Swift Comparison

 

 

Cameron Martin

And

Andrew Winsick

 

Saugus High School AP Literature Author Comparison Project

 

 

Jonathan Swift

 

 

Gulliver’s Travels

A Tale of a Tub

 

 

Table of Contents

 

Author Biography

Overview of Texts

            Gulliver’s Travels

            A Tale of a Tub

Style Elements

Critical Reads

            Political

            Formalist

            Historical

            Biographical

            Reader-Response

Multiple Choice Quiz

Annotated Bibliography

5 Relevant Cites

 

 

Author Biography

 

            Jonathan Swift was born in Ireland in 1667.  His father, the source of the family’s income, died seven months before he was born and left the family with no money to live off of.  He was then taken to England by his nurse so that he could be taken care of in a better environment.  This did not last long and at the age of four he was sent back to Ireland.  Upon returning to Ireland, his mom left to go to England.  She left him with her very wealthy brother-in-law.

            Swift went through basic schooling, first at a grammar school by the name of Kilkenny Grammar School.  After he finished his eight years of schooling there, he went to Trinity College in Dublin for seven years where he received both his B.A. and M.A.  Many of his teachers said that he was not a very good student and that he was very focused on his own ideas.  During the same time period that Swift was going to college, the anti-Catholic Revolution was occurring.  In order to get away from the situation, he moved in with a friend of his mothers in England.  He worked for her as a secretary but did not really enjoy it because he felt as though he was a servant of the household. 

            Swift then became a teacher of this young girl and fell in love with her.  Nothing is really known about what their relationship entitled but they did spend a lot of time together until she died.  He kept a lock of her hair among his belongings for the rest of his life.  Swift then returned to Ireland where he met another woman and they had an affair.  Swift was disappointed when she never admitted her love for him.  He then tried to take over a political paper but failed.  After that he met another girl whom he had tutored but he rejected her because she was 22 years younger and he was not interested at the time.  He soon became the dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral but began to have health issues.  It is thought that he might have had a sort of Alzheimer’s disease.  He knew this and described himself as “a tree, dying from the top.”  Swift died at age 78 a few years later.

            Throughout his life, Swift wrote prose and poetry and papers.  Many of his writing were not published because he thought that they were not appropriate for the time.  Yet others were published and sent to important political figures in order to solve social problems.  Swift’s writings varied on the content although most were political or had a political underlying message, many directed at England.  It was through his unique writing style that Swift truly became known however.  He was a strong supporter of satire and this use of it helped to establish his career.  Swift was a remarkable writer who was not afraid to express his ideas through prose and poetry.

 

 

Overview

 

Gulliver’s Travels

 

            Gulliver’s Travels recounts the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a practical-minded Englishman trained as a surgeon who takes to the seas when his business fails. In a deadpan first-person narrative that rarely shows any signs of self-reflection or deep emotional response, Gulliver narrates the adventures that befall him on these travels.

            Gulliver is taken into the capital city by a vast wagon the Lilliputians have specially built. He is presented to the emperor, who is entertained by Gulliver, just as Gulliver is flattered by the attention of royalty. After staying in England with his wife and family for two months, Gulliver undertakes his next sea voyage, which takes him to a land of giants called Brobdingnag. The farmer eventually sells Gulliver to the queen, who makes him a courtly diversion and is entertained by his musical talents. Social life is easy for Gulliver after his discovery by the court, but not particularly enjoyable. Gulliver is often repulsed by the physicality of the Brobdingnagians, whose ordinary flaws are many times magnified by their huge size. On a trip to the frontier, accompanying the royal couple, Gulliver leaves Brobdingnag when his cage is plucked up by an eagle and dropped into the sea.

            Next, Gulliver sets sail again and, after an attack by pirates, ends up in Laputa, where a floating island inhabited by theoreticians and academics oppresses the land below, called Balnibarbi. This land is populated by Houyhnhnms, rational-thinking horses who rule, and by Yahoos, brutish humanlike creatures who serve the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver is grief-stricken but agrees to leave. Gulliver then concludes his narrative with a claim that the lands he has visited belong by rights to England, as her colonies, even though he questions the whole idea of colonialism.

 

A Tale of a Tub

            A Tale of a Tub is the story of three brothers who represent three branches of Christianity.  Peter is a stand in for Saint Peter and represents the Catholic Church.  He is the first to say he is better than his other brothers and does not allow them to call him their brother which parallels the Catholic hostility towards Protestants and Calvinists.  Martin is the representative for Martin Luther and is the brother who starts to go against what Peter preaches.  Jack is Swift’s John Calvin who takes Martin’s ideas even further.

