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
Jonathan Swift is one of the best known satirists in the history of literature. When one reads his works, especially something like Gulliver’s Travels, it is easy for one to spot the misanthropic themes, which emerge within his characterization. Lamuel Gulliver is an excellent protagonist: a keen observer, and a good representative of his native England, but one who loses faith in mankind as his story progresses. He ends up in remote areas of the world all by accidents in his voyages. In each trip, he is shipwrecked and mysteriously arrives to lands never before seen by men. This forms an interesting rhythm in the novel: as Gulliver is given more and more responsibility, he tends to be less
Swift was a neoclassical writer who wrote to enlighten people. He wanted people to look at the world that exits beyond them selves and discover virtue. Through his work Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift demonstrates to the reader the importance of virtue. I this story the main character am Gulliver; a world traveler who takes a journey to different lands. Each place that Gulliver lands has different ideals that are the foundation of their society. Their views on life are completely new to Gulliver.
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
Gulliver’s Travels was written during the 18th Century and mocks the governing spirit among the English and people of Europe of that time, and even extends to all of mankind. Swift uses metaphors to expose society of its pretensions and reveals his disapproval of their behaviour. Swift’s clever use of satire achieves this by not directly addressing the flaws of the English but by doing so in a veiled manner,
In1726, Jonathan Swift, one of the best-known realistic writers in 18th century, published his book Gulliver’s Travels which on the surface is a collection of travel journals of a surgeon called Lemuel Gulliver but actually is a work of satire on politics and human nature. In the four incredible adventures, Gulliver’s perceptions are tied closely with Swift’s shame and disgust against British government and even against the whole of the human condition as Richard Rodino says in his book that 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)
Two novels use satire to criticize human weakness. In ‘Gulliver’s Travel’, Swift makes up a horse society Houyhnhnm and a brutal animal Yahoo. Gulliver has to admit that human beings are yahoos after a series comparison between human and yahoo. Vices of human beings are exposed by the Swift’s satiric
The Revolutionary War is one, if not the most memorable time of American history. It is what started the beginning of the land of the free. The colonization and tyranny of England was not just felt in the thirteen colonies that became America but also in places such as Ireland. Authors such as Jonathan Swift not only acted as literary geniuses but as a way for modern day historians to see the effects of colonization and the hardships of a country where the wealthy and politicians live almost in another world than most of the country that lives in poverty. The works of Jonathan Swift express his political views and social observations during the sixteen and seventeen hundreds at the height of conflict between England and Ireland.
Poverty has been a problem not only in Texas or the United States, but all over the world. Many types of individuals have addressed this topic for years, raised money, volunteered, but still, as much as there’s said and done, the issue hasn’t been fazed a bit. From Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal, he clarifies the poverty issued throughout Ireland in the early 1700’s and how one suggestion could change it all. Elaborated from the Literary Reference Center, “A Modest Proposal, like Gulliver’s Travels, transcends the political, social, and economic crisis that gave birth to it, woeful as they were. Packed with irony and satirical revelations of the human condition…” Swift wasn’t just writing a masterpiece, but an intended, informational
The Lilliputians are supposed to symbolize the Whigs, and Swift thinks of them as stupid and power-hungry. He demonstrates this when they search Gulliver for weapons. In Swift’s time the Whigs searched the Tories for evidence of their connections with England. He also makes fun of the thinking at the time; the Lilliputians were discriminated against whether they wore either high heels or low heels, and the ones that tried to remain neutral worse one high heel and one low heel. At the end of the book Swift demonstrates his thought on humans, when all the humans were savage and stupid, while the animals were brilliant. I believe that Swift demonstrates all his points very well. The reader is transported to the story, yet unlike most books, Swift doesn’t tell the reader exactly what to think, he insinuates it but lets the reader come to his own conclusions.
In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver is washed up onto a foreign land where he encounters two species: Houyhnhnms, ruling intellectual horse-like species, and the Yahoos, brutish human-like animals. As a foreigner, Gulliver tries to integrate himself with Houyhnhnms community and through his attempts of communicating Gulliver ultimately fails due to his striking similarity to the brute Yahoos. Swifts juxtaposition of two different worlds, made extremely clear by both physical, physiological, linguistic aspects, reveals the futility of any successful integration.
Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels in 1762 with the intent of providing entertainment for people. Entertainment through satire was what Swift had in mind. In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift traveled to four different foreign countries, each representing a corrupt part of England. Swift criticized the corruption of such parts and focused on the government, society, science, religion and man. Not only did Swift criticize the customs of each country, he mocked the naive man who was unable to figure out the double meaning of things. When reading Gulliver's Travels, reflects upon plot, characters, settings, theme, point of view, conflicts, climax, resolution, symbolism and figurative
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.
The term scatological means to have an interest or preoccupation with the obscene. In his book, Gulliver’s Travels, it is hard to miss the various references that its author, Johnathan Swift, makes concerning bodily functions. Yet, this is more than the bawdy, juvenile toilet humor one would encounter in a cheeky T.V. show but has a literary purpose. Scatology is used to define the literary trope of the grotesque body. Through the realist perspective Swift employs scatology as a means of satire. This invokes Swift’s contemporary politics. He uses it to draw attention to Gulliver’s humanity, balancing out the strangeness of the lands Gulliver visits. Realism in literature, “refers generally to any artistic or literary portrayal of life in a faithful, accurate manner, unclouded by false ideals, literary conventions, or misplaced aesthetic glorification and beautification of the world. It is a theory or tendency in writing to depict events in human life in a matter-of-fact, straightforward manner. It is an attempt to reflect life as it actually is.” Swift uses the daily grotesque and bodily functions to both connect his audience and provoke disgust in them. By employing a blasé attitude when using this device, Swift manages to create a novel that has both realist aesthetic and the fantastical grotesque. He accomplishes this because the grotesque is simply an exaggeration of reality. Swift also creates the character of Gulliver, a realist character
It was written under the pen-name Lemuel Gulliver, Swift told stories of a series of expeditions to strange new worlds. More than simple fantasy writing, Swift’s novel was a heavy and intricate satire on politics, religion and other vices. The real stroke of genius that Swift managed with Gulliver’s Travels was its universality; and thus a book written in 1726 is still read in 2016. Comic elements were deliberately used and aimed quite directly at established power structures, but the elements of fantasy written into the story is capable to attract
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.