“I have a Dream,” and “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” These quotes are timeless. They will last forever and most likely people will always recall the event to which they were tied. Many words throughout history have lasted forever. Satire based on a time and a society still hold relevance today even though the world has changed very much since Swift’s time. Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels as a satire on his time which was the early seventeen hundreds, but the satire still hold true for problems and occurrences still found in our society. When problems with the human way of life our pointed out, one can assume that the same vices will exist forever in humanity. Swift satirizes everything from the human form to sciences and politics, things that still exist and are in the public eye, faults that will exist through out time as long as humans remain. “Whether we read it, as children do, for the story, or as historians, for the political allusions, or as men of the world, for the satire and philosophy, we have to acknowledge that it is one of the wonderful and unique books” (Gosse 1475). Though the theories presented and satirized in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels are from the 1700’s it is still relevant three hundred years later.
Throughout Gulliver’s Travels, Swift mocks politic and established social and educational issues of the 1700’s. Ironically, many of the problems still exist. Swift notes that the problems come from the ruling power wanting to stay in power; therefore, the politicians provides for themselves and not for the people. The common man cannot be involved with law. Swift explains how laws our written in their, lawyers, own language, so that only those who write the laws truly understand them, and can therefore break them with-out penalties. Swift states in Gulliver’s Travels “Peculiar cant and jargon of their own, that no other mortal can understand, and wherein all their laws are written.”(260) Most of the problems in politics are derived from trying to benefit a few at the sufferings of the masses.
Today issues are arising over internet voting. The advocates claim that it will bring unprecedented numbers of voters out to the presidential election. John C. Dvorak, a columnist for PC Magazine stated, “Most people don’t vote because they don’t see clear differences in the officials and they don’t want to understand the issues in a referendum. More people vote when things upset them. Are these people going to be any better informed than in the past when they didn’t vote? No”(101). This points out that many of the average citizens don’t understand what exactly they are voting for. Which is why elections have become more and more about the persona of the president not his usually loose stance on any given issue. There have been requests to reform the Electoral College. It was originally set up because politicians believe that the people where not well informed enough to make a good decision, so there had to be a filter of “better informed people” to make the final decision. Both of these issues relate directly to Swift satire of the people not knowing the “lawyers language”. Things are made so complex that the people really don’t know that when they cast a vote nothing guarantees that their state Electors will vote they way they did.
The national budget is everywhere in today’s media. The government is always accused of overspending. Overspending has become so bad that we have a huge national debt. Swift ironically addresses this problem with governments in his novel. He uses Gulliver’s Travels to express that better governments wouldn’t have spending problems, because they would never overspend their budgets. Better governments would only spend money for necessary causes. This can be seen when Gulliver is recounting one of the kings and his conversations, “I computed our taxes at about 5 or 6 million a year… he found issues he found they sometimes amounted to more than double” (Swift 130). Overspending is now as big of issue as it ever has been. Our government is just now trying to not spend more than it collects in taxes. Also, the discussions of whether to pay back our national debt have become a larger issue over the past few years. Swift satirically comments on countries debts, “He asked me, who were our creditors and where we should find money to pay them” (Swift 131), obviously making fun of the point that we owe ourselves money and if we are overspending that we can’t get the money to pay ourselves back.
Swift ironically points out in his novel, that rich families would arrange for their sons to become elected to parliament. There will continue to be problems of electing those not for there skills required for such a position, but for fame as an actor or the wealth and power their family has. Swift attacks how the British elect parliament by explaining how the Lilliputians are “elected” by being able to do acrobatics on a tight rope. Obviously dexterity is not a needed ability in governing a country, but now in our society there is controversy over recently elected governors (former pro wrestlers) and representatives in congress (actors). Popularity at Swift’s time or ours can always cause for an unfit person to be elected to a high position of power, which they may abuse.
