The novel Gulliver’s Travels is more than just a story about a man who has fantastic journeys in unimaginable places. It is a satirical novel written in 1726 by Jonathan Swift, an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric. In this novel Swift satirizes a variety of issues he sees as problems and ironically enough, the very people he was poking at were the ones that were buying the book. (britannica.com) “Gulliver’s Travels is prose satire that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the travelers’ tales literally sub-genre.” (Quintana Par. 1) The work was originally published anonymously but was traced back to Swift in later years. “Gulliver’s Travels’s matter-of-fact style and its air of sober reality confer on it an ironic depth that defeats oversimple explanations.” (Quintana Par. 17) This means that it is a very difficult novel to dissect. It definitely did not come with a guide from Swift so it is open to many different legitimate interpretations. Many people consider it to simply be a comic novel but for the most part it is understood that it is a “misanthropic deprecation of mankind. [He] uses the various races and societies Gulliver encounters in his travels to satirize many of the errors, follies, and frailties that human beings are prone to. The warlike, disputatious, but essentially trivial Lilliputians in Book I and the deranged, impractical pedants and intellectuals in Book III are shown as imbalanced beings lacking common sense and even decency. The Houyhnhnms, by contrast, are the epitome of reason and virtuous simplicity, but Gulliver’s own proud identification with these horses and his subsequent disdain for his fellow humans indicates that he too has become imbalanced, and that human beings are simply incapable of aspiring to the virtuous rationality that Gulliver has glimpsed.” (Quintana Par. 17) Swift satirizes many of the qualities of mankind that he finds to be prominent in his age that are unattractive or he believes needs to be changed. In the satiric novel Gulliver’s Travels, written by Jonathan Swift in the late 18th century, the English government and political system is scrutinized in an attempt by Swift to strike political change.
This essay will discuss some of the political issues that occurred in England during the time Swift wrote the book and how Swift satirizes them in his novel, from the way he makes the Houyhnhnm’s the epitome of reason and virtuous simplicity, the warlike Lilliputians fight over essentially trivial matters, and the Brobdingnagians who are the epitome of moral giants. The English government at the time was a monarchy whose power laid with the king mainly along with the parliament who made many important decisions for the kingdom. The members of the parliament were highly educated and brought up in the upper class so were very well mannered.
In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver finds himself upon an island inhabited by a sort of magical horselike creature called the Houyhnhnm. They are, in simplest terms, the perfect race; they speak clearly, they act justly, and they have simple laws. They know what is right from wrong and always make the right decision. “They are untroubled by greed, politics, or lust. They live a life of cleanliness and exist in peace and serenity. They live by the grand maxim: Cultivate Reason and be totally governed by it. So perfect is their society, in fact, that they have no concept of a lie, and therefore no word to express it.” (Thickstun 3). They represent a perfect society meanwhile they live on the same land as the Yahoos who are the exact opposite. They encompass everything bad in society and are always making poor or evil decisions. When Gulliver first comes across the Yahoos he says that he has never seen such a disagreeable animal, while in fact they resemble humans in many of their features. He is disgusted by the Yahoo and refuses to be associated with them and does not accept the similarities between them; rather his pride leads him to strive to be more like the horses.
The Puritans of Swift’s time believed themselves to be somewhat like the Houyhnhnm in their characteristics and how they act. Like many Puritans believed they were, “[The Houyhnhnm] are not subject to temptation. Swift, however, never suggests that the Houyhnhnms stand for perfected human nature; on the contrary, they manifest innocent human nature” (Thickstun 5). Basically, Swift created the race to show a race that could be similar to that of an innocent human. The Yahoo are again, an exact opposite. They are animals who are naturally vicious and represent a form of mankind that is depraved and are degenerate filth. To epitomize this contrast, Swift has them eat nearly everything prohibited by the biblical and Levitical food codes. The Puritans believed that if you were not with them, you were against them. They believed anyone who was not Puritan to be something similar to a Yahoo. No matter how much Gulliver (the average man) attempts to achieve the status of the horse, he fails because he is simply more of a Yahoo than a Houyhnhnm. Swift satirizes how great the Puritans believe themselves to be but drags them down to Earth when Gulliver can never really achieve that status even if he strives to with all of his determination.
Swift establishes a range, or spectrum, of existence; from the innocence of the Houyhnhnm to the depraved Yahoo. The horses are innocent. “In theological terms, they have never fallen from innocence. They are a representation of what humans may have been before the original sin in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve” (Rogers 234). A purely innocent race that lives in peace and harmony. Right in the middle of this spectrum lies Gulliver who represents all of mankind. While some people may be a little more to one side of the spectrum, no one will ever truly reach that innocence of the Houyhnhnm nor the depravation of the Yahoo. This is the satire of Swift on these races. No matter how holy and pure some people may claim they are, none of them will ever reach the pure innocence that was once held by man before the original sin. An unadulterated innocence that is untouchable by evil.