            The book is divided into sections; each of which either tells the tale of the brothers or is a Digression on Learning, which was Swift’s way of saying a satirical rant on everything from critics to madness to a digression about and in praise of digressions.  He included these to break up the tale of the brothers and give vent to certain items which bothered him.

 

 

Style Elements

 

—Satire—But the large rivers are full of vessels, and abound with excellent fish for they seldom get any from the sea, because the sea-fish are of the same size as those in Europe, and consequently not worth catching; whereby it is manifest that nature is the production of plants and animate of so an extraordinary bulk is wholly confined to the continent, of which I leave the reasons to be determined by philosophers (GT p 120)

            He told his brothers he would have them to know that he was their elder, and consequently his father’s sole heir; nay, a while after he would not allow them to call him brother, but Mr. PETER; and then he must be styled Father PETER; and sometimes, My Lord PETER (ATOAT p 50)

 

—Allusion—The wine…raised our hopes, banished our fears (GT p 266)

            You will find in my will full instructions in every particular concerning the wearing and management of your coats, wherein you must be very exact to avoid the penalties I have appointed for every transgression or neglect, upon which your future fortunes will entirely depend (ATOAT p 34)

 

—Historical References—When they were quelled, the exiles always fled for refuge to that empire (GT p 56)

            Martin laid the first hand; at one twitch brought off a large handful of points; and with a second pull, stripped away ten dozen yards of fringe (ATOAT p 65)

 

—Irony—…resolved into an alphabet more easily than Chinese (GT p 250)

            I confess with shame it was an unpardonable omission to proceed so far as I have already done, before I had performed the due discourses expostulatory, supplicatory, or deprecatory, with my good lords the critics (ATOAT p 43)

 

—Modern References—On the 16th day of June, 1703, a boy on the topmast discovered land (GT p 93)

            A defect, indeed, for which both he and all the ancients stand most justly censured by my worthy and ingenious friend Mr. Wotton… (ATOAT p 61)

 

 

Critical Reads

Political Read:

Swift Analysis

            “If good and ill nature equally operated upon Mankind, I might have saved myself the trouble of this [a]pology” (ATOAT p.1) By adding a humorous twist to an immensely important political problem, an author is able to educate a country.   Jonathon Swift uses satire in order to address the problems that he sees, not only with society, but with the government as well.  Both of his stories, Gulliver’s Travels and A Tale of a Tub, inform the reader on how Swift feels about the current society and how it should be acting.  In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift introduces Gulliver to four distinct societies, each one a little different then the next; compared to A Tale of a Tub, where Swift introduces three sons, each one representing a different religion.  It is through the similarities and differences between these two stories and their political situations that Swift is able to truly express his own views on the political situations in his own society.

            Although the two stories do not share a common plot, they do share many underlying political criticisms; “his Lordship did so, and I remained alone, under many doubts and perplexities” (GT p.78).  One of the biggest and most obvious similarities is that both stories have three solutions.  Swift offers three new ideas that pose as political and social changes to the current situation.  In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver ends up going to four distinct “lands”.  Each land has its own people, with their own language, their own political system, and their own ways of life.  Gulliver gets to learn all the new languages and become accustomed to the way that each ruler runs his land, introducing him to new political ideas.  In the piece A Tale of a Tub, there are again, three options.  This time they are in the form of three brothers.  These three brothers each represent a religion and they are given land from their father.  Each brother sets up his own way of life and how he wants to govern it.  They need to keep their society in line, so they develop their own ways of doing it.  The common theme in both of these stories is how different types of politics equal different end results.  In both cases, Swift is trying to convey that the current political system is unsatisfactory and needs to be changed.  In Gulliver’s Travels, he makes it very clear how he feels about England and their current system by having every land that Gulliver visits, mock England and it’s political system (GT p.145).  They do not believe how a land like that could ever govern its self.  But the two stories did have some differences in how Swift wanted to describe these new political agendas.

            Swift used two different ways to portray his ideas on the current political issues.  In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift utilized four fictional “nations” and how they were organized; showing that they were more advanced and did not have the same problems that England was having at the time.  However, in the other story, Swift used three brothers and their introducing new religions to their lands to depict how political change was needed.  Gulliver’s Travels used a man wandering aimlessly through his adventures while A Tale of a Tub used three men with their own situations.

