Sunday, February 3, 2013
Shock Value in "the Slave Trader in the Dumps"
Looking back on Cowper's "The Slave Trader in the Dumps", it is interesting to note just how often shock value was used in famous works of that time period. He disturbs us with this narrator who seems to delight in the misery of the slaves. Jonathan Swift told the poor to feed their babies to the rich in A Modest Proposal, and Robert Browning creeped out his readers with the sinister implications in My Last Duchess. Shock value seems to have been a typical way that points were gotten across to audiences back then. It certainly got my attention.
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My thoughts are that the shock value is strategic, in that by having the audience pust into such a state of shock and disgust there forced to pay more attention to what the author is saying. The disturbing line about "feeding babies to the rich" in A Modest Proposal makes me think about how that the author was saying that the death of innocence and purity is fine so long as the rich are taken care of, or perhaps a ironic way of showing hatred for those who take and destroy everything that is pure and good in this world while giving nothing back.
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