Discuss The Similarities And Differences In Themes And Ideas As Shown In 'Stone Cold' And 'A Modest Proposal'.

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Discuss The Similarities And Differences In Themes And Ideas As Shown In ‘Stone Cold’ And ‘A Modest Proposal’

Homelessness was a problem 200 years ago as it is now. Authors Jonathan Swift and Robert Swindells try to eradicate this feature in books. Jonathan wrote an effective pamphlet where homeless children make good food! And Swindells’ book, intended for children, wrote a day to day life of a homeless teenager, but the only catch is there is a serial killer on the loose…

In this essay I am going to compare these 2 pieces, Swift’s written in 1729 and a 20th century pamphlet and Swindells’ in 1993, a 20th century book. I am going to compare the ways the writers have treated the issue of ‘homelessness’ and how successful they have been.

Robert Swindells book for children, ‘Stone Cold’ portrays and effective experience of life on the streets.

Link the main character is a normal 16 year old lad. He has just left school with no credible GCSEs. His dad ran away with a mistress when he was 14, but now his mum, ‘Sheila’, has a new boyfriend, ‘Vince’, whom Link hates. The new man is his mother’s life is too much for link and the fact that he and Vince are enemies isn’t making matters any better. Link is slowly driven out his home in Bradford. Not thrown out, but through emotional hardship that his new ‘dad’ figure is a moron, as he says,

“If you happen to know anybody who’s looking for a hundred percent out-and-out bastard, I can let him have Vince’s address.”

He movies in with his sister who lives with her boyfriend, but soon falls homeless in Bradford as staying at her sisters is awkward and her boyfriend makes it clear he doesn’t want Link there.

After being homeless in Bradford and all the bad memories fresh in his mind, he decides to move to London for a clean start, a job and a home. He has a £150, money left from his savings account, and decides to live in a B&B. but soon his rent money runs out and finding no job he finds himself homeless, cold and shattered out on the streets.

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This is when he invents his new street-name ‘Link’. Link isn’t his real name it is his street name, in order to get a clean break. Swindells invents this name as it is a image of a chain and thus connects the reader to the issue and also because, later on, the name produces the joke ‘Link the stink’ which provides a little, dry humour in the book.

Swindells puts Link on the street because his mum has a new boyfriend whom Link hates. But all-in-all the events leading up to making Link homeless were in my opinion not good ...

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