            These two stories share more similarities then they do differences.  This is because not only were they written by the same author, but also the author was trying to convey the same message in both, but with a new approach.  Swift wanted his society to see and understand that the government that was established was not their best option and that there were many other options that no one even knew about.  Swift was not writing in order to get the current government to adopt one of his fictitious systems, but rather to show how there were other types that could be more effective.  By using Gulliver’s Travels and A Tale of a Tub, Swift was able to capture his audience’s attention and make the general citizen aware of the political change that needed to take place because just “as wit is the noblest and most useful gift of human nature, so humour is the most agreeable” (ATOAT p.9).

 

 

Formalist Read:

Formalist Comparison of Jonathan Swift’s

A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels

 

            “I already discover that the issues of my observanda begin to grow too large for the receipts” (Tub 103).  The end of Jonathan Swift’s Tale of a Tub states he cannot continue because those he attacks in his satire will not be capable of handling such criticism.  Both Swift’s novels, A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels, criticize the customs of the time period through the use of sophisticated, scholarly diction which satirizes and entertains, however each novel directs its attention to different subjects. Tub attacks the leading religious beliefs using an allegory about three brothers broken up by various digressions commenting on other items that peeved Swift, while the description of Lemuel Gulliver’s travels to various lands is structured in the fashion of the too common travelogues of Swift’s day creating a sense of reality while describing events which seem typical of the hallucinations described by people tripping on acid or LSD.

            Jonathan Swift is one of the most well known satirists of the 17th and 18th centuries.  The novels A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels are two of his finest works as they both effectively satirize political and religious ideas at the time of their writing.  Lemuel Gulliver’s tale reflects the problems of England colonizing and condescending to the people of the New World.  Gulliver’s experiences in Lilliput and Brobdingnag put into perspective the feelings of extreme power, when with hardly any effort Gulliver could destroy Lilliputian society, and extreme powerlessness, when even exercising all his resources he can barely amuse the giants of Brobdingnag.  His experiences show the problems associated with one race or nationality or gender believing in or taking on a false sense of superiority.  Similarly, the description of the three brothers and their coats in A Tale of a Tub show the ridiculous nature of believing one interpretation of a religion is more correct than another and Swift effectively attacks those Christians who believed their view was infallibly correct to the point they fought and killed other Christians for having a different interpretation.

             The similar nature of these two novels satirical language is offset in their structure.  Swift established credibility in Gulliver’s Travels by breaking the book into four parts, each with its own adventure and lesson for Gulliver, and writing the satire with the frame of the travelogue which was popular in the time period.  A Tale of a Tub, however, is written as an allegory of three brothers and the ornaments they put on their coats.  Throughout the narration of the brothers, Swift interjected digressions on what he called Learning, which was various topics the author felt needed addressing.

            The novels A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels both use sophisticated formal diction to satirize the political, religious, and social beliefs of the 18th century.  They are structured in different ways in order to effectively deliver that satire.

 

Historical Read:

  • The brothers in A Tale of a Tub represent different branches of Christianity and their differences and struggles represent the religious strife and the anti-Catholic feelings of the time period
  • The ornamentation each brother puts on their coats is equivalent to the differing practices of each of the major religions
  • Gulliver’s Travels rejects all religion by not even discussing it in each the lands visited by the sea-faring Captain
  • Swift examines English colonialism and English feelings of superiority during the description of Gulliver’s trip to Lilliput

 

Biographical Read:

  • Swift’s experience as a clergy member allowed him to see first-hand the problems between the Catholics and the Protestants
  • Swift constantly traveled between Ireland and England giving him a basis for Gulliver
  • His satirical nature developed from his headstrong spirit established when he was young in grammar school

 

Reader-Response Read:

  • In Gulliver’s Travels, I felt a tie with the section relating to yahoos.  It seemed to be a direct connection to mankind and its lack of knowledge and brutality.
  • The idea that a civilization has brute strength contrasted with another being beautiful, smart, and intellectual.
  • GT also brought forth the thought that our universe could be small and finite compared to another that is more vast in size and insight.
  • In A Tale of a Tub, the concept of three brothers representing three religions was a clever way to present Swift’s argument and I was amused.
  •  The digressions in ATOAT made me contemplate the various issues Swift felt the need to discuss.

