Satire in Gulliver’s Travels

Jonathan Swifts Gulliver’s Travels is an elaborate concoction of political allegory, moral fable, social anatomy, and mock Utopias set within a parody of both travel fiction and journals of scientific exploration. When it was finally taken as satire, critics began insisting that Swift was mad; they did not like what they saw in the satirical mirror. Swift knew that people would see everyone’s likeness but their own in this glass, so he wrote the character of Gulliver in a certain way in order to prevent the writing off of his actions as quirks. Gulliver visits four different societies in his travel, and upon his return home at the end, he cannot bring himself to rejoin society.

The character of Gulliver will be examined in this section. Swift created him in such a way that the people of England could identify with him easily. He is a typical European: middle aged, well educated, has no overly romantic notions, is sensible, and conducts his affairs prudently.

This section will look at the satirical aspects of the first book, where in Gulliver visits the land of Lilliput. Gulliver is a normal human being visiting a recognizably European society, but he is twelve times bigger than the lands inhabitants. The Lilliputians are as small morally as they are physically. They are petty and have arguments over aspects of life such as upon which end to break an egg: ?the king seemed to think nothing … of destroying the Big-Endian exiles, and compelling that people to break the smaller end of their eggs; by which he would remain sole monarch of the world. ?.The Lilliputians are ordered to stand fifty feet away from Gulliver s house, unless they have a license whereby the secretaries of state got considerable fees. It is clear that the main satiric target in the first book is the pride Europeans take in public ceremonies and celebrations of power and magnificence: There’s an obvious silliness to the obsessions with these matters when the figures are only six inches high.

Gulliver returns home and promptly sets out to sea once more. He comes across the island of Brobdingnag, and this section will deal with the various satirical aspects of that society. He has left a land of small people and has now found himself in the role of a Lilliputian: he is now twelve times smaller than those around him. This entire book serves to reflect on the obsession with physical beauty which has grabbed Europeans of Swift’s time. He is nauseated when he sees a woman with a cancerous breast; he notes that the flesh is full of holes into which he could have easily crept. When he is in a bedroom with a few maids of honor, he is disgusted when they begin to undress in front of him because of their size and physical grossness.

The voice of Swift, behind Gulliver, is saying ?look at yourself, especially if you are a girl, and most especially if you think yourself lovely; excepting your size, in what way are you less vulgar than these Brobdingnagians?? The king of the Brobdingnagians also provides straightforward commentary on the Europeans Gulliver describes to him. Gulliver is the first to explain away the king’s criticisms. He says that the king cannot help thinking in such ways because he has been isolated his entire life and has certain prejudices and a narrowness of thinking. Because of this, Swift allows he to write the king openly criticizing the European way of life; to the untrained reader, the passage is taken as Gulliver takes it, which is as the product of a closed mind.

The fourth book is perhaps the most important. This section will deal with the views expressed in Gulliver s journey to Houyhnhnmland. The Houyhnhnms are extremely rational horses who co-exist with entirely irrational human-monkey hybrids known as Yahoos. Swift uses the conflict between the actions of these two species to set forth the fact that humans tend to describe themselves in terms of Houyhnhnms but act more like Yahoos. This book deals with more philosophical issues such as the nature of man’s thought and the purpose of living. Again, Swift allows Gulliver to reveal the characteristics of Europeans. The reply he receives from the king of the Houyhnhnms is crushingly unflattering:?he looked upon us as a sort of animals to whose share, by what accident he could not conjecture, some small pittance of Reason had fallen, whereof we made no other use than by its assistance to aggravate our natural corruptions, and to acquire new ones which nature had not given us.?Through his interactions with the people of Houyhnhnmland, his objective perspective on society from the previous books is shattered; he begins to realize facts about human nature. This time, he agrees with the king of the Houyhnhnms about his countrymen:

?When I thought of my family, my friends,

my countrymen, or human race in general,

I considered them as they really were,

Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps

a little more civilized, and qualified

with the gift of speech, but making no

other use of reason than to improve and

multiply those vices whereof their

brethren in this country had only the

share that nature allotted them.?

Gulliver’s perspective and entire life are changed because of his episode with the Houyhnhnms

and the Yahoos. The fate of Gulliver is just as important as his journey in supporting Swift’s critical view of European life. This section will deal with what happens to him and why it occurs the way it does. When he returns home, he faints for over an hour after being embraced by his wife. He describes her as an ‘odious animal,’ decides that her presence is morally unbearable, and describes her as a Yahoo. He cannot bear the company of Europeans anymore. Gulliver shuns the culture which bred him: ?the many virtues of the Houyhnhnms placed in opposite view to human corruptions, had so far opened my eyes and enlarged my understanding, that I began to view the actions and passions of man in a very different light, and think the honor of my own kind not worthy managing.?From this realization on, he walks around trotting like a horse and spends four hours daily speaking to horses, trying to force himself to be thought of as a horse. So although he comes to understand humanity better than any of his peers, he actually loses his grip on reality.

