Gulliver'S Travels

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Gulliver’s Travels Essay on Authority In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift expresses his opinion on authority through out the novel. During this time, his home country England was experiencing many changes and events that Swift did not agree with. There is corruption involved in the political systems on every different journey. Corruption is caused because of people’s selfishness. People tend to only see things from their perspectives rather than be open to other peoples’ views. Swift uses Gulliver’s travels to express his view of the politics that were currently taking place in England at the time he wrote this novel. In his first trip, Gulliver ends up on the island of Lilliput. Here, he is a giant among small people, eating enough food at a time to feed one thousand of them. Gulliver thinks the government on this island is small and ineffecient. Different ideas are exposed to represent how unprofessional and stupid the people on Lilliput are. For example they consider themselves limber compared to Gulliver who they think of as clumsy and awkward. Another example of criticism of authority is in the following passage. “In choosing persons for all employment, they have more regard to good morals than to great abilities for since government is necessary to mankind, they believe that the common size of human misunderstandings is fitted to some station or other, and that providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius of which there seldom are three born in an age but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like to be in every man’s power, the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country except where a course of study is required.” This is a common mindset in the present
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