 

 

Multiple Choice Quiz

 

1.  Who is the topic of this web page?

            a. James Joyce

            b. Jonathan Swift

            c. Henry David Thoreau

            d. C-Mart and A-Winz

 

2.  What country was he born in?

            a. United States

            b. France

            c. England

            d. Ireland

 

3.  At what University did he get his Masters degree?

            a. Trinity

            b. Oxford

            c. Harvard

            d. Yale

 

4.  How did he die?

            a. Alzheimer’s

            b. He was exiled from Europe due to political writings and his death is unknown.

            c. He committed suicide after his true love left him.

            d. Cancer

 

5.  Who are the first people that capture Gulliver?

            a. The English

            b. Houyhnhnms

            c. Laputa

            d. Lilliputians

 

6.  What was the nature of the inhabitants of the second land Gulliver went to?

            a. extremely small

            b. extremely large

            c. smart horses

            d. dumb brutish humans

 

7.  Who does Gulliver claim the lands he visited belong to?

            a. Himself

            b. England

            c. Ireland

            d. The people inhabiting each

 

8.  What does the picture below show?

             

a.       English being dominated by a Brobdingnag

b.      Gulliver entering the capital of Lilliput

c.       The superiority of colonial powers over New World lands

d.      Jonathan Swift’s view of himself compared to humanity

 

 

9.  What major religion does Peter represent?

            a. Christianity

            b. Calvinism

            c. Islam

            d. Catholicism

 

10.  What is the father’s will?

            a. a representation of the Bible

            b. a piece of paper the brothers ignore

            c. that the brothers should live on different continents

            d. that Ms. Maghakian should give us all A’s

 

11.  What significant item of clothing is each brother given?

            a. Hat

            b. Shoes

            c. Coat

            d. Pants

 

12.  What does the author use to enable to him to express his opinions on other matters throughout the story?

            a. Transgressions

            b. Regressions

            c. Aggressions

            d. Digressions

 

13.  What is Swift’s main style element?

            a. Satire

            b. Alliterations

            c. Dialect

            d. Stream-of-Consciousness

 

14.  In Swift’s use of historical reference, what event is he describing when he mentions Martin?

            a. Cromwell’s overthrow of the colonies

            b. Germanic barbarians raids throughout Europe

            c. Martin Luther’s 95 theses

            d. The Great Schism

 

15.  What is significant implication about the boy seeing land from the top mast?

            a. The increase in use of boats as transportation

            b. The discovery of the New World

            c. Child Labor issues

            d. The deteriorating eyesight of humans as years progress

 

16.  What does Swift want to be reformed?

            a. The Church of England

            b. Social ills

            c. Slavery

            d. The government

 

17.  Which of these is correct?

Each land has its own:

I.                    People

II.                 Language

III.               Political System

IV.              Currency

 

a.       I only

b.      I and III

c.       I and II

d.      I, II, and III

e.       I, II, III, and IV

 

18.  How does A Tale of a Tub break up its political/religious examination?

            a. Three brothers and their articles of clothing

            b. Four nations

            c. A father and his rebellious sons

            d. Horses and Yahoos

 

19.  Which drugs are referred to in the formalist criticism of A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels?

            a. cocaine and acid

            b. LSD and PCP

            c. acid and LSD

            d. cocaine and PCP

 

20.  What is Gulliver’s first name?

            a. Samuel

            b. Lemuel

            c. Peter

            d. His first name is not known, only his last

 

21.  Fill in the blank.  Swift called his interjected rants ________ on ________.

            a. Digressions, Learning

            b. Instructions, Religion

            c. Transgressions, Society

            d. Aggressions, Calculus

 

22.  Who does the FATHER in ATOAT represent?

            a. mankind

            b. time

            c. God

            d. clergyman

23.  What is unique about GT?

            a. lack of religious reference

            b. political satire

            c. it is the first fictional novel ever written

            d. it is a story about a man who never travels anywhere

 

24.  How did Swift gain the knowledge about religion to write about it?

            a. he studied Buddhism

            b. he converted to Islam

            c. he was a member of the clergy

            d. he was born with the knowledge

 

25.  How did ATOAT affect me?

            a. I cried

            b. I was so angry I ripped the book to shreds

            c. I was amused

            d. I found it completely irrelevant

 

 

Annotated Bibliography

 

Books and Writers. 5 April 2008. <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jswift.htm>

            Biography Info for Mr. Swift.

 

CliffsNotes. 1 April 2008. <http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/Gulliver-s-

            Travels.id-120.html>

            Info for political read

 

SparkNotes. 1 April 2008. <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gulliver/>

            Info for all reads and GT overview

 

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. New York. Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003.

            Info for reads, GT overview, and style elements

 

Swift, Jonathan. A Tale of a Tub. New York. Oxford University Press Inc., 1986.

            Info for reads, GT overview, and style elements

 

http://www.readprint.com/author-79/Jonathan-Swift http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/swift/swiftov.html

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/577008/Jonathan-Swift

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

http://www.incwell.com/Biographies/Swift.html