In other words, the Houyhnhnms’ society is perfect for Houyhnhnms, but it is hopeless for humans. Houyhnhnm society is, in stark contrast to the societies of the first three voyages, devoid of all that is human.

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What Is the Story of Gulliver’s Travels?

Gulliver’s Travels is a series of four books about Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon who has a group of adventures in four different areas. These adventures help him form a new outlook on humanity and society. The author of the book, Jonathan Swift, expresses his opinions about his society by satirizing the societies that Gulliver visits to suit his own. The task at hand is to compare and contrast Book one and Book four of Gulliver’s Travels. I will compare and contrast this book in terms of setting, character, theme and plot.

One more important factor to consider is the satires that were made in each of these books; as well as, Gulliver’s mood in each and how his adventures affected him. The first point of comparison and contrast is the plot. In Book One, we see that Gulliver is the surgeon of a ship called the Antelope. The ship that he is in goes into a terrible storm where twelve of the crewmembers die. Gulliver and the remaining crew members board a rowboat to escape the wrecked ship. The rowboat then turns over and Gulliver has t o swim to shore in order to survive.

He falls asleep on the shore and when he wakes up from his slumber he finds himself tied down. Gulliver gets introduced to the Lilliputians where he is welcomed by them later on in the book. He is taken to the Emperor and the Emperor was really entertained by Gulliver. After a long time in Lilliput, he is used as a ‘national resource’ for Lilliput, used in the wars against Blefuscu. The war that was on between the Lilliputians and the Blesucuns was about the different ways of cracking eggs which is really a useless matter to argue over.

Finally, Gulliver is accused for treason because he put out a fire in the queen’s apartment with his urine. He would be shot ion the eyes but he convinces the Emperor to allow him to leave and the Emperor agrees. He goes to Belfuscu where he gets on a canoe and goes home. In Book Four, Gulliver is captain of a ship where his crew conspires against him and take him prisoner because they want to be the pirates of the seven seas. They drop Gulliver on a rowboat where he manages to row to an island. He decides to look for inhabitants or humans where instead he finds horses that treat humans like trash and only use them like slaves.

He befriends a horse (they call themselves Houyhnhms) where he discusses his society to him and describes a lot of the characteristics of humans or yahoos in their language. The second point that should be mentioned in the comparison between Book One and Book Four is Gulliver’s character in each of the books. In the actual books, Gulliver is a surgeon and the purpose of this is that surgeons, in general, are respected and trusted for the decisions that they have to make in the operating rooms; Swift makes Gulliver a surgeon so that he would be an expert in note taking and that he can make us believe and trust Gulliver.

In the first book, we see Gulliver as a person who is just criticizing the government of the Lilliputians, and all he is doing is expressing his opinion. In Book Four, we see that Gulliver is an unreliable narrator as his views are extremely tedious and that the arguments that he makes about humanity are unfair and unjust. Heading back to book one, we saw that Gulliver was a peaceful man that made excellent critics of his the government of the Lilliputians. Through the books and leading all the way to Book Four, we realize his violent and aggressive nature, adding to the mistrust that we have for him.

In Book One, Gulliver’s violent nature was unnoticeable as the book was focused on the government and the living system of the Lilliputians. Gulliver’s name suggests the word gullible; he does realize the ways in which he is being used in the books. In Book 1, Book Two, he is being exploited in terms of acts and behaviour. He had to fight a war that was between the Belfuscuns and the Lilliputians. In Book Four, we realize his gullibility by the exploitation of knowledge that does happen.

This element of exploitation is obvious in the book as in the first few books it is in terms of material acts and items while in the last book it is the terms of the knowledge gained by the Houyhnhms. The last element in the character of Gulliver is the misanthropy that he develops at the end of the book. The cause of this misanthropy is view at the Yahoos in the island of the Houyhnhms. He couldn’t stand Yahoos, even his own family, that he bought himself a horse and talked to him at the very end, “As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and kissed me, at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal. . The term odious that he describes his wife with shows how much he could not stand his own wife which is quite depressing really. He really wanted to stay with the Houyhnhms at the island. This contradicts the part in the first book where he wondered if he would ever see his family again and his children. Gulliver’s character was deeply altered through his travels, but mainly altered in the final book where he developed his misanthropy and the hate of the humans of the world, at the very end, he bought himself a horse that he talked to instead of his family and the friends that he might have had.

