"But the main goal that I propose in all my work is to upset the world"Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Jonathan Swift In most ironic works, there are two voices. Ellen Winner and Howard Gardner explain that, ironically, “what the speaker says is intentionally at odds with how he or she sees the world” (428). The use of the word “speaker” twice in this sentence reveals a lot of irony. One of the speakers Winner and Gardner refer to is the actual voice speaking to the audience in the work. The other voice is usually that of the authors and hides behind the text or the immediate voice, with a view opposed to that of the first voice. In Jonathan Swift's ironic short work, “A Modest Proposal,” two of these voices are at work. One voice is the naive voice expressed in the text, a voice that recommends the slaughter of children for the social good. The other, contrasting voice is Swift's own mature voice that sits behind the text and uses the naive speaker to demonstrate the absurdity of the naive speaker's point of view. In Swift's work, Gulliver's Travels, he makes it clear that he will use multiple voices before the work even begins. Swift inserted a letter purportedly written by Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator of The Travels, as a preface to the work. In this light passage, the reader is informed that a voice other than that of the author will be used. The difference in meaning between the two voices is not known at this point, but throughout the rest of the work the contrast of these multiple voices is vital in elucidating Swift's purpose. In Gulliver's Travels, as in other ironic works, there is an initial naive voice in the text, a voice that manifests itself largely in Gulliver. But in book four, the irony takes strange turns that do away with the standard two-voice irony system, like that seen in "A Modest Proposal." A number of creatures are featured, each with a radically different lifestyle. The standard by which these creatures are judged changes over the duration of the work, creating multiple voices of judgment. In Gulliver's Travels it is clear that there is more than one voice, but it is not clear which of the multiple voices expresses Swift's feelings, and therefore the stable opinion by which these creatures are measured. This confusion forces the reader to examine the work for a stable voice. A possible stable solution for the mature ironic voice is Gulliver himself, as he is at the end of the book. At the start of volume four, Gulliver has just been thrown from his ship and finds himself in the land of the Houyhnhnms, friendly creatures who resemble horses but have the ability to speak and reason. Gulliver is taken in by a Houyhnhnm master eager to learn more about Gulliver's land. At the beginning of the fourth volume, there is a blatant naivety, even absurdity, in everything that Gulliver tells Master Houyhnhnm. In describing the many causes of war to Master Houyhnhnm, Gulliver explains that: "Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his domains, where neither of them claims any right." Sometimes a prince quarrels with another, lest the other quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is started because the enemy is too strong, and sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbors want the things we have, or have the things we want; and we both fight, until they take ours or give us theirs. It is a completely justified cause of war to invadea country after its people have been devastated by famine, destroyed by plague, or embroiled in factions among themselves. (184-5) And so the short monologue continues, with the extremism and one-sidedness of views continuing to intensify. Gulliver, however, never refers to one-sidedness. His ignorance of the weight of his words in the first part of book four makes him a naive channel through which these harsh views can pass. Gulliver's ignorance is emphasized by his expressed desire to give a completely unbiased description of the man. Before presenting the harsh views above, he said to Master Houyhnhnm: "I will here set forth the substance of what has passed between us concerning my own country, putting it in order as best I can, without regard weather or other circumstances, while I adhere strictly to the Truth” (184). This contradiction between tone and desire marks Gulliver as ignorant of his position. The one-sidedness that Gulliver does not recognize in his own words seems to be the mature voice of irony, Swift's own voice. If this is the case, Swift believes that the horribly one-sided view of man that Gulliver unknowingly presents is true. Gulliver's naivety is an oblique voice through which Swift can deliver this scathing truth. This form of delivery seems reasonable due to Swift's layout. As his autobiography tells us, “Swift was not a fiery revolutionary” (Hunting 24), thereby assuring us that if Swift indeed possessed these visions of the man, he would not want to express them angrily in a fiery diatribe. Plus, Swift would have known that no one would listen to accusations from a screaming extremist. By shielding his opinions with irony - Gulliver's naivety - Swift, it seems, finds an effective way to express his harsh opinions with a