The author, Jonathan Swift uses plenty of satire in his first book of Gulliver's Travel. The main character in the story is Lemuel Gulliver who travels and visits far and strange lands during his voyage. In the book's introduction it states, "One thing that makes the book rather hard to lay down is the excitement of the story" (Swift IX). In the first book of Gulliver's Travel, Mr. Swift uses the citizens of Lilliput to demonstrate The attitudes and morals of the English politics of this time, by using satire.
During Gulliver's first voyage he gets shipwrecked and upon waking up finds himself tied down by a large number of little people. These little people, who are about six inches tall, are called Lilliputians. At first Gulliver was seen as threat and was treated like a prisoner. With time, he becomes accepted by their community and learns about their lifestyle. What brings sorrow to Gulliver is that he begins to see the similarities between his home country of England and the personalities of the Lilliputians. The Lilliputians were very much like England, both were small in size, but capable of defeating a much larger opponent such as Gulliver, who was over ten times their size. The citizens of Lilliput earned their jobs and places in the government by performing tricks on a rope. Swift states, "When a great Office is vacant, either by Death or Disgrace, five or six of those Candidates petition the Emperor to entertain his Majesty and the Court with a Dance on the Rope" (S!.
wift 25). To someone from the outside world this would look strange, but is was an accepted practice in Lilliput. This was a satire of the English government, who elected their ministers without regard to the candidate's qualifications for the position. Also similar to England, was the bickering between the Big-Endians and Little-Endians. It was no different than the arguments back in England between the Whigs and Tories.