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Gulliver’s Travel Satire

Gulliver’s Travels is written from the perspective of a shipboard doctor named Lemuel Gulliver, and tells of four of his journeys into remote parts of the world. At the time Jonathan Swift wrote (1726), the increase in exploration of all parts of the globe had made stories of travels quite popular; the travels Swift wrote of, though, were fictional and satirical, even though presented as if a factual account written by Gulliver himself. A Voyage to Lilliput: Mocking the Pompous Gulliver’s first voyage takes him to a land inhabited by people who are six inches tall.

Lilliput and its rival kingdom of Blefuscu carry on as if their affairs were just as vital as those of European nations, and their nations just as capable, despite the fact that Gulliver could step on them all if he wished. As he records their society, court intrigues, religious disputes, and wars, it becomes clear that European politicians and aristocrats share much of the ridiculousness of the Lilliputians. When Gulliver is finally forced to leave Lilliput, it is because of trumped-up charges of treason fabricated by court enemies.

He spends a short time in Blefuscu, but because Lilliput threatens war over his presence there, he resolves to leave rather than cause further trouble. When Gulliver journeys to a land of giants called Brobdingnag he experiences what it feels like to be a Lilliputian, as the giants are as much larger than him as he is larger than a Lilliputian. Gulliver’s various brushes with death are humorous, but Swift also uses them to reinforce a major focus of this section: just as Lilliputian affairs are ridiculous because of their smallness, human pretensions are ridiculous as well.

Swift’s second major target for satire appears when Gulliver tries to show the Brobdingnagian king the greatness of England; he succeeds only in showing its corruption. While English civilization is more complex and more technologically advanced than Brobdingnag, a large portion of the technology is devoted to war and destruction, and much of the complexity of law and government is an opportunity for massive corruption. Swift’s satire has expanded in this section to cover the entire nation, and other European nations as well. A Voyage to Laputa: Pretensions to Knowledge

Gulliver’s third voyage, “to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan,” is divided into four main sections (his visit to Japan at the end is brief). Each stop on Gulliver’s trip mocks mankind’s claims to knowledge and understanding in some way. Laputa, as an island of absent-minded thinkers floating in the air, gives a good picture of a people with impressive thoughts, but no good connection to reality. When Gulliver leaves for the land of Balnibarbi below and enters the city of Lagado, the satire turns much harsher.

Swift portrays there a group of men who, after spending some time in Laputa, attempted to apply their pet theories to the improvement of the country. But their ridiculous schemes have ruined it, because the theories took no account of reality. Still, most people follow their schemes, for they are after all new, modern, and scientific. Glubbdubdrib is a land where magicians can temporarily bring the dead back to earth, allowing Gulliver to speak to various famous historical figures. He discovers, though, that much of the history he has read is inaccurate, through either the ignorance or bias of the historians.

Swift also takes this opportunity to speak again of the frequent evil of even honored men such as religious leaders and aristocrats. In Luggnagg, Gulliver himself comes in for mockery. Upon hearing of the existence of immortals in the land, he begins to imagine the greatness of their lives, and sketches out the life of learning and leadership he would live were he to be immortal. His host then informs him of one thing he has failed to understand — the immortals do not have eternal youth — a fact that overthrows his whole grand scheme.

A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms: Human Beastliness Gulliver’s final voyage is to a land of intelligent horses called Houyhnhnms, and beastly human-like creatures called Yahoos. In his depiction of the Yahoos, and the parallels he draws between their brutish behavior and that of humans, Swift expands his satire to the evils of the entire human race. The perfectly rational and virtuous Houyhnhnms provide sharp contrast to this, leading Gulliver to eventually become so ashamed of his humanity he almost begins to act like a horse.

Despite Gulliver’s eventual elimination of some of his bad tendencies through imitation of the Houyhnhnms, he is eventually exiled on the argument that his combination of greater intelligence than Yahoos and lesser virtue than Houyhnhnms makes him dangerous. The end of the story presents Gulliver’s dilemma: he is now horrified by his fellow humans, yet his behavior in talking to horses and refusing to eat with his family is enough to make the reader wonder if he is insane.