certain gentleness. Such a harsh view of the man would not have been unusual at the time. Thomas Hobbes, a prominent philosopher who immediately preceded Swift, expressed similar beliefs. Hobbes, in his work Leviathan, describes the cause of war between men. He argues that “we find three principal causes of quarrel: first, competition; second, distrust; third, glory” (185). This point of view is quite similar to that presented by Swift, in the guise of Gulliver. Hobbes goes on to say that “force and fraud are at war the two cardinal virtues. Justice and injustice are neither faculties of the body nor of the mind” (188). For Hobbes, the only thing that causes peace among men is the fear of death. In Gulliver's Travels, we find characters remarkably similar to this Hobbesian conception of man: the Yahoos are human-like creatures, but have no redeeming characteristics. Hobbes's conclusion is that men naturally live in a "brutal manner" (187), remarkably similar to that of the Yahoos. However, as Book IV progresses, Gulliver comes to see the perfection of the Houyhnhnm's utopian society, and in contrasting this perfection with the version of humanity he presents, loses his naive view of man. Among the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver tells us objectively: “Friendship and benevolence are the two main virtues among the Houyhnhnms” (202). These positive traits are all governed by reason. There is no possibility of great evils like war, lies and murder in Houyhnhnm society. There are not even small conflicts such as “Quarrels, disputes and positivity in false or doubtful propositions” (202). At the same time as he sees the virtues of the Houyhnhnm system, Gulliver realizes the evil of man – the Hobbesian or Yahoo view of man; this point of view that wecould argue that Swift has all along. As Gulliver's naivety disappears and he comes to view the man as Yahoo, it seems that the irony of the work also disappears; Gulliver adopts the previously established mature voice and escapes from the naivety of the first voice: "When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen or the human race in general, I considered them as they really were, the Yahoos in Fitness and Disposition" (211). When Gulliver is forced by the Houyhnhnms to leave their community and join humans, including his wife and children, he complains that he would rather live on a lonely island than to be with humans Finally convinced that such an island does not exist, he mutters with resignation: "I finally obeyed, realizing that I could not do better" (220). The resulting ironies are not surprising because they occur at the end of the fourth volume of this four-volume work. It seems reasonable that Gulliver should finally realize what he has been ignorant of (and therefore what Swift was aware of) all along. along the length of the work, thus allowing a certain closure of the work. In exchange for irony, in these final pages we find a character who seems to be Swift's moral lesson for us all. Swift seems to be saying that we should all face the truth that we are Hobbesian creatures, as Gulliver did. In light of this perception of the story, Gulliver's desire for isolation upon his return home seems at first glance reasonable and even respectable, as recounted by John Gay. to Swift, the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough proudly declared "that if she knew Gulliver, even if he had been the worst enemy she ever had, she would abandon all her present knowledge for his friendship" (quoted in Correspondence 183 ). By proudly displaying her sympathy for Gulliver, the Duchess showed her own belief that her sympathy for Gulliver was also sympathy for a Swift who shared Gulliver's Hobbesian view of man. And it's not just duchesses who are not very learned who share this point of view. William Thackeray and George Orwell may not sympathize with the Duchess's desire to kiss Gulliver, but they agree with her interpretation of the tale. Thackeray argues that Swift "began to write his terrible allegory the meaning of which is that man is utterly wicked, hopeless, and imbecile, and that his passions are so monstrous and his vaunted powers so petty, that he is and deserves to be to be the slave of brutes” (37). Orwell expresses a similar interpretation in “Politics vs. Literature”; "We must be told that the Yahoos are human beings...Swift has overextended himself in his fury and shouts to his fellows: 'You are dirtier than you are!' (255). But while Gulliver was shouting at his fellow men, Swift was doing no such thing Orwell, Thackeray and the Duchess are all wrong in their interpretation that Swift agrees with Gulliver's belief that men are Hobbesian creatures Swift does not believe. to Gulliver's willingness to completely abandon humanity is a fair measure of humanity's value because he does not believe that humans are the Hobbesian characters that Gulliver believes them to be. writing Gulliver's Travels: "I tell you after all that I do not hate humanity" (Correspondence 118). naive of this ironic story, Swift meticulously exposes the instability and contradictory nature of Gulliver's new Hobbesian belief. When Gulliver returns to society, he remains firmly convinced thatthe man is Yahoo. His