Essay Database

Gulliver's Travels - Satire in Lilliput Generations of schoolchildren raised on the first Book of "Gulliver's Travels" have loved it as a delightful visit to a fantasy kingdom full of creatures they can relate to-little creatures, like themselves. Few casual readers look deeply enough to recognize the satire just below the surface. But Jonathan Swift was one of the great satirists of his or any other age, and "Gulliver's Travels" is surely the apex of …

…good satire, "Gulliver's Travels" cannot be read purely as an analogy, as some scholars have tried to do. You cannot say that the Emperor "is" George I, or Filimap "is" Robert Walpole. The Emperor is the Emperor and Filimap is himself. But by making the political and religious situations of the eighteenth century seem even more ridiculous than they already were, Swift he was able to make people view their actual life choices more rationally.