A Satirical Account of English Beliefs

As a satirical account of commonly held 18^th century English beliefs, Gulliver’s Travels succeeds greatly. Just like Robinson Crusoe, Lemuel Gulliver is an adventurer who sails the seas time and again finding himself interacting with unknown beings on distant islands. Thus far, we have seen Gulliver encounter three separate societies that all satirize the culture of England in various ways. As a whole, the book is a mockery of standard travel stories of the time. For example, Gulliver ends up on all of these various islands in the same manner as Crusoe—by means of an improbable occurrence of a natural disaster at sea.

Gulliver first encounters the Lilliputian society and their tiny inhabitants. The ridiculous size of the Lilliputians exacerbates the sheer ludicrous nature of Gulliver’s situation. At any moment he could escape from the Lilliputian detainment simply due to his physical strength. This is clearly playing into the idea that common pretensions of power can often be shown or obtained simply via one’s physical size. Furthermore, when the Lilliputians describe the wars they are currently facing against the other societies, this is Swift’s attempt to recast European history as a series of brutal wars over meaningless and ridiculous disagreements (e.g. Protestants v. Catholics). Swift also criticizes that idea that societal norms are always absolute via Gulliver’s analysis of the ridiculous Lilliputian customs. Almost every society believes that their customs are normal, no matter how arbitrary they are (e.g. the egg-breaking controversy). Thus, when these practices are criticized or challenged there are often violent consequences.

In Brobdingnag (i.e. the land of the Giants), we once again see the idea of the relationship between one’s size and one’s power. However, in this case Gulliver’s role is reserved to essentially that of a toy and spectacle for the giants to use and observe. Gulliver is extremely distraught for much of his time on Brobdingnag, mainly because the King and the ruling class find it amusing that people of Gulliver’s small size think of themselves as so important. Gulliver attempts to explain the intricacies of English society and how advanced the society is, in order to convince himself (and the King) of his own significance. This idea is particularly striking as one never wants to accept that they themselves (or what they believe in) are insignificant. This would deeply hurt someone, as these are fundamental beliefs to any human or society.

The third society Gulliver visits is that of Laputa, in which the inhabitants have oddly tilted heads and strange-looking eyes. This voyage is interesting as one can see Swift building on his previous discussion and satirical description of politics and societal ethics. He moves on to describing the ideas of science, education and even technology. For example, he mocks academics via his portrayal of the flawed and purposeless experiments Gulliver witnesses in the academy. Overall, Swift’s writing is largely entertaining because he uses clever devises to challenge many ideas that were being written about and discussed during the 18^th century.

Silence Dogood and Freedom of Speech

Ben Franklin’s compilation of Silence Dogood letters certainly weren’t published with the intent to be that serious, as many of the letters are quite satirical. For example, the simple fact that he wrote disguised as a woman hints at the fact that Franklin was not writing in the most serious of tones. However, despite the inherently comical nature of the letters, Franklin still raised many compelling points with regards to societal issues being addressed at the time.

In letter number three, Franklin proclaims: “It is undoubtedly the Duty of all persons to serve the Country they live in, according to their Abilities…” (9). For Silence Dogood, this most likely meant entertaining readers of the New England Courant through biweekly publishing’s. Yet this statement also seemed to be a call for other members of society to take action in order to make sure they were serving their country in the best way possible. This may have been through one’s occupation, charity, or simply through abiding by state laws.

Franklin then later builds on his call to the citizenry as he touches on more issues with regards to the state and their power (mainly in letter number eight). While he plucked the words from the London Journal, he writes that he much preferred the phrasing “to any Thing of my own, and therefore shall present it to your Readers this week without any further Preface” (24). He brings to light the ideas of freedom of thought, freedom of wisdom, public liberty, and most importantly the idea of freedom of speech. Franklin believed all these too be inherently tied together, and most importantly that freedom of speech was a right that every citizen deserved as long as one does not infringe on the speech of another. Furthermore, Franklin’s belief that “This sacred Privilege is so essential to free Governments,” that if one were to attempt to overthrow a democratic society then they “must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech” (24).

Franklin published these letters in the 1720s, a solid amount of time before the American Revolution, and drafting of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Thus for him to publish such ideas in a public forum at a time when many people in the colonies had essentially no voice in society is fairly astounding. Franklin was certainly well ahead of his time with regards to holding the proper beliefs for what a functional democratic society needed. It’s still strikes me as very interesting though that he would publish all this under an alias and not as himself, as (all joking aside) much of his early writing was extremely brilliant.