Utopia In Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift was born on 30th November, 1667 in Dublin, Ireland. He was the dean of St. Patrick's church in Dublin. He was an Anglo-Irish author, satirist and clergyman who grew up fatherless. His uncle Godwin Swift took the responsibility of educating Swift. He received a bachelor's degree from Trinity College and then worked as an assistant of a Statesman. Later on, he became the dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Most of his writings were published under alias. He is best remembered for his book Gulliver's Travels. In February,1702, Swift received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity College, Dublin. That same year he travelled to England during spring and returned to Ireland in October. He was accompanied on his trip by

It explores the idea of utopia—an imaginary world of the ideal community or paradise. The idea of a utopia is very old, tracing back as far as the description in Plato’s Republic of a city or state governed by the wise and expressed most famously in English in Utopia by Thomas Moore. Swift’s attitude towards utopia is much more skeptical, doubtful or suspicious and one of the main aspects he points out about famous historical utopias is the impulse and tendency to privilege and support the collective group over the individual. In Plato’s republic the children are raised communally or as a group with no proper knowledge of their biological parents as according to them this helps in understanding that this system enhances and increases social fairness and helps in achieving and maintaining a utopian world. Swift in his novel, says that the Lilliputians similarly raise their children collectively, but it does not satisfy their motive of achieving a utopian world or the results are not exactly utopian, since Lilliput is torn by conspiracies among people. It is a chaos where people continue backstabbing and hold