How Does Swift Use Satire In Gulliver's Travels

In Jonathan Swift's novel, Gulliver's travels, Swift interprets the current political situation in England by adopting satire into each civilisation in the book, as a way of attacking the ideals of his country and representing the flaws in the monarchy. He approaches this by not only mirroring political problems in a bizarre fashion, but writes what ideally should be utopian lands as those that show the defects in what humans believe to be a perfect society. In each book the civilisation Gulliver arrives to is flawed in some fashion, making Swift's political approach stand out as he doesn’t believe an ideal society exists, so therefor doesn’t write one. Gullivers main observations and Swift’s most direct criticism include the Lilliputians backwards court customs, the Houyhnhnms’ …show more content…
While the first two books came across as strange based on the difference in physical sizes between Gulliver and the citizens of the lands he’d visit, the third book put a sense of abnormality into how Laputa’s society focused on abstract theoretical concepts for everything. Swift’s description of the Laputans creates a physical exaggeration with the description saying “their heads were all reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith” (198). This could represent how consumed they are in their own theories and opinions, as well as their obsession in the stars. Swift even takes inspiration from Enlightenment ideals when creating the geography of Laputa, using speculations of mechanical flight. The idols of science are drawn specifically from contemporary theories and practices, showing how far from concrete values and reality the flying land is (Todd