first reaction towards the Portuguese sailors who must save him is “between fear and hatred... When they began to speak, I thought I had never heard or seen anything so unnatural; for it seemed to me as monstrous as if a dog or a cow should speak in England, or a Yahoo in Houyhnhnms-Land" (217). But while Gulliver expresses only contempt, the Portuguese sailors show only contempt. benevolence and kindness, precisely what the Houyhnhnm hold in the highest esteem Gulliver tells us that in their first words, after a brief questioning from Gulliver, “they spoke to me with great humanity and told me that they. were sure that their captain would carry me free to Lisbon” (217) When Gulliver meets the captain, he is forced to admit “that he was a very courteous and generous person,” even though Gulliver was “ready to faint.” just the smell of him and his men” (218) Upon his arrival in Lisbon, this captain offers Gulliver everything he desires “The captain persuaded me to accept a newly made suit” (219). ) and also provided Gulliver with food and lodging. In addition to all this material generosity the captain kindly and serenely accepts Gulliver's absurd hatred towards the man and places him in the room of his house farthest from the street. In the end, the captain kindly forces Gulliver to return home and to his wife. On leaving, the captain “lent me twenty pounds. He took leave of me and kissed me as he parted; which I endured as best I could” (220). This final scene of the captain warmly hugging Gulliver, while Gulliver shudders in disgust at the benevolence and kindness, captures the absurd distance Gulliver keeps from the kind people around him. It is striking to note that this Portuguese captain has no visible ailments. The cautious reader feels annoyed by Gulliver's dogmatic refusal to see in this man exactly the traits that the Houyhnhnm glorify. Through this stark contrast, Swift shows how offensive and extreme Gulliver's new Hobbesian view of the man is. By thus giving the impression that Gulliver's point of view is absurd, Swift perfectly sets out his own point of view on the matter: he denounces the truth of that Hobbesian vision of man as Yahoo which he seemed so strongly to convey to through Gulliver. Swift also makes Gulliver's views seem unfair. by making him use superficial and unreasonable criteria to judge humans; criterion like their smell. When Gulliver's wife welcomes him home, Gulliver says, "Having not been accustomed to contact with this odious animal for so many years, I fell unconscious for nearly an hour... their very smell was intolerable” (220). . Master Houyhnhnm had accused humans of being like Yahoo in many ways, but the only thing he praised humans for was their cleanliness. The master had said that Gulliver “must be a perfect Yahoo; but that I differed greatly from the rest of my species, by the whiteness and softness of my skin, by the absence of hair on several parts of my body” (178). ) while later in the work Master Houyhnhnm complains sympathetically of Gulliver of the Yahoos and their “strange disposition to wickedness and filthiness; whereas there seems to be a natural love of cleanliness in all other animals” (198). Gulliver therefore finds in man the only attribute for which the master Houyhnhnm did not criticize man. By constructing Gulliver to hate the man solely through this completely absurd statement, Swift highlights the absurdity of Gulliver's Hobbesian hatredtowards man. Sometimes this shift in point of view involves Swift in tense writing. Ironically, Swift wants to keep alive the belief that Gulliver's hatred of humans is reasonable, but at the same time, Swift needs this narrator, who supposedly hates humans, to convey the positive aspects of humanity that Swift knows they exist in these and all. men. The text shows this tendency in lines such as this one describing what the Portuguese captain provided Gulliver: “Finally I wanted to eat in my own canoo; but he ordered me a chicken and an excellent wine, then ordered me to be put to bed in a very clean cabin” (218). Gulliver's glowing description of each thing given to him contrasts sharply with Gulliver's feeling that the captain forced each of these luxuries upon him. Placing these contrasting descriptions directly next to each other undermines Gulliver as a credible thinker on these points and allows Swift to pull off this difficult turn. By using tense phrases like this, Swift is able to stop, but these points of tension are beacons that reveal the turn Swift is taking. But Gulliver left the Houyhnhnm country with two new beliefs. The first is his new Hobbesian vision of man like Yahoo, the error of which Swift exposes. His second belief, however, is a corresponding respect for the Houyhnhnms' life of reason. Although Swift may not agree with the Hobbesian view of man, he can still believe in the Houyhnhnm system of life. And indeed, this hypothesis is supported by many aspects of Swift's depiction of the Houyhnhnms. The Houyhnhnms have a system in which evil is entirely absent. "Just as these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conception or idea of ​​what is evil in a rational creature; thus their great maxim is to cultivate reason and to be entirely governed by