Gulliver’s dilemma is also humanity’s. Developing greater virtue can lead to hating humanity’s corrupt nature, but trying to escape one’s own human nature because of its corruption is insanity. So throughout Gulliver’s Travels, Swift repeatedly satirizes human corruption and inadequacy from a variety of angles. The four adventures progressively increase the scope and forcefulness of these attacks, leading to the thematic climax that ties off the plot.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Air Travelling

When we are on holiday or intend to travel abroad as a tourist, we should firstly choose the means of traveling. In my view, traveling by air is both advantages as well as disadvantages. Advantages of traveling by air plane. The biggest advantage of flying is that it is often the fastest way to get […]

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Traveling by Plane and by Train

and by train When traveling over states or over countries there are three main ways of doing so, a flight, a train ride, or driving yourself. I guess you could walk or run but, I’m talking about cross country travel. There are expensive and inexpensive ways of travel, some fast, some slow, most fun, others […]

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Everyone is a traveler, choosing the roads

Everyone is a traveler, choosing the roads to follow on the continuous journey of life; there exists not a path that leaves one with but a sole direction in which to advance. In his poem, “The Road Not Taken”, Robert Frost exhibits insight and perception in using poetic techniques to communicate this message. The piece depicts a man’s regret at not being able to travel two roads, and having to make a choice between the two. The importance of making decisions is disclosed in the narrator’s assertion that his choice “has made all the difference.”

The first few lines of the poem introduce the elements of Frost’s primary metaphor and symbol, the diverging roads. The use of the road suggests that life is a journey that the narrator is traveling. The “two roads diverged” symbolize the points in this journey where one must make choices. As the narrator contemplates his decision, wishing that he could take both paths at the same time while knowing there is no possibility in that, the reader is able to glimpse the strength of Frost’s symbolism- every person must make decisions with the knowledge that going back and changing them is impossible, because one has already traveled too far down the chosen path to turn back.

The setting, along with imagery, assists in developing the key symbols of the poem. The piece opens with the narrator taking a walk in the woods during the autumn season, when he is suddenly confronted with a diverging path. The central image of “two roads diverged” helps to convey the theme of having to make choices in life. The “yellow wood” corresponds to the autumn season, a period that is often related to the end of the annual cycle in flora and foliage. Autumn may be perceived as a state in limbo between the vivacity of summer and the chill of winter.

The speaker examines one path to the best of his ability: “. . . and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth”. His vision, however, is limited because the path bends, and a certain amount of undergrowth obscure the destination of the road. The description of the paths indicates that although the speaker would like to acquire more information, he is prevented from doing so because of the nature of his environment. The road that will be chosen leads to the unknown, as does any choice in life. The concept of “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” illustrates an interval between two phases in life, and helps convey the theme of one having to inevitably choose between digressing paths.

The ironic tone is inescapable: “I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence.” The speaker anticipates his own future insincerity. He knows that he will be inaccurate, at best, or hypocritical, at worst, when he holds his life up as an example. In fact, he predicts that his future self will betray this moment of decision as if the betrayal were inevitable.

This realization is ironic and poignantly pathetic. But the “sigh” is critical. The speaker will not, in his old age, merely gather the youth about him and say, “Do what I did, kiddies. I stuck to my guns, took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Rather, he may say this, but he will sigh first; for he won’t believe it himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind will remain the image of yellow woods and two equally leafy paths.

Ironic as it is, this is also a poem infused with the anticipation of remorse. Its title is not “The Road Less Traveled” but “The Road Not Taken.” Even as he makes a choice (a choice he is forced to make if does not want to stand forever in the woods, one for which he has no real guide or definitive basis for decision-making), the speaker knows that he will second-guess himself somewhere down the line–or at the very least he will wonder at what is irrevocably lost: the impossible, unknowable Other Path. But the nature of the decision is such that there is no Right Path–just the chosen path and the other path. What are sighed for ages and ages hence are not so much the wrong decisions as the moments of decision themselves–moments that, one atop the other, mark the passing of a life. This is the more primal strain of remorse.

It is observed that the title of the poem, “The Road Not Taken,” may be intended to serve as a subtle hint, an insinuation of the narrator’s dissatisfaction with the decision he made. What about “the one less traveled by”? Neither of the roads was less traveled than the other. He less traveled both roads because this was the first time the narrator had come upon these paths. Leaves covered the ground, and since the time they had fallen no one had yet to pass by on this road; both were worn about the same “in leaves that no step had trodden black.” Nevertheless, the speaker is unhappy that he took the path that he chose, and yearns to go back and take “The Road Not Taken.” Time, however, does not allow second chances.

