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Liang, Chia-Wei
ENG 201
Professor
4/23/2016
The Criticism of Society and Humanity in Gulliver’s travel
“Gulliver’s travel” written by Jonathan Swift describes a surgeon named Gulliver and his
mysterious adventures. Although this book seems interesting and funny, it actually reflects
the contradictions of British society during the first half of the 18th century. Swift through
presenting the contradictions allude to the suspicion of British political, religious, colonial,
money, and human nature.
The description of voyage to Lilliput is an irony of the conflicts between British political
parties. For example, “When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often
happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the
court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in
the office” (1075). As ruling class and governments of British, they are supposed to be the
wisest and most matured people in British. However, the use of dance on the rope to select
candidates for government officer vacancy shows the opposite idea. This satirizes the fatuity
of British ruling class and government officials’ inability. Moreover, heel height, as
distinguishing mark, separating two parties implies the conflict between two British political
parties is nonsense. “High-heeled party” and “low-heeled party” have deep rancor between
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each other, “The animosities between these two parties run so high, that they will neither eat,
nor drink, nor talk with each other” (1081). Although the majesty is in low-heeled party, his
chancellors did not arrogantly walk in and out of court as if the power is wholly on their side.
Instead, they are worry, due to the heir to the crown seems tend to join the high-heeled party
because of his uneven height heels. However, no matter high heels or low heels, it is
nonsense that this problem is able to bring down the unity of a country.
The war between two empires, Lilliput and Blefuscu, is the metaphor of criticism of
British religious ridiculous disputation. With describing the ridiculous war in Lilliput
occurred merely because of the different ideas of how to break an egg, Swift actually intends
to criticize the Catholic and Protestant. The bloody battles brought by these two opposite
religious causing numerous innocent people die. However, the reason is merely because of
the meaningless conflicts of various church ritual matters. Swift also reveals that the religion
that time was nothing but a political tool, and the ruling class eliminated the people who
