Social satire in Swift's Gulliver's Travels
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V. Conclusion
Gulliver's Travels has undoubtedly been Swift's most discussed work by generations of critics who have provided a wide variety of interpretations of each of the four voyages and of Swift's satiric targets.
Gulliver's Travels is not only a political satire in the form of an adventure novel. The main object of Swift’s satire is human nature itself, mainly Man's pride, manifested in pettiness, grossness, rational absurdity, and animality. His character, Lemuel Gulliver, travels to several fantasy worlds where he learns that English institutions, such as the government and social structure, are by no means ideal.
Rationalism was characteristic of late 17th-century England and this is where Swift’s intellectual roots lay. With its emphasis on common sense, its distrust of emotionalism, its strong moral sense, rationalism gave Swift the standards by which he weighed and appraised human conduct; but Swift did not believe that science and reason require absolute devotion. He thought there are natural limits of human understanding because humans are not meant to know everything and there is a realm of understanding into which humans are simply not supposed to venture.
The writer provided a description of reason’s weaknesses and of how people use it to delude themselves. Although his moral principles are not new, the quality of his satiric imagination as well as his literary art make his work original.
His power of inventing imaginary episodes and all their accompanying details is unfailing. He states his views through imagined characters like Lemuel Gulliver, whose voyages to nonexistent lands give the author the opportunity to explore the theme of the individual versus society and the idea of utopia - an imaginary model of the ideal community.
The countries of Lilliput and Blefuscu are complete societies with the same kind of issues and flaws as contemporary British society. Swift described those societies as seen through the eyes of Gulliver and we see them for what they are.
Brobdingnag seems to be less corrupt than Lilliput. Swift shows how much simpler things could be if people were not so greedy, although it is obvious that Brobdingnag is far from being perfect.
Swift’s attitude toward utopia is a skeptical one, with no tendency to privilege the collective group over the individual. The Lilliputians raise their children collectively, but the results are not utopian at all since Lilliput is torn by conspiracies and backstabbing.
The rational horses also practice strict family planning so that the male-to-female ratio is perfectly maintained. Although they come closer to the utopian ideal, there is something unsettling about the Houyhnhnms’ indistinct personalities. They are all good and rational and you feel they are more or less interchangeable as they have no individual identities; they do not even have proper names.
The Houyhnhnms, the bloodless, unfeeling creatures who embody pure reason are not only impossible but also useless models for humans, incapable of experiencing the Christian virtues of grace and charity that unite passion and reason.
Their complete lack of individuality make them the exact opposite of Gulliver, who has hardly any sense of belonging to his native society and exists only as an individual eternally wandering the seas.
The last voyage contains the hero’s ultimate rejection of human society. Here "Swift is attacking the Yahoo in each of us".7
Gulliver’s intense grief when forced to leave the Houyhnhnms has been interpreted as his longing for union with a community in which he can lose his human identity. All the other societies he visits make him feel alienated as well.
Gulliver initially shows no interest in describing his own psychology to the reader; he makes no mention of his emotions, passions, dreams, or aspirations. He seems empty, remarkably lacking in self-reflection and self-awareness. It is possible for his personal hollowness to be part of the overall meaning of the novel. By the end, he comes to a twisted self-knowledge in his belief that he is a Yahoo who aspires to become a Houyhnhnm.
Don Pedro de Mendez rescues Gulliver and takes him back to Europe, but Gulliver can no longer recognize virtue and charity when he comes across them and despises Captain Mendez because he doesn't look like a horse. His disgust with the human condition, shown in his treatment of the generous Don Pedro, extends to himself as well, so that he ends in a thinly disguised state of self-hatred.
Swift may thus be implying the idea that self-knowledge has some necessary limits just as theoretical knowledge does, and that if we look too closely at ourselves we might not be able to carry on living happily.
Most of the critics agree that the interpretations given to the fourth voyage refer to the central problem of Swift criticism.
