Swift S Gulliver S Travels Analysis

¶ … Gulliver's Travels has seen its fair share of political examination, as well as attempted to locate consistent political characterization, including a foolproof political allegory. Why have people vested such interest in analyzing what many consider a hallmark in world and English literature? Perhaps it is because it represents the best example of satirical work, and demonstrates clear political and social criticism. From a gradual transition of absolute governments to modern democracy, Swift gave importance to concepts of balance of power, tolerance, and examination, important aspects of modern society.

Within the first section of the four parts, Swift wrote, Swift tells of the initial voyage Gulliver undertakes. The journey has detail and Swift strongly emphasizes his perspective of the British political system and the religious struggle within England. The first point where Swift emphasizes his perspective is when Gulliver became acquainted with the diminutive Lilliput's and admired their system of government. He observed the people as they competed from a position within the government.

One could see this on page 17 of the book as the people of Lilliput performed on a slender, white thread, just above two feet from the ground. The ones that were able to jump the highest and not fall would succeed in gaining a position in office by entertaining the king. Here Swift shows his disapproval of the British government. Specifically, he shows through parallels, how cunningly and easy Englishmen receive these kinds of positions of leadership.

Another point that can be made is the way Lilliput and Blefuscu's disagree on how to crack eggs. Because of the silly disagreement, the Lilliput's and Blefuscu's engaged in war for "six and thirty moons past" (Swift 25) and revealed the way civilizations engaged in their own petty squabbles throughout history. In writing about the cracking egg conflict, Swift wanted to mirror the outlandish behavior of the British government at the time.

The growing conflicts among the Big-Endians and Little-Endians are quite comparable to the Protestant Reformation- the wars between Protestants and Catholics. People throughout history showed remarkable immaturity and narrow-mindedness even in the smallest of things. Swift wanted to highlight this by using egg cracking as a way to satire Christianity. Essentially Christian sects have the same outline; however, the little differences are what generate big conflict, so much, so that people would leave Britain in order to exercise religious freedom.

Swift saw how ridiculous was and used the conflict in his book to highlight this. In the third section of Gulliver's travels Swift takes a satirical stance again to show his thoughts concerning education and science. He does this by stating the various projects and subjects that the Laputan people work on. The list gets increasingly more ludicrous as the reader continues. In Swifts opinion, a couple of areas in science and education that the Royal Society of London worked on were a waste of time (Firth).

This is vibrantly shown with the absurdity of the Laputans projects. Swift wrote that one Laputan had spent eight years on a project for removing sunbeams out of cucumbers. (Swift 132) During Swifts time, organizations like the Royal.