Gulliver's Travels - a Critique on Society

Gulliver’s Travels:

A Critique on Society

Many novels send a great message that goes far beyond the novel itself that

include powerful political messages. For example “Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet

Beecher Stowe, created controversy from the moment it was published. The Jungle by

Upton Sinclair, alerted the country to the horrors of the meat packing industry”(Carlos-

Diaz 5).

Jonathan swift’s Gulliver;s Travels is another novel for the in taking of this

political message. The narrator, Lemuel Gulliver, travels to many lands that reverse his

mind about the American and English way of life, this being done, he finds his home and

satirizes the world, and uses yahoos as depraved human like beings who are ruled over by

the Houyhnhnms.

He only starts to realize what’s going in the world when he reaches Lilliput. “It is only when Gulliver is ship-wrecked and awakens on a beach with �arms and legs

strongly fastened on each side to the ground’, captured by creatures �not six inches high’

(p.8) that the reader begins to question the veracity of the account. This is, of course, a

description of Gulliver’s encounter with the Lilliputians, a race of people no larger than

his middle finger”(Swift 8).

In the second voyage to brobdingnag, lemuel meets giants on the island where he

meets the queen and becomes her entertainment. Gulliver’s second voyage sees him

arrive in Brobdingnag, populated by a race of giants �As tall as an ordinary spire-steeple’

who take �ten yards for every stride’ (p.8 part2). Between fighting off a giant wasp and

being abducted by an eagle, he passes the time attempting, unsuccessfully, to impress the

king by describing the workings of the English