Irony, Ambiguity, Symbols, and Symbolism in Gulliver's Travels

Using the proper appeals and mechanisms, Swift wrote a piece that in a sense was the voice of the voiceless! Eighteenth century for Ireland was almost like a rally; their economic condition was a harsh one, and they had high poverty rates. As opposed to that of the United Kingdom- formed of England and Scotland-, back then it was economically vibrant. As for the Irish political condition; there was a huge gap between the Irish and the English as well as the discrimination present in the Catholic Church. Ireland was an oppressed minority and was in a sense an outsider in its own home. “In 1750, 93% of the land was owned by non-Irish landowners and by 1770, this number was practically 100%” (“Short history of Ireland in the 18th century”). Swift didn’t only use the proper appeals while tackling those conditions but also used the right language. Satire maybe a difficult to understand genre but it certainly is a treasured way to deliver a message. It serves to voice the cruel acts in a manner that wakes those who practice them. Woken from a trance then, the oppressor gets the chance to regard his acts with

The sarcastic views of Swift’s understanding of the poverty of Ireland leads him to make a proposal for a solution to poverty, where he ignores the concern of human morale by displaying the lacking efforts of England to help. Swift uses methods that work to get or help better understand a situation, for example being sarcastic in a situation where a person wants something out of the situation by satire. The undeniable effect of satire catches the attention of England to further display the poverty of Ireland which is displayed throughout Swift’s Modest Proposal with exaggeration, incongruity and reversal.

Jonathan Swift uses humor in his essay ‘A Modest Proposal’ in the form of satire. His writing style specialized in gaining entertainment and humor from the issue that is being criticized. Jonathan Swift was a satirist who is famous for his ‘Modest Proposal’, in which he proposed a shocking but humorous remedy to satirize the false modesty of British pamphlets and the government during eighteenth century.

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.

Most humans create a facade which they hide behind. A person will create an identity that fits their expected role in their family, community, and society. All of these factors play into the human ideal because no one expectation of an ideal human matches another, but people still want to meet the expectations of the people around them. One common thread comes from even under the mask that all humans wear. Within The Odyssey by Homer, The Republic by Plato, and The Holy Bible, honor is able to play a role into a human’s life in many different ways; it is what pushes people into becoming the leader, teacher, and follower of what is believed in, and honor is what creates an ideal human.

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,

Swift is clever as he manages to lure the reader into a 'Fake sense of

Jonathan Swift's 1729 essay, A Modest Proposal, was a true example of satire at its best. Many readers at the time rejected the essay because they failed to understand the irony. It is presently one of the most well known works of satire and is a classic example of the technique most commonly used today. The entire essay from the title down to the last sentence were meant to be taken ironically, which is a rare form, but very effective when trying getting a point across. This essay will explain why the text was meant to be taken ironically and why Swift used irony instead of straightforward statements.

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.

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

Irony is an element which is found all throughout the best and worst pieces of literature. This is an element of literature which gives the reader an understanding of the story. In Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”, he uses three distinct forms of irony which add to the story. Irony is basically the expression of one’s meaning by using language to signify the opposite. In this story, Chaucer uses dramatic, situational and verbal irony all throughout his story. By incorporating these kinds of ironies, Chaucer is able to paint a picture through his story. This in turn adds to the overall theme of the story.

A staggeringly prolific writer, Anglo-Irish Jonathan Swift wrote a great many things. Swift was a tireless intellectual who wrote pamphlets, poems and books. With politics being what they were in the early-to-mid-18th century, Swift had been known to write under various pen names in order to avoid an unwanted attention. Foremost among Swift’s major works, Gulliver’s Travels which was originally published under the title Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World is a superbly clever work still capable of holding a reader’s imagination more than a couple of centuries after it was first published in 1726 (Paula).

Thesis Statement: Jonathan Swift’s literary canon of politically and comically-prolific satires, fantasies, and allegories was seasoned with his exposure to the follies of the economic, religious and governing institutions of the British Empire, and thus, he sought to lampoon and caricature the current events and social, cultural, religious, and political trends that were so omnipotent during his lifetime.