Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Analyze Gulliver's Travels as a satire on humankind.

Gulliver's Travelssatirizes many of humankind's most negative traits. In the first and second parts, including Gulliver's trips to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, Swift draws attention to the way in which we resort to war or physical conflict to solve many of our problems. Swift also satirizes the way we feel the need to control others' basic ways of life, in terms of religion, when he has Gulliver describe the Trameckstans and Slameckstans and their disagreements....

Gulliver's Travels satirizes many of humankind's most negative traits. In the first and second parts, including Gulliver's trips to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, Swift draws attention to the way in which we resort to war or physical conflict to solve many of our problems. Swift also satirizes the way we feel the need to control others' basic ways of life, in terms of religion, when he has Gulliver describe the Trameckstans and Slameckstans and their disagreements. Further, by showing the response of the peace-loving Brobdingnagian king to Gulliver's prideful boasting about gunpowder and other weaponry, Swift emphasizes our brutality and savagery.


Swift satirizes the contemporary rage for conducting useless experiments in the name of progress and science, even when they have no benefit whatsoever for humankind. Experiments like attempting to extricate sunshine from cucumbers or return human fecal matter to its original food matter are depicted as a waste of money, resources, and brainpower. Science can be incredibly useful, and its potential benefit to humanity should perhaps be the way in which we measure whether an experiment is worthwhile or not.


Swift also points out the way in which human beings are incredibly animalistic in part four. The Yahoos are very like us, a similarity that we ought to find somewhat troubling, given how disgusting and loathsome they are. Swift satirizes our greed and selfishness through these creatures.

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