Study Guide/Discussion: Swift's Satire and Gulliver’s Travels
Gulliver’s Travels is a work of satire, a genre of literature that simultaneously creates humor and
critiques its society. The satirist diminishes a revered thing by making it appear ridiculous,
thus assuming a position of superiority to that revered thing — a position that the reader can usually
share.
In DIRECT or FORMAL satire, the writer speaks directly to the reader, and the work’s persona is a
carefully constructed character. The classical inventors of the form were Horace (65-8 BC) and Juvenal
(60-140 AD). Both poets wrote verse satires that were extremely regular in form, though they ranged
widely in topic. The two styles differ chiefly in tone.
Horatian satire is: tolerant, witty, wise and self-effacing, general
Juvenalian satire is: angry, caustic, resentful, personal
In INDIRECT or NARRATIVE satire, characters make themselves ridiculous by their own actions
— there is no need for a narrator to speak directly to the reader. This type of satire can, of course, can
be Horatian or Juvenalian in mood, though not usually in form. Gulliver’s Travels offers a combination
of Direct and Indirect satire forms, but Swift is one of the most famous English practitioners of
Juvenalian satire in terms of his tone. We’ll compare this tone to the more Horatian tone of Alexander
Pope later.
A few things to remember about Gulliver’s Travels: Swift is satirizing (among other things) the
conventions of the travel narrative — as well as the tendency of many readers to believe every word
of the accounts they were reading. The first three books of GT describe, in first person, the adventures
of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon who gets shipwrecked frequently on strange islands that are, in
various ways, topsy-turvy reflections of England.
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His first voyage is to Lilliput, a land of tiny people (relative to Gulliver) whose petty, minutiaeobsessed ways poke fun at similar pettiness in English culture. We learn that Gulliver is very good at
recording details such as foreign customs, measurements and vocabulary, but very poor at putting this
information into any useful perspective.
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The 2nd voyage, to Brobdingnag, an island of giants, satirizes England’s appetite for excess (in
food, drink, and sex), as well as its over-inflated, grandiose feelings of self-importance.
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The 3rd voyage, to the floating island of Laputa, populated by mad scientists and loony
academics, satirizes the English craze for the latest technologies and “scientific” discoveries – and also
satirizes the belief that the best solution for any problem is a technological one.
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The 4th and final voyage, to the land of the Houyhnhnms (pronounced “Hwinn-ems”), is the
most complex, because Gulliver loses what little objectivity he ever possessed and becomes convinced
that the godlike, rational horses that populate the island are indeed superior beings, and that the
despicable, apelike Yahoos are indistinguishable from humans. He becomes horribly confused as to
which group he should identify himself with. Note: Gulliver’s name is based on the same root word as
“gullible.” Always question whether we are meant to share his opinions about what he sees. Swift
particularly satirizes the trend in travel narrative for the narrators of such voyages to claim that they are
impartial observers, purely empirical in their reasoning (i.e., their knowledge was supposedly based on
observation alone). The reality is that they often imposed their own cultural, political, and religious
assumptions on what they observed. In Voyage IV, the Houyhnhnms, in their insistance on absolute
rationality in all their thinking, satirize certain philosophical movements (such as Descartes) that assert
that all problems can be solved by the use of pure reason — and that human emotion is a dangerous
distraction. As you read, ask yourself: would you want to live in the world of the Houyhnhnms? Do
you agree with their way of solving problems and engineering a society?