Lecture Nine Objectives: Assignment: Training the students on answering essay questions about the novel. Assignment: 1. Explain how Swift makes use of the character of Gulliver. As you prepare your answer, be sure to consider whether Gulliver has a distinct and recognizable character or whether he is simply Swift's mouthpiece. 2. In his satire, Swift makes a correlation between size and morality. Explain how this works in the Travels, paying particular attention to Gulliver in Lilliput and in Brobdingnag. Link: http://www.engliterarium.com/2007/12/swifts-gullivers-travels-social-satire.html

1- Gulliver's Travels is a novel of social satire 1- Gulliver's Travels is a novel of social satire. Explain with reference to the text. 2

Gulliver’s Travels is a great work of social satire Gulliver’s Travels is a great work of social satire. Swift’s age was an age of smug complacency. Corruption was rampant and the people were still satisfied. 3

Thus, Jonathan Swift tears the veil of smug complacency off which had blinded the people to realities. In “Gulliver’s Travels”, there is a satire on politics, human physiognomy, intellect, manners and morality. 4

In the first voyage to Lilliput, Swift satirizes on politics and political tactics practiced in England through Lilliputians, the dwarfs of six inches height. He satirizes the manner in which political offices were awarded by English King in his time. 5

Flimnap, the Treasurer, represents Sir Robert Walpole who was the Prime Minister of England. Dancing on tight ropes symbolizes Walpole's skill in parliamentary tactics and political intrigues. 6

The ancient temple, in which Gulliver is housed in Lilliput, refers to Westminster Hall in which Charles I was condemned to death. The three fine silk threads awarded as prizes to the winners refer to the various distinctions conferred by English King to his favorites. 7

In the second voyage to Brobdingnag, there is a general satire on human body, human talents and human limitations. Gulliver gives us his reaction to the coarseness and ugliness of human body. 8

When Gulliver gives an account, to the King of Brobdingnag, of the life in his own country, the trade, the wars, the conflicts in religion, the political parties, the king remarks that the history of Gulliver's country seems to be a series of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, revolutions and banishments etc. 9

Kind condemns the fatal use of gunpowder and the books written on the act of governing. King mocks at the human race of which Gulliver is the agent. 10

The most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. 11

Swift here ridicules human pride and pretension Swift here ridicules human pride and pretension. The sight is, indeed, horrible and disgusting. Among the beggars is a woman with a cancer in her breast. 12

It stood prominent six feet, and could not be less than sixteen in circumference … spots and pimples that nothing could appear more nauseous. 13

There is a man with a huge tumor in his neck; another beggar has wooden legs. But the most hateful sight is that of the lice crawling on their clothes. This description reinforces Swift views of the ugliness and foulness of the human body. 14

In the third voyage to Laputa, there is a satire on human intellect, human mind and on science, philosophy and mathematics. However, his satire is not very bitter. 15

We are greatly amused by the useless experiments and researches, which are going on at the academy of Projectors in Lagado. 16

Here scientists wants to extract sunbeams out of cucumbers, to convert human excrement into its original food, to build house from the roof downward to the foundation, 17

to obtain silk from cobwebs and to produce books on various subjects by the use of machine without having to exert one’s brain. 18

Their heads were inclined either to the right or to the left, one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to Zenith. 19

Swift amuses us by making a fun of the people whose sole interests are music and geometry. Thus we see that “Gulliver’s Travels” is a great piece of art containing social satire in it. 20

Every satirist is at heart a reformist Every satirist is at heart a reformist. Swift, also, wants to reform the society by pinpointing the vices and shortcoming in it. And he very successfully satirizes on political tactics, physical awkwardness, intellectual fallacies and moral shortcomings. 21

2- Gulliver's Travels is a complex novel of different interrelated perspectives. Comment 22

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver’s Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the “travellers’ tales” literary sub-genre. 23

Satire is a literary genre in which human vices, weaknesses, foibles and follies are held up to ridicule. Wit and humor are commonly used as instrument of satire. 24

Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a pure piece of satire where he satirizes party politics, religious differences, and western Culture as a whole in ways still relevant to today’s world. One of the forms of political satire is embodied in the first culture that is met by Gulliver. 25

In Gulliver’s first adventure, he begins on a ship that runs aground on a submerged rock. He swims to land, and when he awakens, he finds himself tied down to the ground, and surrounded by tiny people, the Lilliputians. “Irony is present from the start in the simultaneous recreation of Gulliver as giant and prisone. 26

Gulliver encounters the ridiculous nature of war Gulliver encounters the ridiculous nature of war. His first encounter of war is in the form of a dispute over the way to eat an egg. 27

A former king took the right of personal preference away from his people by telling them to eat the egg from the small end instead of the large end. For Swift, Lilliput is analogous to England, and Blefuscu to France. 28

With this event of the story Swift satirizes the needless bickering and fighting between the two nations. Gulliver’s Travels was the work of a writer who had been using satire as his medium for over a quarter of a century. 29

His life was one of continual disappointment, and satire was his complaint and his defense — against his enemies and against humankind. People, he believed, were generally ridiculous and petty, greedy and proud; they were blind to the “ideal of the mean.” 30

This ideal of the mean was present in one of Swift’s first major satires,. In Gulliver’s last adventure, Swift again pointed to the ideal of the mean by positioning Gulliver between symbols of sterile reason and symbols of gross sensuality. 31

To Swift, Man is a mixture of sense and nonsense; he had accomplished much but had fallen far short of what he could have been and what he could have done. 32

Gulliver,s first voyages ends up on the island of Lilliput, second voyages face with encounter a land of giants, in third travels discovers a Flying Island called Laputa, in fourth travels he is discovered by a herd of ugly, 33

despicable human-like creatures who are called, he later learns, Yahoos who like a horse. These virtues are the result of grace and redemption. 34

Swift does not press this theological point, however Swift does not press this theological point, however. He is, after all, writing a satire, not a religious tract. 35