PERCEPTIONS OF SATIRE IN GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

Source: https://www.uv.es/~fores/jsaron9.html

In 1726, Jonathan Swift published a book for English readers. On the surface, this
book appears to be a travel log, made to chronicle the adventures of a man, Lemuel
Gulliver, on the four most incredible voyages imaginable. Primarily, however,
Gulliver's Travels is a work of satire. "Gulliver is neither a fully developed character nor
even an altogether distinguishable persona; rather, he is a satiric device enabling Swift
to score satirical points" (Rodino 124). Indeed, whereas the work begins with more
specific satire, attacking perhaps one political machine or aimed at one particular
custom in each instance, it finishes with "the most savage onslaught on humanity ever
written," satirizing the whole of the human condition. (Murry 3).
Jonathan Swift's story, Gulliver's Travels, is a very clever story. It recounts the
fictitious journey of a fictitious man named Lemuel Gulliver, and his travels to the
fantasy lands of Lilliput, Brobdinag, Laputa, and Houyhnhmn land. When one first
reads his accounts in each of these lands, one may believe that they are reading
humorous accounts of fairy-tale-like lands that are intended to amuse children. When
one reads this story in the light of it being a satire, the stories are still humorous, but
one realizes that Swift was making a public statement about the affairs of England and
of the human race as a whole.
In the beginning of the story, Gulliver explains to the reader a bit about his
background, why he was on these journeys to begin with, and where he finds himself at
the beginning of his tale. The story begins with Gulliver recounting how he was
shipwrecked the land of Lilliput. He awakens to find himself tied down and held
captive by a tiny race of people. To the inhabitants of Lilliput, Gulliver is something of a
giant. He could not move, because he was tied down, but he notices a a race of tiny
people moving about him. These people take all of his possessions for inspection, for
they are in awe and fear of his great size. They feed him, and soon untie him but still
keep him in confinement. While in his confinement, he is visited by the emperor who

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likes Gulliver. Gulliver learns there language and the customs of the people of Lilliput.
In this book Swift, by describing the ludicrous system that Lilliput's government
fashions in, is satirizing the English system of governing. He uses parallels that seem
absurd at first glance but make more senses when looked at carefully.
When Gulliver reaches the land of Brobdinag, he finds himself in the exact
opposite situation that he was in when in Lilliput. In Brobdinag, it is Gulliver who is the
tiny person, and the inhabitants of that land who appear to be giants. Gulliver expects
these "giants to be monsters", but soon finds that they are a peaceful race of people, who
live in a sort of peace-loving land. Swift was playing on all people's fear of being
frightened by those who appear different looking or more powerful.
In recounting third journey, Gulliver visits the land of Laputa. The stories that
are contained within are a satire on specific figures and policies of the British
government of the period in which Swift lived. This is probably, out of all of the parts of
this story that are commonly read today, the least widely read. This is because most
people today do not know of whom Swift is referring to.
When Gulliver reaches the land of the Houyhnhnms, we read a very fine story
that we can still relate to today. There is a distinction made between the two type of
people Gulliver encounters in this land. The Yahoos, who are considered to be
uncivilized Neanderthals, and the Houyhnhnms, who Gulliver's considers to be
civilized. Gulliver contends that the Houyhnhnms are civilized because they are similar
to him, the people remind him of English people, and they have the most complex
language he has run across in his travels. We also read in this part of his travels of a war
between the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians, who are at war with one another over
which end of a hard boiled egg should be cracked on. Swift is satirizing the futility of
wars over things like religion.
Gulliver soon returns home in wonder over his journeys to these lands. Swift did
a excellent job of hiding a biting criticism of the government and society in which he
lived. He did this by making the characters in the story so fantastic and foreign to the
reader that the story could only be a fairy tale, written for children. The actions of the
people he runs across are so absurd, and Gulliver seems so innocent, that at first read

