Discuss “Gulliver’s Travels” as a political allegory.
Jonathan Swift was born in 17th century
and he contributed to the 18th century prose by writing essays.
Satire is the powerful weapon of swift and he attacks the social institution of
his times directly in his works. Apart from being a man of letters, swift was
active in the politics of his time. King George-I those ruled the British
empire in those days. There were two powerful parties known as Whigs and Tory.
The king George-I favored the Whigs and in the beginning Swift supported the
king George-I and also the Whig But later, he became the victim of the king’s
indifluence and anger, He then started writing for me Tories. Apart from the
politics in religions also, there was the constant conflict between Catholics
and Protestants. Swift started thinking negatively about everything and his
cynicism could be traced out from his works. His satire is always sharp,
sometimes bitter and it real pessimistic vision of swift.
There is something ill or corrupted or morbid in his satire. Unlike the
innocent harmless sunny satire of Addition and Steels, Swifts satire creates
adverse effect in our minds. In his pamphlet he recommends with ironic
seriousness that every Irish woman should produce children for the Englishman’s
fable. Irois is a literary device by which an author uses words or expressions
in which he more or less the exact opposite of what he intends to convey. Their
very contrariness is intended to shock the reader, while highlight their real
meaning. Swift exposed the pathetic state of the Irish peasant whose only
solution to poverty would be able to see their children as delicacies for the
English nobleman’s fable.
