Narrative Technique in Gulliver's Travels

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE IN GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels is an early representation of a novel, resonating both political and social satire. Despite the obvious satirical elements in this text, Gulliver's unreliable narrative voice is a satire within itself. Mocking the travel narratives contemporary of his time, Swift utilizes the narration of Gulliver in order to criticize the naïve and gullible English men and women who read travel narratives as factual documents despite the overt Royalist paraphernalia and overly descriptive aspects.
The text commences with "A Letter from Captain Gulliver to His Cousin Simpson," creating the framework of Swift's satire of contemporary travel documents. Within the very first sentence of this letter Gulliver already states that he urgently published this "very loose and incorrect account of [his] travels". This statement signals to the reader that Swift is purposely conveying his narrator as unreliable, and furthermore, he writes "I do here renounce...a paragraph about her Majesty the late Queen Anne, of most pious and glorious memory". The statements conjointly set up Swift's satire of the travel narrative with both elements of "loose and incorrect" travel accounts, as well as a parody of Royalist paraphernalia. The writing flows along as the narrator's thoughts and memories surface within his mind, with some ideas sparking new ones, which leads to a chain of connected clauses. This style gives the writing a diary or travelogue like quality, where one continues the train of thought unabated. Another particular style found in the writing is the deadpan explanation of details, especially quantitative details. The narrator rarely elaborates on how he is feeling or thinking, but supplies the reader with an abundance of facts and figures of his surroundings and situation.
The unreliability of the narrator runs throughout the text, and is presumably Swift's method of satirizing the unreliable narrations of English traveller’s accounts of their own travels to new lands. In Part I, "A Voyage to Lilliput," Swift writes that when Gulliver first arrived upon Lilliput he "conjectured [it] was about eight o'clock in the evening...was extremely tired...drank [brandy]...and slept...above nine hours". The most intriguing aspect of this section is that Swift conveys his narrator as overly exhausted, drunk off of brandy, and delirious from his swim to shore; therefore, Swift is purposely setting up a narrator who is obviously not in a state of mind where his perception is unclouded. Swift could possibly be satirizing the delusions of the English travellers who were writing back to England at the time, mocking that these captains were also drunk and delirious from their travels, and they quite possibly could be imagining the "wonders" that they described. Anyone who has read Samuel Taylor's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is aware of the effect that the desolation of the sea can have of one's psyche. Swift's inclusion of exceedingly exact measures and time frames is also notable in his attempt to satirize the travel narratives. For example, the narrator was aware of the exact time of day, and exactly how long he slept in the previous quotation. Furthermore, Gulliver narrates an entire paragraph concerning the description of the ancient temple in which he was to stay in Lilliput which exhaustively explains exact measurements of the gate being "four foot high" and "almost two foot wide," and "a small window not above six inches from the ground". Swift is able to mock the overly descriptive narratives of his contemporary British travellers by including overly descriptive and unbelievable measurements into the narrative of his protagonist Gulliver.
Gulliver describes how the island of Laputa moves using this giant magnet, which is attracted to the Earth on one side and repulsed by it on the other. If they stand the stone upright with the attracting side face down, the island goes down, and vice versa. Gulliver is using the formal mathematical and scientific language of his day with all of this stuff about parallelism, attraction, and repulsion. But it's clearly an imitation – none of Gulliver's regular descriptions of things sound this stiff and difficult. Swift imitates different kinds of jargon and technical writing to show that the weakness of mankind isn't just limited to politics and morals; we write pretty badly, too.
The Royalist paraphernalia within Swift's text is equally significant in his parody of travel narrator's unreliability in which English men and women at the time believed as factual. Every instance in which Gulliver says something (or provokes from another) a negative response about England or England's monarchy, Gulliver augments the statement with praise of England and/or the monarchy. For example, in Part II Chapter VII the narrator uses a pre-verification before he begins to tell a story in which his "noble and beloved country was so injuriously treated". Swift then writes "a strange effect of narrow principles and short views!" in relation to the King of Brobdingnag's lack of interest in gunpowder. Gulliver's sarcastic tone could not possibly be any more obvious in this line, as Swift utilizes his narrator Gulliver as a representation of England as a morally corrupt and violent society. In this same section, Swift writes that Gulliver will "hide the frailties and deformities of [his] political mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous light". This statement is further demonstrative of Swift's opinion of the travel narratives in which the authors continuously praise their mother country, not because they were particularly Royalist Englishmen, but because their travels were funded by the monarchy, and therefore they must bootlick and grovel as much as possible so that their funding continues.
The satirist finally satirized himself after exhausting every other subject possible. Or perhaps Swift instead admits that folly, finally, will always be part of humanity, and the self-awareness and cynical distance of the satirist are not the answer. Gulliver learns from the Yahoos the weaknesses of humanity, because he sees them without any redeeming qualities. But there is no place for Gulliver in a world without any of those vices either, because they cannot tolerate him. If there are two possibilities, as Swift seems to be saying, run from all humanity or accept humanity, Gulliver's solution does not work. He is miserable at the end. He has rejected humanity, and his ideal world will not have him. This is not where Swift wants the reader to be at the end. If Gulliver has no compassion for the weakness of humans, then the reader must. If Gulliver cannot see the good in people, such as the wise sea captain, then the reader should.

Essentially, Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a text compiled of various layers of satire, and Gulliver's narrative voice is satirical within itself. In representing the unreliability of contemporary travel narratives, as well as their Royalist purposes, Swift criticizes the English men and women who naïvely determined them as factual documents while he criticised the English imperialist acquisitions and aspirations.