Swift’s Satire in Gulliver’s Travels:

A satire is a literary device in which the author exposes and ridicules the follies, absurdities and incongruities of individual or society. Swift in his preface to ‘The Battle of the Books’ points out that “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason…very few are offended with it.”

Swift was a prolific writer, notable for his biting satires. Swift’s polemical tour de force, Gulliver's Travels satirizes mankind on many levels. He wrote the scathing satire on behalf of human dignity that is famous for being full of reminders of human filth. The book is also a brilliant parody of travel literature and a witty parody of science fiction.

Swift employs both comic and corrosive satire in his satirical masterpiece. The other literary devices used in his satire are irony, humour, invective exaggeration, mockery, parody, allegory etc.

Gulliver's Travels, is a complicated, unblinking criticism of humanity, written, Swift said, “to vex the world rather than divert it.” “I wrote for their(men’s) amendment and not their approbation”, says Gulliver in his prefatory letter to cousin Sympson. Within the framework of his travels, very little of human social behavior, pretensions, or societal institutions escape the deflating punctures of Swift's arrows.

In the first voyage, Swift mounts a dark and violent assault on the political institutions and the politicians of his time. The juxtaposition of physical delicacy and mental brutality of Lilliputians is all the base of satire and irony in the story of Lilliput. The six inches high midgets constitute the ‘moral midgets’ in the Court and Parliament of Swift’s day.  Swift portrays them as being only six inches tall because it is an excellent way to trivialize the significance of their wars, the political jousting, their endless infighting and their sycophancy over honours and rewards.

The first voyage in particular is a satirical romp in which Swift takes some memorable shots at English political parties and their antics. Flimnap’s dancing on the tight rope symbolizes Sir Robert Walpole’s dexterity in parliamentary tactics and political intrigues. The phrase “one of the king’s cushions” refers to one of King George’s mistresses who helped to restore Walpole after his fall in 1717. High Admiral Skyresh Bolgolam which turns out to be Gulliver’s ‘mortal enemy’ represents earl of Nottingham while Reldresal may symbolize Lord Carteret who was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by Walpole.

Gulliver’s extinguishing the fire of queen’s palace is a reference to Queen Anne’s annoyance with him on writing “A Tale of a Tub”. In highlighting the conflict between the Big-Endians and the small-Endians; “it is computed that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end”, Swift is actually ridiculing the theological disputes between Roman Catholics and the Protestants. 

Swift also pokes fun at the differences between ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’—the Low-Church and High-Church political parties—by distinguishing them by their low heels and high heels respectively. The enmity between Lilliput and Blefuscu refers to England’s rivalry with France.

Also when the King of Blefuscu offers Gulliver his "gracious Protection" if he will serve him, Gulliver becomes the mouthpiece of Swift’s satire and comments: "I resolved never more to put any confidence in Princes or Ministers, where I could possibly avoid it."

In the second voyage of Gulliver, there is the satire of more general kind. At times it seems a satire on human physiognomy and at times through the king of Brobdingnag, Swift ridicules the running of British parliament:
"My little friend Grildrig; you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country. You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator. That laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.”

When Gulliver gives an enthusiastic account of the life in his own country, the trade, the wars, the conflict in religion and the rift between the political the political parties in the last century, the king remarks that the history of Gulliver’s country “was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions and banishments” etc. The king mocks and observes how contemptible is human grandeur which is being mimicked by such diminutive insect as Gulliver. When Gulliver reveals the secret of gun-powder, the king is horrified and dismissively concludes that “the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” 

In the third part of Gulliver’s travels, Swift takes us to an imaginary floating island of Laputa, and there is a comic satire on human intellect, misuse of his sagacity in science, philosophy and mathematics. Gulliver observes that the inhabitants are wholly engrossed in their fruitless meditation:

"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.”

Here Swift mocks at the diverted intellect of scientists, academics, planners and all those who often get lost in theoretical abstractions and exclude the more pragmatic aspects of life. The various researches that are in progress at the Academy of Projectors in Lagado are fantastic and preposterous. Experiments are being made “to extract sunbeams out of cucumbers, to convert human excrement into its original food, to build houses from the roof downwards to the foundation, to obtain silk from cobwebs.”

And, finally, there is the grim and poignant satire on the human longing for immortality which is symbolized by the Struldbrugs. Gulliver describes himself as “struck with inexpressible delight” when he hears about the Struldbruggs, while Swift silently mocks his naivety. When he hears how they must live and sees for himself their condition he describes them as “the most mortifying sight (he) ever beheld”

In the Fourth voyage to the country of Houyhnhnmms there is a sharp pointed satire on human moral shortcomings. This voyage contains the most corrosive and offensive satire on mankind. The sheer intensity and violent rhetoric are simply overwhelming. Swift’s clinical dissection of the utopian ideal is at best in the description of Houyhnhnms. At first, these improbable horse-like creatures seem to be the embodiment of pure reason. They know neither love nor grief nor lust nor ambition. These are in sharp contrast with the loathsome Yahoos, brutes in human shape. Swift’s impeachment of human nature becomes extremely cruel when he says:

“Upon the whole, I never behold in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, nor one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy.”

Gulliver maintains:

“I had hitherto concealed the secret of my dress, in order to distinguish myself ,as much as possible, from the cursed race of Yahoos.”

 Houyhnhnmsland virtually constitutes Swift’s utopia as it is governed by rational Houyhnhnms:

“Here was neither physician to destroy my body, nor lawyer to ruin my fortune; no informer to watch my words and actions…here were no gibers, censurers, backbiters, pickpockets, highwaymen, house-breakers…gamesters, politicians, wits…ravishers, murderers, robbers …”

Swift ingeniously cracks the smug self-confidence of the contemporary society and makes it clear that his chief adversary is man's pride:

“When I behold a lump of deformity, and diseases both of body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience.”

Every satirist is at heart a reformist. Swift, also, wanted to reform the society by pinpointing the vices and shortcoming in it.  "I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind…I write without any view to profit or praise", he concludes his travels on a philanthropic note.