The Yahoos have traditionally been viewed as a satiric representation of debased humanity, while the Houyhnhnms were considered to represent Swift's ideals of rationality and order. The two races have been thus interpreted as symbols of the dual nature of humanity. According to some of the critics, Gulliver's misanthropy was caused by his perception of the flaws of human nature and the failure of humanity to develop its potential for reason, harmony, and order. The hero's desire to become a Houyhnhnm makes him a pathetic man who strives to become someone he can never be.
In the end, Gulliver experiences a dramatic change. He appears to be as equally flawed and absurd as the other beings he encountered because he cannot see the potential in his fellow human beings and he sees the human race all in bleak light.
Although he never complains about feeling lonely, the bitter and antisocial misanthrope we see at the end of the novel shows he is a profoundly isolated individual. By portraying a miserable and lonely Gulliver talking to his horses at home in England, Swift’s satire mocks the excesses of communal life and also the excesses of individualism.
The hero’s repeated failures to integrate into societies to which he does not belong could make Gulliver’s Travels one of the first novels of modern alienation. Gulliver is never eager to return to England, which is not much of a homeland for him. Every time he comes home, he can’t wait to leave again and he never speaks nostalgically about England.
"Alternately considered an attack on humanity or a clear-eyed assessment of human strength and weaknesses, the novel is a complex study of human nature and of the moral, philosophical, and scientific thought of Swift's time which has resisted any single definition of meaning for nearly three centuries."8
Swift strongly believed that man's reason and common sense, which are his highest faculties, continually interfere with his tendency to act irrationally. Lack of faith, he said, is the consequence of vain pride in reasoning, while immorality is the consequence of disbelief. In Swift’s opinion, religion holds moral society together. A person who does not believe in God by faith and revelation is in danger of disbelieving in morality.
The writer points out that rationalism leads to Deism, which leads to atheism and atheism leads to immorality. Where people worship reason, tradition and common sense are inevitably abandoned. Both tradition and common sense tell humankind that murder, stealing, whoring, and drunkenness, for example, are immoral. Yet, if one depends on reason for morality, that person can find no proof that one should not drink, steal, whore, or murder. Thus, reasonably, one would feel free to do these things. Actually, too often people are driven by will and lust rather than by reason.
Swift thought that man is by nature sinful, having fallen from perfection in the Garden of Eden, which is a pre-Enlightenment, Protestant idea .While man is a rational animal, his rationality is not always used for good. People cannot perceive accurately because they are filled with self-love and pride; they are incapable of being rational — that is, objective.
According to John W. Cousin, Gulliver’s Travels is probably the greatest satire in the English language, although its concluding part seems to be a savage and almost insane attack upon the whole human race. Meanwhile, the character of Swift is one of the gloomiest and least attractive among English writers, dominated by a ferocious misanthropy.
In a letter to his friend, Alexander Pope, Swift ind
eed once called himself a misanthrope, but it seems more likely that he was simply frustrated by people who choose not to use the logic and reason they have been endowed with.
The novel is obviously the expression of the author’s concern from various perspectives: it is in the meantime a political allegory, a satire on Walpole's Whig administration and a merciless dissection of the human spirit. We can detect in it his own distress over the blindness and stupidities which had shattered his own career and threatened to destroy the societal values and aspirations which he valued most.
The author’s observations on man are sharp and the satire is disturbing. He wrote to Pope in 1725, "...the chief end I propose to myself in all my labors is to vex the world rather than divert it”. Apparently, Swift was, indeed, a misanthrope to a certain extent. He himself maintained that he hated mankind but found it possible to love individuals, although he criticizes specific actions of particular people.
Swift has been criticized for being a pessimist who writes out of "a bitter mind and a bitter heart" and who sees only "man's ineptitude and failure." 9 To the casual observer, mankind and people appear to be the same. However, mankind is an abstract while people are specific and concrete.
George Orwell refers to Swift's values and world-views as those of a reactionary who has come to believe that ordinary life is not worth living
On the other hand, Gilmore asserts that Swift’s primary aim is to make us laugh, something that modern critics hesitate to consider.
The critical attitude he maintains towards the world is the expression of Swift's repudiation of false and immoral behavior, it is the indictment, by the moral rationalist, of man's irrational conduct.
