encounter from both parties in the same moment as well as to tighten the prose and thus the action of the story. Behn does not have time to stop in the middle of the action with a period. Likewise, the reader is propelled forward in the narrative by the use of a semi-colon instead of a period. The reader is not given the pause to take a breath that a period affords in the same way that Caesar and the tiger cannot stop in the middle of their actions.

Only humans can own objects and in making the tiger own an object, she is made to seem human. The tiger is likened to a human being in that she has “possession” of the sheep she is eating and does not want to lose it (2343). The conflict of the colonialists’ possessions being stolen is now flipped where the tiger is afraid of losing her sheep. Sheep have been mentioned twice before, which displays how it is a common animal used by the colonialists and thus important for their livelihood. Sheep are mentioned in the first sentence with the list of animals the tiger has stolen and again when Caesar asks if he will be rewarded for killing the tiger that steals the colonialists’ “lambs and pigs” (2343). It is significant that the animal the tiger is eating is a sheep because it is a symbol of innocence and community in Christianity. The Lord is the colonialists’ shepherd and thus the colonialists’ are His sheep. Second, the sheep is defenseless and so the tiger is taking advantage of the weak, which is sinful. A tiger in itself is an animal that has no conception of right and wrong, but since this tiger has been likened to a human, it is under the moral jurisdiction of the colonialists. Even more so, if the tiger is a human and the sheep is a colonialist human, then the tiger has committed murder, which can be punishable by death. In this way, the colonialists, most likely subconsciously, rationalize their killing of the tiger.

The pronouns “she” and “he” are used for a majority of the paragraph to refer to the tiger, which does not automatically suggest the subject is an animal. The use of these pronouns makes the tiger like a human because “she” and “he” are most often associated with people. For instance, when Caesar is not being referred to by his name, the pronoun “he” is used. The switch from “she” to “he” during moments of intense violence shows how violence is strongly attributed to males. Making the tiger a male also serves to create emotional distance by making the situation seem like a battle between two men. Further, only a female tiger would have the justifiable excuse of being aggressive to defend her cubs, but even this reason to sympathize for the tiger is removed by making it a male when it is killed.

Behn, Aphra. “Oroonoko.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. C. 9th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.

“Another time, being in the woods, he killed a tiger which had long infested that part, and borne away abundance of sheep and oxen, and other things that were for the support of those to whom they belonged; abundance of people assailed this beast, some affirming they had shot her with several bullets quite through the body at several times, and some swearing they shot her through the very heart, and they believed she was a devil rather than a mortal thing. Caesar had often said he had a mind to encounter this monster, and spoke with several gentlemen who had attempted her, one crying, “I shot her with so many poisoned arrows,” another with his gun in this part of her, and another in that; so that he, remarking all these places where she was shot, fancied still he should overcome her by giving her another sort of a wound than any had yet done; and one day said (at the table), “What trophies and garlands, ladies, will you make me, if I bring you home the heart of this ravenous beast, that eats up all your lambs and pigs?” We all promised he should be rewarded at all our hands. So taking a bow, which he chose out of a great many, he went up into the wood, with two gentlemen, where he imagined this devourer to be; they had not passed very far in it but they heard her voice, growling and grumbling, as if she were pleased with something she was doing. When they came in view, they found her muzzling in the belly of a new ravished sheep, which she had torn open; and seeing her self approached, she took fast hold of her prey with her forepaws and set a very fierce raging look on Caesar, without offering to approach him, for fear at the same time of losing what she had in possession. So that Caesar remained a good while, only taking aim, and getting an opportunity to shoot her where he designed; ’twas some time before he could accomplish it, and to wound her and not kill her would but have enraged her more, and endangered him. He had a quiver of arrows at his side, so that if one failed he could be supplied; at last, retiring a little, he gave her opportunity to eat, for he found she was ravenous, and fell to as soon as she saw him retire, being more eager of her prey than of doing new mischiefs. When he going softly to one side of her, and hiding his person behind certain herbage that grew high and thick, he took so good aim that, as he intended, he shot her just into the eye, and the arrow was sent with so good a will and so sure a hand that it stuck in her brain, and made her caper and become mad for a moment or two; but being seconded by another arrow, he fell dead upon the prey. Caesar cut him open with a knife, to see where those wounds were that had been reported to him, and why he did not die of ’em. But I shall now relate a thing that possibly will find no credit among men, because ’tis a notion commonly received with us, that nothing can receive a wound in the heart and live; but when the heart of this courageous animal was taken out, there were seven bullets of lead in it, and the wounds seamed up with great scars, and she lived with the bullets a great while, for it was long since they were shot. This heart the conqueror brought up to us, and ’twas a very great curiosity, which all the country came to see, and which gave Caesar occasion of many fine discourses, of accidents in war and strange escapes.”

– Aphra Behn, Oroonoko