Satiric Gulliver
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Ivan Orozco
8-15-09
Period 2
Gulliver’s Travels Essay
“Satiric Gulliver”
Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator of Gulliver’s Travels, was created by Jonathan Swift as a satirical object. I believe that Lemuel Gulliver is a satiric object whose opinions are the object of Swift’s ridicule. At first, Gulliver distinguishes that his race of humans are high in potential that they are the best race, but at the end of the novel he outright despises the human race, or what he now goes by as the “yahoo’s”. This illustrates how Gulliver does have definitive traits and does undergo a transformation, and that he also is an allegorical representative of humanity. Swift doesn’t intend it to be one of the following, but both of the following.
Gulliver’s opinions about humans in the beginning and the end of the novel differ, revealing how Swift is showing us how a human can change opinions and their way of life after being shown the downsides of the human. Gulliver first demonstrates how he is proud to be of the human race after he prevents and invasion of Liliput by Blefuscu, and after being asked by the Liliputian prince to take down the whole nation of Blefuscu, Gulliver “endeavored to divert him from this design…and I plainly protested, that I would be an instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery” (Part I, Ch. V). Although it is human for someone to become power hungry and take advantage of a weak people, it is not the type of human that Gulliver believes is the better human. He takes into account that protesting the small princes’ asking of taking Blefuscu makes his race better than that of the Lilliputians, showing that they are of more savagery than of his race. In Part II of Gulliver’s Travels, he is shown up as the race that is more of a savage than that of the Brobdingnags after he proposes to their King that he will give them the formula of gun powder, in which the king “protested, that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in...
8-15-09
Period 2
Gulliver’s Travels Essay
“Satiric Gulliver”
Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator of Gulliver’s Travels, was created by Jonathan Swift as a satirical object. I believe that Lemuel Gulliver is a satiric object whose opinions are the object of Swift’s ridicule. At first, Gulliver distinguishes that his race of humans are high in potential that they are the best race, but at the end of the novel he outright despises the human race, or what he now goes by as the “yahoo’s”. This illustrates how Gulliver does have definitive traits and does undergo a transformation, and that he also is an allegorical representative of humanity. Swift doesn’t intend it to be one of the following, but both of the following.
Gulliver’s opinions about humans in the beginning and the end of the novel differ, revealing how Swift is showing us how a human can change opinions and their way of life after being shown the downsides of the human. Gulliver first demonstrates how he is proud to be of the human race after he prevents and invasion of Liliput by Blefuscu, and after being asked by the Liliputian prince to take down the whole nation of Blefuscu, Gulliver “endeavored to divert him from this design…and I plainly protested, that I would be an instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery” (Part I, Ch. V). Although it is human for someone to become power hungry and take advantage of a weak people, it is not the type of human that Gulliver believes is the better human. He takes into account that protesting the small princes’ asking of taking Blefuscu makes his race better than that of the Lilliputians, showing that they are of more savagery than of his race. In Part II of Gulliver’s Travels, he is shown up as the race that is more of a savage than that of the Brobdingnags after he proposes to their King that he will give them the formula of gun powder, in which the king “protested, that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in...