This famous satire features the fantastical travels of Gulliver on four separate journeys that transforms a confident English man into a misanthrope. The novel can be seen as a fantasy, a satire, a children’s book, and therefore would appeal to many different audiences. Gulliver travels first to the land of Lilliput where everyone is small and he is a giant compared to them. Next he travels to the land of Brobdingnag where the situation is reversed and everyone there is a giant compared to him. This is followed by a journey to Laputa, a floating island full of absent-minded intellectuals and associated islands on the ground ruled by the superior technology of the floating island. Last, Gulliver finds himself in the land of Houyhnhnms where he finds horses have rationality and rule the land in peace and happiness.

One of Swift’s goals in the text is to criticize European society. On each of these journeys there is a chapter (or more) dedicated to Gulliver explaining the customs of his own society, which usually receives a reaction of disgusts or censure.  By having these fantastical societies react to the customs and practices of his own world, Swift creates a unique objectivity through the means of fantasy that wouldn’t have half the power if he stuck to pure realism. The fantastical allows for a distance; it allows for the original British readers of time to view the vision of their own society from the perspective of these fictional outsiders and realize the flaws and injustices in their own society. The satire also works via parallels, in which certain aspects of the fantastical societies copy some aspect of our real society. So for example, the war between Lilliput and Blefuscu calls to mind the constant wars and animosity between Britain and France. The constant ridiculous aggrandizing of kings and the following of their whims (even when made ridiculous by Swift’s fantastical imagination of what kings might demand like a guest licking the floor as he approaches the throne) is an attack on the the nature of kings themselves as known in Europe.

Swift’s target, however, strikes much deeper into human foibles. For example, during the journey into Laputa, Gulliver finds himself touring an academy that represents the wasteful of government projects and the absurdity of certain intellectual endeavors. During his time he finds an intellectual who is trying to restore human fecal matter back into its original constituent food parts, a painter who employs blind helpers to sniff the colors for him, a theorist who wants to replace the secondary nature of language with the direct thing by communicating directly with the objects words are supposed to represent and forcing one to carry tons of heavy objects with them. How can moments like this not remind a reader of books like White Noise by Don DeLillo with professors teaching Hitler Studies and Elvis Studies!  Swift’s point is that many intellectual endeavors can be quite ridiculous and a waste of time, while trying to make improvements for the sake of change rather than to fix an actual problem. Furthermore, Laputa’s floating island which oppresses and rules over the population on the ground cannot help but remind one of a modern weapon of mass destruction. Even though, the Europe of his times was his main target, this is a novel that still has plenty to say about the stupidity and mistakes of our current existence, which goes to show why classics never truly grow old.

Humanity and human institutions continue to receive a drubbing once we reach the land of the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver eventually adapts the misanthrope attitudes of the rational horses. They help him see the imperfections of humanity and they show him that human beings aren’t truly rational at all. This is accomplished again through the fantasy of the situation; they contrast their very different society and way of living as horse, which turns out to be more peaceful and seemingly more rational, with these “rational” human beings who just destroyed each other and themselves through the misuse of nature’s gift of intelligence. The horses show Gulliver that everything from the government to the class social structure is inherently corrupt and mismanaged. All of this leaves the readers themselves feeling a bit pessimistic and misanthropic by the end, but Swift manages to keep his material mostly light-hearted and fun.

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