An Introduction to Gulliver's Travels and Satire
Gulliver's Travels is one of the most renowned works of the eighteenth century which was secretly published in 1726 by Jonathan Swift. He lensed the follies and problems in England and other European countries. Gulliver's Travels' satirical caricaturing frowned many literary critics and they regarded Swift's work a neurotic fantasy. Satire in Gulliver's Travels grows from normal to bitter and then corrosive (acidic) as Gulliver moves into different [fictional] distant lands sequentially.
Satire is a literary device in which human follies, vices, abuses and weaknesses are displayed through humour, ridicule, burlesque, parody and irony. The chief reason behind a satire is to reform, not to ridicule. Jonathan Swift asserts his views on satire in the preface of his Battle of the Books,
Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason…very few are offended with it.
The land of Lilliputians is a political satire
Gulliver makes his first voyage to the Land of Lilliput where its inhabitants are merely six inches tall. [Now we have solved the literary context behind Doraemon's gadget Gulliver's Tunnel. 😀] Swift satirizes the feign politics of England through the first voyage. Filmnap's rope dancing allegorically hints on Sir Robert Walpole's handy works in parliamentary affairs and political intrigues. Redressal signals at Lord Carteret who was favoured by Walpole to become Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The line "One of the King's Cushions" refers to King George's queen who played a key role in restoring Walpole after his political demise in 1717. Swift has also attacked the religious conflicts between Roman Catholics and Protestants through an amusing controversy between big-Endians and small-Endians on which side should an egg be broken. In short, Swift mocks the political and religious conflicts and issues which were rampant during the early eighteenth century in Europe.
Mocking the English Ways
In the second book, the satire mostly consists in mocking the English ways of leading their lives. Gulliver finds himself on the island of giants where his condition is reversed. He sees everything of the Brobdingnagians as minute as possible. Thus satirizing the ugliness of the human body. But Gulliver's talks with the king also satirizes the way England and France stayed at loggers head at that time.
Satirizing Scientific Endeavours
In the third voyage to various Islands, Swift satirizes the human intellect being used as a scientific means to destroy other humans. The details that are given for the scientific experiments going on in the laboratory of Lagado are amusing as well as disgusting. For example, turning human excrement back into food or trying to cast sunbeams through a cucumber or building houses from the roofs. Here Swift is mocking the scientists as well as planners who only give theories and are practically null. Similarly, Swift satirizes literary critics through Gulliver's interviews with the ghosts as well as the use of science for dictatorship or destruction by the floating island which stops sunlight to go through or destroys them completely.
In the land of Houyhnhnms, Swift's social satire grows unbearable
Gulliver's last voyage takes the surgeon to the land of Houyhnhnms where Swift goes super san with his social satire which fiercely attacks on the moral weakness of mankind. Here rational horses are ruling over animal-like humans known as Yahoos. Gulliver sketches the most pathetic picture of these humans as thus,
Yet I confess I never saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts; and the more I came near them the more hateful they grew.
Houyhnhnms were the horses who lead their life with order and discipline. Since those horses were ruling over humans, such act constitutes as a fatal attack on human superiority on animals. Gulliver told the master of Houyhnhnms about all the evils prevailing in Europe. Corruption, wars, political and religious intrigues which were eating into the vitals of Gulliver's continent. Having heard Gulliver's account, the master replied that the Yahoos were gluttonous and their love of shining objects was unmeasurable.
Since Gulliver was, after all, a human, he covered his body at his best so that he might not be sent to Yahoos,
I had hitherto concealed the secret of my dress, in order to distinguish myself, as much as possible, from the cursed race of Yahoos.
The utopian perfection of the Land of Houyhnhnms made Gulliver a fanboy of the idealistic lifestyle of the rational horses and to detest himself as an inferior human being. He shows his admiration as thus,
Here was neither physician to destroy my body not lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to watch my words and actions … here were no … backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, house-breakers … politicians, wits … murderers, robbers … no cheating shop-keeper or mechanics, no pride, vanity or affectation.
And he expresses his hatred against his Yahoo-like body,
When I behold a lump of deformity, and diseases both of body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience.
This pretty much sums up his immeasurable hatred against his fellow men. The fourth voyage is marked with a biting satire on moral and social foolishness and weakness of the European countries where countless humans are butchered just to please a king.
Conclusion
Gulliver's Travels is corrosive by nature but it acts as a mirror and reflects a multitude of flaws prevailing in the mankind of past and present. Swift is, at heart, a reformer and he wanted to save his society from the problems which were weakening their identity as a civilized race. Swift gives a finishing, philanthropic touch to his travels,
I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind…I write without any view to profit or praise.
Sources and Suggested Readings
- UKEssays. (November 2018). Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift | Analysis of Satire. Retrieved from https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-literature/satires-in-gullivers-travels.php?vref=1
- https://maenglishnotespk.blogspot.com/2015/01/swifts-satire-in-gullivers-travels.html
- https://www.uv.es/~fores/jsaron9.html
- http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-optional-subjects/group-v/english-literature/285-swifts-gullivers-travels-social-satire.html
- https://englishhelplineforall.blogspot.com/2016/02/social-satire-in-swifts-gulliver.html#:~:text=Thus%20Jonathan%20Swift%20tears%20the,intellect%20and%20on%20moral%20shortcomings.
- https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Gullivers-Travels/
- https://literaryterms.net/satire/
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