Satire in Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift, author of the satirical Gulliver’s Travels, employs different characters and situations to represent the aspects of people and societies that he chooses to criticize. The bickering between the Big- and Little-Endians, the Lilliputian method of selecting public officers, the behavior of the Yahoos, the characteristics of the Houyhnhnms, and the experiments of the Grand Academy of Lagado are all vehicles to convey Swift’s opinions of man and society.
The disagreement between the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians is a ridiculous one. Their opinions differ about the correct way to break an egg, a petty argument that leads to the formation of two separate empires (Swift 59). In this situation, Swift is mirroring the circumstances surrounding a religious war; specifically, the needless bickering between the Catholics and the Protestants. The author effectively demonstrates that disagreeing about the "correct" way to worship God is equally as absurd and senseless as ...