“The Road Not Taken” is an ironic commentary on the autonomy of choice in a world governed by instincts, unpredictable contingencies, and limited possibilities. It parodies and demurs from the biblical idea that God is the “way” that can and should be followed and the American idea that nature provides the path to spiritual enlightenment. The title refers doubly to bravado for choosing a road less traveled but also to regret for a road of lost possibility and the eliminations and changes produced by choice.

“The Road Not Taken ” reminds us of the consequences of the principle of selection in al1 aspects of life, namely that al1 choices in knowledge or in action exclude many others and lead to an ironic recognitions of our achievements. At the heart of the poem is the romantic mythology of flight from a fixed world of limited possibility into a wilderness of many possibilities combined with trials and choices through which the pilgrim progresses to divine perfection.

The reader finds, at the literal level, the narrator expressing his regret at his human limitations, at not being able to travel two roads; he must make a choice. The choice is not easy, since it took him a long time to come to a decision: “ . . . long I stood and looked down one as far as I could”. He examines one path “to where it bent in the undergrowth”, but his vision is limited because the path bends and is covered over. He describes the second path as “just as fair” as the first rather than more fair, and that the paths are “really about the same”.

This ambiguous evaluation of the paths reveals his search for a clear and logical reason to decide on one path over another– only that reason is unavailable. When the narrator finally makes his decision, he tries to persuade himself that he will eventually satisfy the desire to travel both paths, while simultaneously admitting that such a hope is unrealistic: Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. At the end of the poem, in the future, the narrator will claim that the paths were actually different from each other, and that his choice “has made all the difference.”

The last lines of the poem suggest that life would have been different had the speaker taken the other path: “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” The fact that the speaker says the entire last stanza “with a sigh” works together with the title to show that the speaker is disappointed with the choice he made. Once the entire poem is read, it may be realized that this is not an inspirational piece about why one should be different from everyone else. Rather, it reminds the reader of the consequences that follow a decision, and the manner in which one choice can shape one’s life.

In his poem, Robert Frost conveys his notion of life as a journey that every person must travel, a journey laden with diverging roads, many decisions, and occasional sighs; the piece demonstrates the poet’s belief that it is the road that one chooses that makes him or her the person who he or she is. “The Road Not Taken” leaves its readers with many different interpretations. In any case, however, it is Frost’s clever use of poetic techniques to express the theme that opens the door for analysis, and allows all readers from different backgrounds to relate to the poem.

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Misconceptions of a Tenth-Century Muslim Traveler

Historical and cultural accounts are important documents in order for the next generation to mirror the past and learn from the early people. If such accounts are incomplete and biased, the people being described may be underestimated and the readers may be misled. The essay written by Al Mas’udi on the natives of Oman or the Zanj tribe is one example of a cultural account lacking in information and depth.

As a merchant, Al Mas’udi gave a commercialist account of what can be found in Oman. In focusing much on what he could benefit from in the country, he failed to give a truthful observation of the people—their culture, beliefs, and traditions. This narrow point of view by a merchant traveler, if given serious consideration, may be dangerous as it may picture the people of Oman differently.

In his essay, the author regarded the sail to the sea of Oman as the most dangerous, saying, “I do not know of one more dangerous than that of the Zanj.” This introduction could lead the readers to be disappointed from going to the place because of the danger he stated. Also, Mas’udi used the term Zanj to refer to all the people in Oman, but this is not proper because the word has a connotation that may demean his subjects. Such terms are said to be taboo, just like the term “Negroes” for Black Americans for this remind the Blacks of their painful past.

The journal of Mas’udi also contained misconceptions about the natives of Oman as he pictured them to be like savages who “do not use [elephants] for war or anything but only hurt and kill them.” This statement is too rude as it depicts a tribe that did not pay respect for animal life, but a tribe that was so cruel and uncivilized.

On the positive side, though, the author mentioned that the people had a beautiful language and they had a preacher to teach them about God. However, he said that there were no religious laws, which leads us to asking, what do the preachers preach aside from the law of their god? Truly, this statement gives a confusion on the people’s beliefs.

As a traveler, one thing that Mas’udi must have done was to respect the people he observed and carefully write about them, without missing out on details which could lead the audience to misconceptions. This is similar to the term lesbian which was given a misconception from its original meaning of “people of Lesbos,” an island where the poet Sappho originated. The term was later given negative interpretation due to interpretations of the author’s poems which depicted platonic love between women. Indeed, we can see, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!” (Pope 1709)

Work Cited

“Lesbos Lived on an Island.” Pearl’s Rainbow Key West. 3 December 2007.

<http://www.pearlsrainbow.com/articles/Lesbos-Lived-On-An-Island.html>.

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