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Satire


            Jonathan Swift, author of the satirical Gulliver's Travels, employs different characters and situations to represent the aspects of people and societies that he chooses to criticize. The endless bickering between Lilliput and Blefuscu, the behavior of the Yahoos, the characteristics of the Houyhnhnms, and the experiments of the Grand Academy of Lagado are all vehicles to convey Swift's opinions of man and society. On the surface, Gulliver's Travels may appear to simply be a novel that chronicles a man's journey to different lands; but in reality, Swift is using "satire as an attack on a tradition of humans considering themselves to be purely rational beings, with no physical limits" (Walker 18). .
             The disagreement between Lilliput and Blefuscu is a ridiculous one. Their opinions differ about the "correct" way to break an egg, a petty argument that leads to the formation of two separate empires. .
             "For six and thirty moons past, the two sides have been at war." Since Gulliver could not distinguish a difference between the two ends of the eggs, this argument seemed ridiculous. Swift made Lilliput similar to England and Blefuscu similar to France. He satirizes the unnecessary arguing between the two countries and religious differences (Rivero 220).
             In this situation, Swift is mirroring the circumstances surrounding a religious war; specifically, the needless bickering between the Catholics and the Protestants. "Swift satirized the religious schism created by Henry VIII's break with the Roman Catholic Church, leading eventually to the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution" (Rivero 225). The author effectively demonstrates that disagreeing about the "correct" way to worship God is equally as absurd and senseless as the disagreement between the people of Lilliput and Blefuscu. .
             Later in the book, the Yahoos are introduced. In the country in which these creatures live, horses called Houyhnhnms are superior to the human-like Yahoos.


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