Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift's Satire: Gulliver's Travels  
Jonathan Swift is in England and born on November 30, 1667. He is taught and brought up in Ireland, but does not consider himself Irish. He began his learning in Kilkenny   Grammar School in 1673 and then goes to Trinity College in 1981, and he graduates in 1686 with a B.A. degree. He soon becomes a secretary to Sir William Temple, and in the process obtains a M.A. degree from Hart Hall. He publishes his first poem, "Ode to the Athenian Society," in 1691, and he writes A Tale of Tub in 1696, which attacks religious abuse, and this begins his satiric career in literature. In 1704, he publishes A Tale of the Tube and The Battel of the Books, which attacks the disputes between old views and modern views.   Pledging allegiance to the Tories in 1710; he becomes a political journalist. Swift becomes a Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral   in Dublin, this is the highest position he achieves. In 1726, he publishes Gulliver's Travels, which pokes fun at many aspects of culture at the time. 19 years later, he would die from a brain tumor on October 19, 1745. Gulliver's Travels is about a ship's surgeon Gulliver who through his travels discovers many interesting islands, people, ways of thinking, and behaviors. With each voyage, Swift describes to Gulliver humanity in a very satiric way while letting Gulliver manage his way home. The people Gulliver meets are far different from in many ways. Some are tiny while some are big; some are very bright and some very narrow minded. Through these variations in these lands, Swift puts a masterful satire together.
Swift sets Gulliver off to the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu which is off the coast of Sumatra.   He shipwrecks on the island of Lilliput and awakes to find he is tied down by people less than six inches high. Gulliver is surprised "at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals, who dare venture to mount and walk upon my body" (16), but he admires this quality in them. Gulliver... [continues]

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