Analysis Of Gulliver 's Travels ( Gt ) By Jonathan Swift Essay

Every individual has their own definition of freedom.  Depending on time, place, religion, or race, this definition varies, but essentially comes back to one point: all men, regardless of anything, are created equally, and therefore have a right to be free.  "The Declaration of Independence," by Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" are two works addressing this concern.  Although Jefferson and King led extremely different lives over 150 years apart, both faced issues of human equality that drove them to write two of the most influential works in American history.

    During the eighteenth century there was an incredible upheaval of commercialization in London, England.  As a result, English society underwent significant, "changes in attitude and thought", in an attempt to obtain the dignity and splendor of royalty and the upper class (McKendrick,2).  As a result, English society held themselves in very high regards, feeling that they were the elite society of mankind.  In his novel, Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift satirizes this English society in many ways.  In the novel, Swift uses metaphors to reveal his disapproval of English society.  Through graphic representations of the body and it's functions, Swift reveals to the reader that grandeur is

In Book 1, the size of the Lilliputians was also an analogy for England. Swift recognized that England was just like the Lilliputians, which had great influence in Europe. Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels during a time when Europe was the world’s most dominant and influential force. However, England despite its small size had the power to defeat any nation and try to conquer them. Swift makes this connection to the small stature of the Lilliputians. They stood only six inches high, but had the power to siege Gulliver who appeared like a giant to them. The ability of a nation consisting of miniature people who are able to capture someone many times their size can be seen as reinforcing the capability of a small nation becoming and remaining a great power. Swift displays a condescending tone to Gulliver’s portrayal of the small Lilliputians who easily fit into the hands of Gulliver yet still manage to threaten his life even though the Lilliputians are extremely small in Gulliver’s eyes.

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift is a story about a man named Gulliver who travels to many different islands in his quest to get home. His first encounter is with the Lilliputians on their island of Lilliput. The Lilliputians seemed rational and reasonable at first, but in reality they are not rational at all. They are revealed to be irrational because they have a corrupt court, wierd laws, and blatant discrimination.

Firstly, the English’s illusion of grandeur are present in Swift’s ironic depiction of Gulliver as both a giant and a prisoner. After Gulliver reaches the shore, he awakens to find himself being bound by the Lilliputians who do not realise that because of Gulliver’s great size that he can easily kill them. This satirises humankind’s (and the English’s) excessive

Swift shows his despair from the rejection he has experienced from every caregiver or leader in his own life, just as the poor have been rejected by society, forcing them to resort to begging. He feels that something drastic will have to happen in order for things to change, otherwise the misery of being devoured by society will be upon the poor “breed for ever,” as well as himself (Swift). Perhaps this drastic change that would have to occur is already too late for Swift. Perhaps his unresolved childhood complexes are too far past that they can never be resolved, but he is still trying to resolve them through his proposal that is trying to resolve society’s large problem of poverty.

Ironically, Gulliver insists to refuse his status of yahoo, the procedure of Gulliver’s acceptation to the status of yahoo is under a depressed atmosphere. When Gulliver backs home, he is still struggling to be a rational creature in his mind which is Houyhnhnm or to be a corrupted creature which is yahoo. Swift’s sharp criticism makes the novel isn’t as fun as ‘Candide’. However, it makes reader think over the purpose of his criticism.

In his biting political satire called ?A Modest Proposal,? Jonathan Swift seeks to create empathy for the poor through his ironic portrayal of the children of Irish beggars as commodities that can be regulated and even eaten. He is able to poke fun at the dehumanization of the multitudes of poor people in Ireland by ironically commenting on what he sees as an extension of the current situation. Swift?s essay seeks to comment on the terrible condition of starvation that a huge portion of Ireland has been forced into, and the inane rationalizations that the rich are quick to submit in order to justify the economic inequality. He is able to highlight the absurdity of these attempted

In Gulliver's first travel where he visited Lilliput, Gulliver was faced with the minute people called Lilliputians. Now while this was the premise for a fantasy story, Swift used the events within to make severe criticisms of England between reigns of Queen Anne and George І. The people of Lilliput were about six inches tall and their size signified that their motives, acts, and humanity were the same dwarfish. The political parties of the British government were represented by the conservative High Heels who depicted the Tories and the progressive Low Heels, or Whigs. As their names, the distinguishing mark of the parties was the height of their heels. Within these two parties, Swift criticized the English political parties, and the Prince of Wales. Swift also mocked the religion war that was going on in England through the use of war between Lilliput and its nearest neighbor, Blefuscu. Swift also used terms High Heels and Low Heels to compare the meaningless battles of the Whigs and Tories, such as the height of heels.

In the fourth book of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift uses satire to draw reader’s attention towards his concerns about humanity and uses irony to reveal his cynical views towards human kind. According to the Great Chain of Being, a term developed by the Renaissance that describes a divinely hierarchical order in every existing thing in the universe, human beings are placed a tier higher than animals (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english /melani/cs6/ren.html). However, by comparing human traits with unpleasant qualities of animals, Swift blurs the definition of human being and questions the hierarchical place of human. In the fourth book of Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver starts his journey as a well-educated European person who is

Jonathon Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels takes place in four parts, each of which describe Gulliver’s adventures with fantastical species of foreign nations. The search for Swift’s meaning has been a controversial one; the novel has been interpreted along a wide spectrum ranging from children’s story to a satire of human nature. The greatest debate lies within the realm of satire, and Part Four of Gulliver’s Travels, “A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms,” is just one area in which critics argue for a variety of satirical meanings. Critics traditionally argue for the “hard” interpretation which posits the strictly rational nature of the

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 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.

In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift makes a satirical attack on humanity. In the final book, Swift takes a stab at humanity by simultaneously criticizing physiological, mental, and spiritual aspects of humans. Literary critics Ronald Knowles and Irvin Ehrenpreis both agree that the last book focused entirely on satirizing humanity. The Yahoo brutes that inhabit Houyhnhnm Land are a despicable species that have the physical appearance of humans. Though their behavior seems to be decadent and irrational, Swift shows that most of their behavior have parallels in the life of "civilized" humans. The Houyhnhnms seem to embody virtue and all the perfections that humans seek, but there are

In the last voyage in Jonathan Swift's book Gulliver's Travels, "A voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms," Swift describes his idea of an ideal society. There are many examples provided in this part of the book to convince the reader that Swift is indeed illustrating his idea of a utopia. By using horses as the most reasonable creature, Swift not only defaces human society by making a beast a more powerful creature, but also shows that humans are unable to attain this perfectly reasonable society.