Book one of Gulliver’s Travels describes the separation of political parties in Lilliput. Parties are decided based on the side that one cuts an egg; each party claims that there is obviously only one way to cut an egg. The group in power creates laws banning the opposing group’s method of cutting an egg. There are revolutions and wars between the two parties over this obviously trivial issue. Swift is comparing the two parties of the Lilliputians to the political parties of his own time, the Tories and the Whigs. “Broadly defined, the Tories believed in the divine right of the kings to rule- that they were ordained by God. Whigs believed that the king was there at the request and good will of the ruling families of the country so could only continue to rule at their approval” (Whig or Tory). The groups in the novel fight more about what group people are in than the issues themselves. “In this book Swift, by describing the ludicrous system that Lilliput’s government fashions in, is satirizing the English system of governing” (Cullom). While this separation of parties is based off one issue, the separation of the groups and working against each other and not directly for their beliefs still holds true with Republicans and Democrats of today.
Swift in the second book makes direct attacks on the society of his time. Gulliver explains to the Brobdingnag king about the society in which he lives and the king responds, “I cannot but conclude 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” (Swift 137). The comment the King made was after receiving accounts of lawyers from Gulliver. Lawyers in our present day are also targets of many jokes and considered to be very manipulative. While respected at the same time they are considered the real criminals of the world. Swift also believes that women of his time should be educated and treated the same. Swift used the Houyhnhnms blatantly to express this: “In educating the youth of both sexes, their method is admirable, and highly deserves our imitation.” (Swift 281) It was only recently when women were treated as equals by this country, women were given the right to vote in 1920. Swift recognized over two hundred years ago, that women should be educated and treated as equals to men.
Swift doesn’t specifically attack people in Gulliver’s Travels nearly as much as he attacks groups of people. “For Swift knew people, and, as individuals, he loved them. But, when they changed into groups, he hated them, satirized them, stung them into realizing the dangers of the herd” (Marlowe 2425). In Gulliver’s Travels Swift usually satires groups like lawyers, royalty, and parliament. Many times specific things like lawyers “cleverness with words” was considered ingenious, how they could help a common man settle disputes in the law. Individually that could be looked at as a good thing. When Swift looked deeper into how everything was lawyers fighting with lawyers over the meanings of their “language”, this was “the dangers of the herd”. Today there is many times an individual good deed is worth praise. On the other hand, a group of people for this same cause are looked at and considered to be worsening the cause, not helping it. Today and excellent example would be Elian, the Cuban child. People have surrounded his house, to show support of him staying in the US. But, so many people being at the house brought it to the point that when they removed the child from that home, it required the FBI and going to get him at 5:00 am to avoid the crowd. The people surrounding his house were not actually helping him anymore. The issue has already been helped by the initial large interest of the people. Crowds surrounding the boy now are just getting in the way to a quick resolution to him getting back in to a permanent family.
“Swift’s critique of the weaknesses of human nature is as piercing today as it ever was” (Damrosch, v), The exact words of Swift may not be as recognizable as other author’s words or famous speeches, but the ideas behind Gulliver’s Travels are still very relevant to today’s society. Gulliver in the land of the Houyhnhnms is something we can still relate to today (Cullom). Swift points out human follies in government, society, and education. Our governmental groups need to realize they shouldn’t be trying to gain power for a party, but they should focus on creating power for whatever ideas the people of the time believe. Our society has also allowed many terrible things, like racism, to last generation after generation. We need to follow Swift’s ideas and be more like the Houyhnhnms that accept everything else and treat others as equals. Lying has become such a part of life that we have lawyers arguing just to declare what is the truth. Ironically Swift points this out as being part of the downfall of human. Much of our progress has come at the expense of other people, nature, and our gentleness towards each other. All people who read Gulliver’s Travels don’t like to think of their selves as Yahoos. We are what Swift described only smarter and perhaps because of that more capable of evil. If society could quench even half the evil that Swift points out, the world would be a much better place. Michael McKeon describes Gulliver’s travels better than anyone else could by saying, “It is a socially useful fiction” (McKeon 203).
Gosse, Edmund. “A History of Eighteenth Century Literature” Bloom 1475.
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Dvorak, C. John. “Voting by Internet, Nyet!” Miller 203.
Miller, Michael, Ed. PC Magazine. Ziff-Davis, 4,9,2000.
McKeon, Michael. “Parables of the younger son: Swift and the containment of Desire” Rawson 197-215.
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“Whig or Tory” N/A: Online. Internet. 3,27,00: Available www:
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