Critically examine “Gulliver’s Travels” as a mixture of
fantasy, satire and travelogue.
or
Discuss Swift as satirist with reference to "Gulliver's Travels".
or
Discuss Swift as satirist with reference to "Gulliver's Travels".
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
is a fictitious Journey through imaginative countries prefaced by an
introduction in an exquisite view of irony, upon the art of writing history. On
the surface, Gulliver’s Travels is an adventure story containing a
fanciful account of strange and wonderful lands. But, at the centre, it is
actually a satire on mankind. The passages of satirical allusion are few, and
thrown at random among a scattered mass of incoherent fiction. But no word
drops from Swift’s pen in vain where his work ceases for a moment to satirize
the view of mankind in general. Gulliver’s Travels, as W.H. Hudson
points out, “turns out, on closer
inspection to be one of the bitterest satires on mankind ever penned.”
Gulliver’s Travels has four parts. Each
part has its own peculiar mood and atmosphere. The book gives us a fanciful
account of the various voyages of a man called Lemuel Gulliver. Every voyage is
an adventure itself and has a fanciful account of strange events. It is through
fantasy that the Swiftian satire becomes entertaining.
In the first book, the satire is
good humoured. Here swift satirizes the court, the politics and the nature of
man. It is funny to see the tiny king desiring to become “the sole monarch of the whole world”. The satire against human pride does
not interfere with our enjoyment of the story.