Swift meant his satire to be a genuine reforming force. Satire, he believes, must be evaluated by its real influence on moral sensibility. In discussing Swift's ideas about the role of the satirist, Tuveson refers to Swift's belief that the greatest test of a satirist is "to bring the message to readers' bosoms, to make men see themselves as well as their neighbours in the glass of satire"10.
Indeed, Swift wished his satire to be more pragmatic than literary, that is, to anticipate social reformation.
Swift’s attitudes in affairs of church and state were influenced by his Irish perspective on English affairs as well as by his identity as a minister of the Church of Ireland. They were central to his writings. Oakleaf observes how Swift’s literary triumphs were also political ones. Placing Swift on the political spectrum of his time is very difficult as, in relation to contemporary party politics, he struggled not to compromise his independence. Swift’s satire has real targets and punitive intensity.
Swift was certainly an interesting and in some ways peculiar man who criticized and satirized what he felt was wrong in society and especially in politics. He felt that man is in his nature corrupt and those who get to power are often the ones who are the most corrupt. We may assume that his intention was to open people’s eyes and make them realize; he stood up for what he believed in and tried to raise people’s awareness.
His criticism is aimed at British eighteenth century society, but much of what he wrote is still relevant today. Gulliver’s Travels is depiction of the human condition and a timeless classic in many aspects.
Swift was different from the 18th century writers. It was during his lifetime that the literary scene was dominated by satire as a literary genre. Still “he stands supreme as a satirist in prose for he was simply louder than most men about his concern for mankind”11
Dobree concluded that “…he was an artist whose cause is finally one with that of humanity”,12 an artist whose work was successful with children as well as with their elders “from the cabinet council to the nursery” as Pope and Gay put it.
Swift reveals our self-deception and our pride, which is the source of all evil. As we travel with Gulliver, we are forced to see ourselves in the mirror of our consciousness. Swift brilliantly shows us what we are and challenges us to be better. Jonathan Swift vexes the world so that it might awaken to the fact that humankind has to save itself by means of a fundamental change.
Although such a bleak picture of humanity may be considered very depressing, there is a point in exposing the depth of our basic nature. Swift seems to be saying that although all of these things are wrong with humanity, they can be fixed. We have the power to change our nature if we choose to; it’s up to us to make the right decision. This message is like modern-day self-help groups: to be able to change, one must first admit the problem.
Swift’s style clear and direct. He moves with perfect ease from a cheerful mood to a grave or cynical one, from joy to misanthropy. His tone varies from the humorous to the savage and his irony reflects his vision of humanity’s ambiguous position between bestiality and reasonableness.
Swift is one of the most complex personalities in English letters whose disillusionment took an indignant turn. He wrote his satires to point out faults, to chasten, and to educate in an attempt to give the public a new moral lens and to "shame men out of their vices."13
In the growing polish and decency of society, Swift saw only a mask for hypocrisy and he used his huge talent to point to the ugliness which he discovered under every beautiful exterior. Although Swift was considered by many a misanthropist, a work like Gulliver's Travels could have been produced only by a man who cared deeply about humanity.
Paradoxically, his care shines throughout his work.
Bibliography
Bullitt, John M. Jonathan Swift and the Anatomy of Satire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.
Davis, Herbert. Jonathan Swift: Essays on His Satires and Other Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.
Dobree, Bonamy. English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century. Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Downie, J. A. Jonathan Swift: Political Writer. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984.
Eddy, William A. Gulliver's Travels: A Critical Study. New York: Russell & Russell Inc., 1963.
Feitlowitz, Marguerite, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s travels, Barron's N.Y., 1984
Lock, F. P. The Politics of Gulliver's Travels. Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Monk, Samuel Holt. "The Pride of Lemuel Gulliver." The Sewanee Review, 1955
Oakleaf, David “Politics and History,” The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Swift, Cambridge University Press, 2003
Quintana, Ricardo. The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift. Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1965.
Rodino, Richard H. Swift Studies, 1965–1980: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1984.
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels, Everyman's Library, 1940
Tuveson, Ernest. (Ed.) Swift: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1964.