Exploring the Ways Jonathan Swift Satirises England of the...

Exploring the Ways Jonathan Swift Satirises England of the 1720s In this essay, I will be considering some of the ways Jonathan Swift satirises the English society. I will be focusing on the effect of his book Gullivers Travels both when it was written and on a modern day audience. Gullivers Travels was published in 1726. Jonathan Swift caused a huge riot because of the way he wrote the book. Satire is making a mockery of people or a group of people in a sarcastic way. Satire uses a variety of techniques used in satire, including a lot of toilet humour. In Gullivers Travels, the aspects of English Society that are satirised are the monarchy, upper classes, the suspicious nature of†¦show more content†¦When the place is burning, Gulliver urinates on the palace to put out the fire. The Empress reacted to it by moving herself o the most distant side of the court and said that she did not want the buildings that Gulliver had urinated on repaired for her use. The satire is that despite saving her, Gulliver is to be punished. The Lillipution is a tyrant. An example to show how cruel he is, is when he uses Guliver to capture all the fleets of Belfescu. This is cruel because he is only using Gulliver to his advantage. Another example of his cruelty is when he demand that Gullivers eyes are to be poked out to make him blind. When he does this, he expects Gulliver to be thankful that this is the only punishment he is getting. To any normal person, this punishment would seem very hard, but to the Emperor, he feels that he is being lenient. Swift satirises George I through the Lillipution Emperor. It portrays George I to be a very cruel and horrible person. An example to show how the Emperor was obsessed with ceremonies is when he holds the Leaping and Creeping day This is when people have to jump over or crawl under a stick that either the Emperor, his first minister or both hold. The three who were best at it would get threads to wear around their waist. Swift is Satirising this aspect of the monarchy by showing that they hold ceremonies