Gulliver eventually comes across a land ruled by men that are six inches in height, yet are very humanistic. “The Lilliputians possess all the pretension and self-importance of full-sized men” (Ward 3). In a sense they are completely human, just a lot smaller. They are nasty, vicious, jealous, envious, hypocritical, mean, and corrupt. Swift, in a genius manner, satirizes specific events and people using the Lilliputians. One example of which is “Swift’s model for Flimnap was Rober Walpole, the leader of the Whigs and England’s first prime minister in the modern sense” (Ward 6). Walpole was a wily and tactical politician. Swift shows this by making Flimnap the most adroit of the rope dancers. Not only did he create Flimnap to represent a politician, he also surrounded him by other characters that represents some of Walpole’s “minions”. Reldresal who is the second of the rope dancers, represents either Lord Carteret or Viscount Townshend. They were both political allies of Walpole.
Swift not only correlates characters in the novel to politicians, he also satirizes the political life of England through his description of political activities and life in Lilliput. He relates the two political lives in “the articles that Gulliver signs to obtain his freedom that parallel particular English codes and laws” (Pencak 2). The signing of these papers is similar to that of the process used in England for a variety of purposes. Not only did the signing of the articles parallel English codes and laws, but also the absurdly complicated method by which Gulliver is forced to swear to the articles that exemplifies an aspect of Whig politics, red-tape harassing. In the novel, Gulliver is forced by the Lilliputians to hold his right foot in his left hand and put the middle finger of his right hand on his head with the right thumb in his ear.
The Lilliputians are mostly used for dark satire to show that the English politicians were treacherous and politically foul-minded. “In detail, he records the bloody and cruel methods that the Lilliputians plan to use to kill Gulliver; then he comments ironically on the mercy, decency, generosity, and justice of kings” (Pencak 6). In this political comparison Swift shows the even though royalty is not fair or generous at all, but you must still say that they are because if you do not then you may receive an even worse death. The Lilliputian emperor, out of mercy, decides to blind and starve Gulliver after parliament called him merciful and lenient. This is a direct reference to George’s treatment of the captured Jacobites (whom he executed). “By the end of Book I, Swift has drawn a brilliant, concrete, and detailed contrast between the normal man (Gulliver) and the diminutive but vicious politician (the Lilliputian); the politician is always a midget alongside Gulliver” (Pencak 9). Basically, Pencak believes that Swift draws a comparison between common man and politician and in the end the common man is in more power than the politician because the politician is the voice of the common man.
When Gulliver arrives at the land of the Brobdingnagians he finds out how truly morally flawed he is. The Brobdingnagians are moral giants, literally. They stand at 60 feet tall and are practical and moral. They are physically ugly on the outside but on the inside they are morally beautiful. “We cannot reject them simply because Gulliver describes them as physically gross. If we reject them, we become even more conscious of an ordinary person's verminous morality” (Firth 5). This is a good example of circular reasoning because if the reader rejects them, then he becomes conscious of his immorality. If the reader accepts them, he subconsciously knows that he wishes he could reject them.
In comparison to how moral the giants are, Gulliver’s ordinariness exposes many of the flaws of human nature. “Gulliver is revealed to be a very proud man and one who accepts the madness and malice of European politics, parties, and society as natural. What's more, he even lies to conceal what is despicable about them” (Firth 3). This means that Gulliver understands that what his government does and says is wrong and immoral, and on top of this he lies to try to conceal what is bad about them. This again is a scaled representation of the English population as a whole in a satirical manner.
While Swift may make it seem as though the Brodbingnagians are flawless, they are not. “Unlike Gulliver, who always considered the Lilliputians to be miniature men, the Brobdingnagians cannot think of Gulliver as a miniature Brobdingnagian” (Firth 6). They simply view Gulliver as a form of entertainment and do not treat him as a normal person. They deny him his humanity and treat him as a plaything. So while the Brobdingnagians are not perfect, they are still considered moral giants and are consistently moral.
In conclusion, the satiric novel Gulliver’s Travels, written by Jonathan Swift in the late 18th century, scrutinizes the English government and political system in an attempt by Swift to strike political change. The Houyhnhnm’s are the epitome of reason and virtuous simplicity, the warlike Lilliputians fight over essentially trivial matters, and the Brobdingnagians who are the epitome of moral giants bring out mankind’s flaws.