Savage Indignation

Adresssing the more savage side of satire, Johnanthan Swifts "Gullivers Travels" (written in 1726) made amazing observations of society at the time, including Gulliver's observations on the Court of Lilliput, which is intended to satirize the court of George I (King of England at the time). The book was not only a parody of the travellers tales genre, but also an indirect reflection of human nature and his life with reguards to his experiences in Politics of the preceeding decade. For instance, the episode in which the giant Gulliver puts out the Lilliputian palace fire by urinating on it can be seen as a metaphor for the Tories' illegal peace treaty; having done a good thing in an unfortunate manner.
Gulliver travels to four different remote worlds and on his final return home, he cannot bare to face his family or even normal human beings in general. The fact that he ended up spending alot more time speaking to his horses as a result of his travels, to me seems like a savage attack on the human race and our seemingly unreasonable nature.

One of the main satirical observations I shall take from this story is The horses he met in Houyhnhnms who depict humans (or as they call them "Yahoos") as cannibalistic animals who seldom have any sense of reasoning, therefore simply end up exacerbating the vices that God (or nature if you like) gave them. This is quite a harsh attack. Especially since those horses represented "the perfection of nature." Therefore I classify Johnathans Swifts work here as Savage satire. Its quite cynical and Im not sure if his intentions were at all to bring about improvement (as my definition of satire at the top of this blogg page states), or to simply say, we have no hope as a human race, as history will just continue to repeat itself (just as Solomon observed in the biblical sripture of Ecclesiastes). After all, he could seldom even speak to humans in the end.