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many people didn't even get what Swift was trying to say. There were, however, people
who knew Swift's intentions from the start, and got all of the symbols in the story.
In order to convey this satire, Gulliver is taken on four adventures, driven by
fate, a restless spirit, and the pen of Swift. Gulliver's first journey takes him to the Land
of Lilliput, where he finds himself a giant among six inch tall beings. His next journey
brings him to Brobdingnag, where his situation is reversed: now he is the midget in a
land of giants. His third journey leads him to Laputa, the floating island, inhabited by
strange (although similarly sized) beings who derive their whole culture from music
and mathematics. Gulliver's fourth and final journey places him in the land of the
Houyhnhnm, a society of intelligent, reasoning horses. As Swift leads Gulliver on these
four fantastical journeys, Gulliver's perceptions of himself and the people and things
around him change, giving Swift ample opportunity to inject into the story both irony
and satire of the England of his day and of the human condition.
Swift ties his satire closely with Gulliver's perceptions and adventures. In
Gulliver's first adventure, he begins on a ship that runs aground on a submerged rock.
He swims to land, and when he awakens, he finds himself tied down to the ground, and
surrounded by tiny people, the Lilliputians. "Irony is present from the start in the
simultaneous recreation of Gulliver as giant and prisoner" (Reilly 167). Gulliver is
surprised "at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals, who dare venture to mount
and walk upon my body" (I.i.16), but he admires this quality in them. Gulliver
eventually learns their language, and arranges a contract with them for his freedom.
However, he is bound by this agreement to protect Lilliput from invasion by the people
of Blefuscu. The Lilliputians relate to him the following story: In Lilliput, years ago,
people once broke eggs on the big end. However, the present king's grandfather once
cut himself breaking the egg in this manner, so the King at the time, the father of the
present king's grandfather, issued an edict that all were to break the eggs on the small
end. Some of the people resisted, and they found refuge in Blefuscu, and "for six and
thirty moons past" the two sides have been at war (I.iv.48). Of course, to Gulliver, such
an argument would be completely ridiculous, for he could hardly distinguish the
difference in the ends of their eggs. For Swift, Lilliput is analogous to England, and

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Blefuscu to France. With this event of the story Swift satirizes the needless bickering
and fighting between the two nations.
Also vehicles of Swift's satire were the peculiar customs of the nation of Lilliput.
The methods of selecting people for public office in Lilliput are very different from that
of any other nation, or rather, would appear to be so at first. In order to be chosen, a
man must "rope dance" to the best of his abilities; the best rope dancer receives the
higher office. While no nation of Europe in Swift's time followed such an absurd
practice, they did not choose public officers on skill, but rather on how well the
candidate could line the right pockets with money. Gulliver also tells of their custom of
burying "their dead with their heads directly downwards...The learned among them
confess the absurdity of this doctrine, but the practice still continues" (I.vi.60). At this
point in the story, Gulliver has not yet realized that by seeing the absurdity of the
Lilliputians' traditions, that he might see the absurdity in European ones. With this
Swift satirizes the conditions of Europe.
As Swift's story of Gulliver unfolds, the satire begins to take a much more
general focus: humanity as a whole. Gulliver manages to escape the land of miniature,
and after a brief stay in England, returns to the sea. Again, he finds himself in a strange
land, but this time, he is the small one, with everything around him many times the
normal size. Unlike the Lilliputians, however, he is alone in this world. When he
encounters the first natives, he fears for his life, "for as human creatures are observed to
be more savage in proportion to their bulk" (II.i.96). This is but one of the many attacks
on humanity that Swift's satire will perform. While in Lilliput Gulliver had been treated
with respect, largely due to his size; here in this land of giants, Brobdingnag, he is
treated as a curiosity, forced to perform shows for public amusement, until the royalty
of this nation learn of his presence. During the time Gulliver spends at this court, he
relates much of the situation of Europe to the king, who listens with much eagerness.
Gulliver tells us:

I would hide the frailties and deformities of my political

mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the most

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 advantageous light. This was my sincere endeavor in those
many discourses I had with that mighty monarch, although it
unfortunately failed of success (II.vii.156).

However well he tried to speak of England, he did not manage to tell only "her virtues."
Instead, much of what he so faithfully speaks to the King is actually the vice and
immorality to be found in England. This is what the King of Brobdingnag learns from
Gulliver's stories:

My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable

panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved that
ignorance, idleness vice may sometimes be the only
ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best
explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose
interests and abilities lie in perverting them ... I am
dwell disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many
vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from
your own relation ... I cannot but conclude the bulk of
your natives to be the most pernicious race of little
odious vermin that ever suffered to crawl upon the surface
of the earth (II.vi.153-154).

