Gulliver’s Travels Essay -- Satire Satirical Essays

Gullivers TravelsGullivers Travels has set a standard for satirical writing for a long time, and Swifts imaginative ability and endowment can explain a lot of the texts continued popularity. People can approach Gullivers Travels like a childrens book, and non search for deeper meaning. They read the story as a fantasy, and seek only to be entertained. Gullivers Travels is valuable and enjoyable for its plot and surface elements alone, but a deeper level of meaning and significance can be achieved if we take note of the satirical elements in the novel. Although to gain a unspoilt appreciation of the satire, the reader ask to be somewhat familiar with the events of Swifts time.Taking the historical period in which Swift was writing into consideration, one of the major changes that was occurring was the shift to a more scientific, empirically-in manakined worldview (being advanced by the Royal Society of England and Francis Bacon). However, Swift and new(prenominal)s were conce rned that if this new scientific outlook could lead to disaster if it continued unchecked. Swift and other nonconformists argued that science without context could have widespread harmful consequences, and this position profoundly reveals itself in his satirical treatment of science and knowledge in Gullivers Travels. This newspaper publisher will discuss Swifts satirical treatment of these subjects in the novel.Several critics have pointed out that evidence exists that suggests that Swift was not uniformly hostile to all science (Phiddian 52). Therefore, it would seem unfair to read Swifts satirical approach to science in Gullivers Travels as a full rejection of the science of his day-it would be overly simplistic and reductive. Swift was not an anti-Luddite. In fact, Swift was a proponent of science in some ways, but he reacted strongly against what he perceived as its abuse or exploitation. The satirical treatment of science in Gullivers Travels is more complex than an all-or -nothing rejection of the scientific expectation that was sightly increasingly popular in Swifts time.Instead of objecting to the use of science in general, Swift seems to have had problems with a particular form of scientific research, and it is with this type of science/scientist that Swift is primarily concerned in Gullivers Travels. The type of science that Swift attacks is inapplicable science, or pure... ...ss of the scientific worldview that was becoming more widespread during his lifetime. Swift himself was not opposed to all scientific endeavors, but Gullivers Travels provided a platform for him to explore the potential negative effect/affects of the new science, engaging in the exaggeration and absurdity that are essential to satire. Although Swifts characterization of the Laputan scientists is distorted, it does successfully call into question the crowning(prenominal) goal of science. Should scientific research be pursued because society has achieved the technology t o perform them? My opinion is that Swift, through Gullivers Travels, argued that it should not automatically and necessarily be pursued.Works CitedFitzgerald, Robert P. Science and Politics in Swifts Voyage to Laputa. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 87 213-29.Patey, Douglas Lane. Swifts caustic remark on Science and the Structure of Gullivers Travels. ELH 58.4 809-39.Phiddian, Robert. A Hopeless Project Gulliver inside the Language of Science in Book III. Eighteenth Century lifetime 22.1 50-62.Swift, Jonathan. Gullivers Travels. Ed. Greenberg, Robert A. 2nd ed. New York Norton, 1970.