Thus, Swift emphasizes the idea that by concentrating solely on the abstract, theoretical aspects of problems and investing their energies in unnecessary scientific advances, they ignore the practical concerns of the wretched people below. They are a people who revel in displays of authority and performances of power.
But if they still continue obstinate… he proceeds to the last remedy, by letting the island drop directly upon their heads, which makes a universal destruction both of houses and men. In addition, the beggars ambush the coach, flashing their big, nauseating abnormalities and diseases unabashedly in Gulliver’s face – they are impossible for him to miss. - Characterization -Swift uses direct characterization on the first page when he describes Gulliver, and both indirect and direct characterization to describe the emperors of Lilliput and Blefuscu. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. The narrator first exhibits sarcasm when mentioning that his reader may mistake such a description of women “rather for a European or English story,” thus mocking English society.
Precisely, England’s treatment of the Irish surfaces in Laputa’s excessive punishment of Balnibarbi; just as Laputa restricts sunlight and rain from reaching Balnibarbi, so, too did England restrict Irish trade, leaving the country barren and the people impoverished. Gulliver’s Travels is an indictment on political systems, follies of human learning, scientists, philosophers and the nature of English people in general. It stands as a gross understatement when one of the king’s court comes to warn Gulliver of his forthcoming arraignment for treason, revealing to Gulliver that:[His] majesty, in consideration of [Gulliver’s] services, and pursuant to his own merciful disposition, would please to spare [his] life, and only give orders to put out both [his] eyes…to signify the great lenity and favour of his Majesty…which his Majesty doth not question [he] will gratefully and humbly submit to; and twenty of his Majesty’s surgeons will attend, in order to see the operation well performed, by discharging very sharp-pointed arrows into the balls of [his] eyes as [he] lay on the ground. Furthermore, by showing the way in which people of varying sizes view England, Swift implies that despite a nation like Great Britain’s perception of superiority (as created by its political or military prowess, successful expansion, or general assertion of power), its may nonetheless be perceived as rather “odious” or morally flawed, when viewed from the side by others such as the Irish or the poor.Although subtle, the irony in A Voyage to Brobdingnag surfaces in several notable examples, one of which occurs when Swift states:[The] beggars, watching their opportunity, crowded to the sides of the coach, and gave me the most horrible spectacles that ever a European eye beheld. His life was one of continual disappointment, and satire was his complaint and his defense — against his enemies and against humankind. In any case, Swift’s outrageous reversal attacks human nature, and in this way, serves to shock readers into self-examination and personal reform.Speaking of the governing body of England, Gulliver explains, “The palace of a Chief Minister is a seminary to breed up others in his own trade: the pages, the lackeys, and porter, by imitating their master, become Ministers of State…and learn to excel in the three principal ingredients, of insolence, lying, and bribery” (303).