Gulliver excuses the King for these remarks, believing that "great allowances should be
given to a king who lives wholly secluded from the rest of the world" (II.vii.156).
Although the reader may find the king to be correct, Gulliver does not, even though he
should "admit that the workings of the parliamentary government is vitiated by the
method of selecting peers ... so that ... the original idea of the institution is 'blurred and
blotted by corruptions" (Firth 10), and so Swift must take him on another voyage to
shed light upon the matter for him.

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 Before embarking on his third voyage, Gulliver returns home. However, he is
"confounded at the sight of so many pygmies, for such I took them to be," speaking of
the men who rescued him, having for so long been accustomed to viewing people many
times his own size (II.viii.170). They return him home; however, Gulliver's restless spirit
will not allow him to remain long. Again he left home, and this time he ended up in the
realm of Laputa, the floating island. His first impression of the people is not very good;
for although they are highly skilled in mathematics, Gulliver has "not seen a more
clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor so slow and perplexed in their conception
of other subjects" (III.ii.191). By this point in the story, Swifts own views of humanity
begin to show through Gulliver, as Gulliver relates, "But rather I take this quality to
spring from a very common infirmity of human nature" (III.ii.192). Gulliver doesn't
remain long on the island of Laputa. He instead goes down to the surface, and in time
makes his way to Glubbdubdrib, the Island of Sorcerers.
The Governor of this island allows Gulliver to listen to numerous people from
history, both the distant and near past. In this place, Gulliver comes face-to-face with
the negative aspects of human nature. Up to this point, he began to see these qualities;
now, he is directly confronted with them as he listens to the great men of the past. "I
was chiefly disgusted with modern history," Gulliver tells, and "How low an opinion I
had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed" (III.viii.236). Swift, by
"drawing our attention repeatedly to this idea of steady human degeneration and the
natural depravity of human nature, Swift seems to suggest broadly that man must
realize that he is degenerate in order to strive for moral regeneration" (Lee 119). At this
point in the story, Gulliver, as well as the reader, are plainly aware of Swift's
understanding of human nature and his negative view of it.
It is during Gulliver's fourth journey that Swift's satire reaches its pinnacle,
where "Swift put his most biting, hard lines, that speak against not only the
government, but human nature itself" (Glicksman). In this journey, Gulliver comes to
the land of the Houyhnhnms, which are creatures that look like horses but have the
ability to reason. Also in this land are the Yahoos, of which Gulliver could only say that

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"Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, nor one
against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy" (IV.i.263).
With great irony, Swift brings Gulliver into contact with a Yahoo once again.
"My horror and astonishment are not to be described, when I observed in this
abdominal animal a perfect human figure" (IV.ii.269-270). Indeed, Gulliver finds that
the only difference between himself and the Yahoo to be the Yahoo's lack of cleanliness
and clothes; otherwise, a Yahoo would be indistinguishably human. With this line,
Swift's satire achieves its goal, and shows that the flaws of humanity are overwhelming,
and let to continue, result in a total degradation of the human.
Taken on four voyages, Gulliver's ultimate travels are to a greater understanding
of human nature and its flaws. Matthew Levy argues that as the "visited society" has an
effect on Gulliver, "he no longer can be said to function as a constant or impartial
measure" (Levy 2); however, this is the point: that Gulliver's perceptions change, and so
do his narrations, as a result, and through this Swift can convey his satire and social
commentary. After the first voyage, his image of humanity is little changed, likewise for
the 2nd, although after this point, Gulliver's image steadily declines until the fourth
voyage, when he meets the Yahoos. In this way, Swift presents his commentary on the
human condition through Gulliver's Travels.

Works Cited

Firth, C.H. "The Political Significance of Gulliver's Travels." London: Oxford University
Press, 1919.
Glicksman, David. Gulliver's Travels. Internet document.
http://www.csulb.edu/~percept/cac/sigkids/gulliver.html 1994.
Lee, Jae Num. Swift and Scatological Satire. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1971.
Levy, Matthew. "Measurement, Irony, and the Grotestque in Gulliver's Travels."
Internet document. http://www.uta.edu/english/dab/baud/fatal/malone.html. 1995.
Murry, J. Middleton. Swift. London: F. Mildner & Sons, 1970.

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Reilly, Patrick. "The Displaced Person." Modern Critical Interpretations: Gulliver's
Travels. New York: Yale University Press, 1986.
Rodino, Richard H. "The Study of Gulliver's Travels, Past and Present." Critical
Approaches to Teaching Swift. New York: AMS Press, 1992.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. Mahwah, NJ: Watermill Press, 1983.