gulliver's travels

A detailed Summary of gulliver's travels

Jonathan Swift's satirical prose, Gulliver's Travels, is the subject of

a wide variety of literary critique and social interpretation. Although

many readers, at first glance, take this tale to be simply a fantastic

narrative of a common man and his encounters with unusual locations and

people through several journeys, further inspection reveals Swift's true

purpose of creativity--satire. Using the contemporary style of the Travel

Narrative, Swift is able to insert his own personal criticisms of modern life

into the experience of Gulliver. Swift focuses entirely on satirizing

humanity in Book IV of Gulliver's Travels.

Gulliver, representing a common man, encounters a wide variety of

characters along his travels, each representing a subject Swift wishes to

criticize. His satire ranges from relatively simple political criticism in his

experiences in Book I and II to a socio-political criticism in Book III, to

decadent and irrational, Swift shows that most of their behavior have

Swift's Book IV of Gulliver's Travels makes a satirical attack

Houyhnhnms. "Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my Travels so

outstanding intellect, but Gulliver is offended that they want to classify

travels. It is obvious, however, that Book IV criticizes the nature of man

as a rational being. Of interest to the readers of today is Swift's choice of

strong an Antipathy" (IV,193). His opinion of the Yahoos contrasts with

are depicted as faults in humans. These two species are shown to be an

experiment for many years without success when the Houyhnhnm arrives

and Contempt" (IV, 205). Gulliver is able to discard his preconceived

European man, but rather that the European man is merely a "more

Approximate Word count = 645
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous

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