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Hypocrisy, Explusion And Truth In Thomas Swift's Gullivers Travels

1078 Words5 Pages

Truth-telling and lying, authenticity and hypocrisy, and illusion and reality make up the back bone of Gullivers Travels. The novel also explores self- discovery and awareness. Swift uses extreme amounts of satire and irony to present these themes in a complex understanding of how lying fits into human nature. There is an long history of the idea that literature is not only an image, but a lie. Ancient Greek poet Hesiod tells us that it is a gift to the muses to “speak many false things as though they were true.” Plato banishes him from his city, believe that his idea is untrue to philosophy. Modern philosophy present the notion of truth as pure and simple, which opposes the rich diction and uncertainty of literature. Thomas Hobbes criticizes metaphor as illusion, arguing that the truth is made of exact definitions, not comparisons. Philosopher Jeremy Bentham claims that “between poetry and truth there stands a natural opposition.” The truth about truth is unclear. Swift believed, along with many muses, that properly guided, lying muses have the power to lead us to truth. Satire lifts the veil covering our awareness, so why is it that it takes the form of a lie? Satire is a very particular and unusual form of lying. It distorts reality in a way to reveal the truth. It uses carefully crafted lies to convey truth that would be …show more content…

However, the message Swift is trying to convey is much more vital. He shows that Gulliver's self-deception and savagery is all caused by these very falsehoods in society. By comparing himself to the unnatural "natural" standards of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver rebukes his own nature, as the Houyhnhnms rebuked the Yahoos. His devotion to truth, and the nature of the Houyhnhnms, causes him to go mad. Gulliver's evident devotion to a definite sort of truth-telling makes him a liar at his

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