Charu Kaushik

19/13

English hons.

Submitted to- Ms Vishakha Kardam

"Gulliver's Travels" is the most delightful of children's

books, yet one of the bitterest satires on mankind.
Comment.
As the greatest satirist in the English language, Jonathan Swift was both
admired and feared in his own time for the power of his writing and hugely
influential on writers who followed him.

Gulliver’s Travels is regarded as Swift’s masterpiece. It is a novel in four parts

recounting Gulliver’s four voyages to fictional exotic lands. His travels is first
among diminutive people–the Lilliputians, then among enormous giants–people
of Brobdingnag, then among idealists and dreamers and finally among horses.
Each book has a different theme, but their common trait is to deflate human
nature.

Gulliver’s Travels was not meant to be a children’s book. The story was

conceived by its author as a mordant satire mocking English customs and the
politics of his day. Then, what led to this misunderstanding?  May be the
elements of the book: little people (Lilliputians), big people (giants twelve times
bigger than a normal human), talking horses (Houyhnhnms) and feral animals
(Yahoos). With the latter in mind, one might think that the misconception of
this work as a children’s book is more than justified.

Gulliver's Travels was unique in its day; it was not written to woo or entertain.
It was an indictment, and it was most popular among those who were indicted
— that is, politicians, scientists, philosophers, and Englishmen in general. Swift
was roasting people, and they were eager for the banquet. It reflects conflicts in
British society in the early 18th century. By narrating Gulliver’s adventures in
Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and Houyhnhnm, the novel reveals and criticizes
sins and corruption of British ruling class and their cruel exploitation towards
people of Britain and neighboring countries in the capital-accumulation period
of British history. Gulliver is treated differently in different countries.

The author depicts every situation at great length, which makes readers feel like
experiencing them personally. The greatness of the work lies in the author’s
proficient application of bitting and profound satires. Swift makes satirical
effects to the fullest by using techniques of irony, contrast, and symbolism. The
story is based on then British social reality. He not only satirizes on then British
politics and religion, but also, in a deeper facet, on human nature itself. Swift’s
superb rendering of satires leads Gulliver’s Travels to becoming a milestone
looked up to by future literary persons in satirical literature.

There are at least three types of satirical technique presented in Gulliver’s

Travels: verbal irony, situational irony and dramatic irony . First,
verbal irony means using words in an opposite way. The real implied meaning
is in opposition to the literal meaning of the lines in verbal irony. In other
words, it uses positive, laudatory words to describe evidently ugly and
obnoxious matters in order to express the author’s contempt and aversion. The
book carries verbal irony from the beginning to the end of the story. Second,
situational irony occurs when there are conflicts between characters and
situation, or contradiction between readers’ expectation and actual outcomes of
an event, or deviation between personal endeavors and objective facts. In
Gulliver’s Travels, the plot development is often the opposite of what readers
expect. Third, dramatic irony is when words and actions possess a significance
that the listener or audience understands, but the speaker or character does not.

Swift also uses contrast as a rhetorical device to construct satirical effects. In

order to reach the purpose of satire, he puts contradictory subjects together to
describe and compare. There are at least three evident pairs of contrasting
subjects. First is Gulliver and Lilliputians. They differ hugely in figures and in
characters. The height of Gulliver’s body exceeds Lilliputians’ in the proportion
of twelve to one. As to character differences, Gulliver is kind-hearted and
grateful with a sense of justice, whereas Lilliputians are more cunning. They
want to make full use of Gulliver in the war fought with its conflicting country:
Blefuscu . He helps them against invasion from it but refuses to serve for them
in their invasive territory expansion.

However, lest one think that Swift's satire is merely the weapon of exaggeration,
it is important to note that exaggeration is only one facet of his satiric method.
Swift uses mock seriousness and understatement; he parodies and burlesques;
he presents a virtue and then turns it into a vice. He takes pot-shots at all sorts of
sacred cows. Besides science, Swift debunks the whole sentimental attitude
surrounding children. At birth, for instance, Lilliputian children were "wisely"
taken from their parents and given to the State to rear. In an earlier satire he had
proposed that the very poor in Ireland sell their children to the English as
gourmet food.

Swift is also a name-caller. Mankind, as he has a Brobdingnagian remark, is

"the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to
crawl upon the surface of the earth." Swift also inserted subtly hidden puns into
some of his name-calling techniques. The island of Laputa, the island of
pseudo-science, is literally (in Spanish) the land of "the whore." Science, which
learned people of his generation were venerating as a goddess, Swift labelled a
whore, and devoted a whole hook to illustrating the ridiculous behaviour of her
converts.

In addition, Swift mocks blind devotion. Gulliver, leaving the Houyhnhnms,

says that he "took a second leave of my master, but as I was going to prostrate
myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honour to raise it gently to my mouth."
Swift was indeed so thorough a satirist that many of his early readers misread
the section on the Houyhnhnms. They were so enamored of reason that they did
not realize that Swift was metamorphosing a virtue into a vice. In Book IV,
Gulliver has come to idealize the horses. They embody pure reason, but they are
not human. Literally, of course, we know they are not, but figuratively they
seem an ideal for humans — until Swift exposes them as dull, unfeeling
creatures, thoroughly inhuman. They take no pleasure in sex, nor do they ever
overflow with either joy or melancholy. They are bloodless.

Gulliver’s Travels is not only rich in content, but also deep in meaning. His
satires about humanity in the four books are to the fullest. Satires are both
implicitly and explicitly constructed throughout the four books. Disgust for
human steadily increases as the narrative proceeds. The greatness of this novel
does not plainly lie in Swifitian satire. The whole novel is like a mirror by
which human flaws are reflected. It probably would long have been forgotten if
the book did not carry critical thinking about humanity.
On the surface, Gulliver’s Travels is an entertaining fantasy that appeals
especially to young readers. For the adult reader, Swift’s masterpiece is a
thought-provoking study of mankind’s capacity for good and evil.