it. (202). This culture of reason leads the Houyhnhnms to consider friendship and benevolence as the two main virtues. Holding reason in such high and natural esteem was, again, not unusual in Swift's time. Swift would have found support for this view among the deist philosophers of the time. Deists believed that a greater force controlled everything, a force that ensured that everything happened for the best. The exaggerated deist Pangloss, in Voltaire's Candide, sums up this philosophy succinctly: "It is demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise: for since everything was done for an end, everything is necessarily for the best end" (18). This feeling is exactly reflected by the master Houyhnhnm who says that it is impossible to imagine that “nature, which works all things to perfection, should allow pain to be reproduced in our body” (190). Swift could easily have created the Houyhnhnms in all their perfection to demonstrate his own belief in deist philosophy. Orwell believes that he did this: “As an ideal being, he chose the horse” (43). But, even though man is not the evil that the Hobbesians would have us believe, Swift does not believe that man should imitate the Houyhnhnms. If Orwell had done some research, he would have found that his view contradicted Swift's own beliefs. Swift, according to John Robertson, “particularly hated the deists, with their reliance on reason” (Cooper 45). As a result, Swift exposes the deficiencies of the Houyhnhnms, as he did those of Gulliver. In chapter nine, Master Houyhnhnm has just returned from the Houyhnhnm conference and tells Gulliver about the meeting. He says that "the question to be debated was whetherthe Yahoos were to be exterminated from the face of the Earth” (205). One side of the debate argued that the Yahoos should be exterminated, while the other side believed that the Houyhnhnms should simply attempt to control the Yahoos. This whole event is in direct contradiction to Gulliver's remark that: “It was with extreme difficulty that I succeeded in getting my Master to understand the meaning of the word Opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because Reason has taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain” (202). Gulliver had stated earlier that the Houyhnhnms had no opinions or debates, but this episode shows them in a speech that can only be described as a debate. The master of the Houyhnhnm began his explanation of the debate between the Houyhnhnms by saying that although this debate was an ancient debate, it was also the only one that had ever taken place. But if they had had this debate many times before, then surely Master Houyhnhnm would have known what it was about in terms of debate and opinion when he made his point to Gulliver. These two descriptions of the Houyhnhnms are in direct contradiction and suggest that the optimism of the Houyhnhnms system is unwarranted. But it is not surprising that this is the only point that has ever been debated among the Houyhnhnms since the Houyhnhnms conscientiously avoid any situation that might give rise to an opinion or emotion. There is no possibility of love between two adult Houyhnhnms because partners are carefully chosen based on hair coloring and disposition (203). (Swift showed his particular disdain for such a view in his diary, when he stated "that no wise man ever married because of the dictates of reason" (Thoughts 285)). Nor does love exist between an adult Houyhnhnms and a young Houyhnhnms. As Gulliver observes: “They have no fondness for their foals or their fools; but the care they take in educating them proceeds entirely from the dictates of reason” (202). Houyhnhnms are only able to eliminate conflict within their society by completely avoiding any situation that could possibly be controversial or stir up feelings. Swift himself mocks this pattern in an essay: “the stoic pattern of satisfying our needs by cutting off our wants is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes” (Scott 277). That’s exactly what the Houyhnhnms do. They deny the possibility of any contentious issues by denying part of a full life by closing their lives in a narrow zone where conflicts will not take place. The Houyhnhnms are also exposed in chapter nine for their lack of benevolence. The Houyhnhnms take great pride in their benevolence, and yet, in all their august reason, they never seem to have given much thought to the meaning of benevolence. Does kindness simply not harm those who do not harm you? If this is the case, then the Houyhnhnms can claim benevolence, as they coexist peacefully with all creatures except the Yahoos. However, the definition of benevolence must include some aspect of governing others. The Houyhnhnms seem to have been responsible for leading, or at least monitoring the Yahoos. This task gives the Houyhnhnms their only opportunity to display their benevolence. What do they do with this opportunity? They wonder if they should exterminate their subjects. This scene does not fit well with Gulliver's remark that the Houyhnhnms are "endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conception or idea of ​​what is evil in a rational creature." Swift sets up the Houyhnhnms in such a way that the only one, 1993).