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Analysis Of Jonathan Swift 's ' Gulliver 's Travels '

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How Jonathan Swift constructs and uses Gulliver in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’
Jonathan Swift was an English 18th century writer who supported the Monarchy and was a Royalist. He wrote this story while in a club, called ‘The Scriblerus Club’, in which there were 2 other members; Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot. All three believed that the society they lived in was corrupt. In this story, Swift indirectly describes the many different faults with man-kind. The story is written in a satiristic style that makes fun of the bad things in society. Swift uses Gulliver to show how corrupt and cruel the 18th century English society was.
Swift constructs Gulliver’s character through his first person narrative style. His narratives reveal that he is a rather unemotional character. This is shown when he describes and recounts dangerous situations in a matter-of-fact and passive style. A clear example of this is when his ship was destroyed in a storm and all of his companions were lost or dead; ‘Twelve of our crew were dead’ and ‘we therefore trusted ourselves to the mercy of the waves’. Swift is clearly using Gulliver to represent many of the 18th century politicians who had a stiff upper-lip and were unemotional. He is used to satirise 18th Century English society’s stereotypical ‘stiff-upper lip’ approach in life, a character trait which may also be a source of humour for the reader.
Swift carefully constructs Gulliver’s character through his reactions to certain situations. He presents

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