pokes fun
at social problems and human weaknesses, often using exaggeration.
In
, Swift pokes fun at the human tendency to equate physical beauty with
moral beauty and physical ugliness with being a morally bad person. The tiny, dainty, pretty
Lilliputians seem doll-like and good at first but turn out to be petty, nasty, cruel, and
vindictive people who focus on trivial things. The huge and therefore ugly people of Brobdingnag
are actually more kind and compassionate (though not excessively so). The king, for instance, is
quite shocked as the naive Gulliver earnestly describes the way war is waged in Europe with
bombs and guns.
Gulliver's trip to the Grand Academy at Lagado, where he
witnesses vast resources spent on useless experiments, such as making marble soft so it can be
used in pillows and trying to extract sunlight from cucumbers, satirizes the experiments going
on in the British Royal Society.
The rational society of the Houyhnhnms, who
are horses, and the...
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