Gulliver’s Travels and the future of political satire
“I cannot but conclude 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.”
~Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Until now, the oldest novel I’ve written about for Lamron Lit Corner was Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. As I approach a novel published nearly a full century before that in 1726, I ask myself—what has changed about the world of novels in the last three centuries?
Well, simply, put, the answer is not too much.
While on the surface prose fiction has indeed changed significantly in terms of writing style and word choice, I am thinking in terms of the actual writing itself. Of course, novels in the neoclassical era used odd capitalization that remains an unintuitive relic of a bygone printing method; and of course, the writers themselves are far less diverse, generated almost exclusively from the white male demographic with the inclusion of only a few women; and, of course, the topics have been long forgotten, the metaphors confused and repressed, and, most importantly for Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the comedy falls on deaf ears.
Or does it?
Gulliver’s Travels stars the titular Gulliver as he finds himself washed up on various fantastical islands over the course of the book. Each of the four islands represents a different aspect of human nature and society that Swift is satirizing, whether it be something as specific as the judicial system of England or as wide as how we as humans are nothing more than grunting, hairy, scared animals without our language and society to tie us together.
While the former example will likely be lost on us today, the latter is a message with which we can all identify. The way Swift captures just how absurd human existence is allows the story to stay popular after all this time. It’s also what gives people the common confusion that Gulliver’s Travels is a children’s book, as absurdism emerged as a prominent genre for children after the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The first island Gulliver visits is inhabited by people who are tiny in comparison to him, the second by people who are massive. This size difference is another common trope that was popularized by Alice, and another reason to think Gulliver’s Travels is meant for children. It only comes through perfectly clearly in the third and fourth islands that this is a book for those who have a full understanding of the power humans hold.
In the third part, Gulliver visits an island whose technology has evolved far past that of 1700s England. The main kingdom exists on a floating island, that island being home to a college that is attempting to create the first universal language. On the lower section of the island lives creatures who are immortal, causing them to fall into a deep depression and out of touch with those who live normal lives. In the fourth island, Gulliver discovers a race of talking horses, who are in constant battle with ‘Yahoos’ or non-communicative, animalistic versions of humans. These sections are filled to the brim with interesting and complex metaphors that allude to the future of humanity all while making one big joke about how society and politics are screwed.
This all leads back to the main thesis of this article: how much have novels changed? Well, considering all good books today are plots for deeper issues concerning our society, how all good books contain complex metaphors for the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys of our world, and how all of it can be done by pointing out just how comedic life is for an average human makes Gulliver’s Travels one of the best-aging novels of all time. Love it or hate it, the themes it presents are as prominent now as in 1726.