Use Of Satire In Gulliver's Travels By Jonathon Swift

Much of the eighteenth century literature in Britain is characterized by satire. Satire was used by authors for a variety of reasons: to mock the current social status of Britain, poke fun of the rising trend known as Feminism, and even criticize political readers. Authors realized that for various reasons they could not directly state their disposition with society. Therefore, satire is different than mocking because instead of addressing an issue directly, writers used satire to mock things in an elegant fashion. For example, instead of directly criticizing the politics or social occurrences of Britain, authors would go to great lengths developing extravagant metaphors to illustrate this. Jonathon Swift, for example, used his stories, Gulliver’s …show more content…
This four-part fictional story details the adventures of Gulliver, an eighteenth century surgeon and traveler. Throughout the seemingly innocent story of adventure, there are underlying criticisms that Swift includes. As is seen in A Modest Proposal, instead of publishing raillery writings, which would be characterized by more of a direct mocking, Swift criticizes Britain in metaphorical ways. In particular, part three and part four of Gulliver’s Travels were used by Swift as a way of pointing out the flaws in British …show more content…
At the beginning of the story, Gulliver is betrayed by his shipmates and cast overboard. This is meant to show that people were deceptive and greedy. When Gulliver meets the Houyhnhnms, it is meant to show readers what the world would look like if humans did not lie. The wild Yahoos are a metaphor for how people, especially politicians, acted in eighteenth century Britain. Swift saw people as disgusting beasts who cared nothing but about themselves. Parts three and four of Gulliver’s Travels are used by Swift to critique modern day social change and political