Animals In Gulliver's Travels

A variety of historical, philosophical and theological traditions have contributed to the way animals are treated in a society both tacitly and explicitly. This research paper shall explore how animals are treated in Gulliver’s Travels written by Jonathan Swift and Heidi written by Johanna Spyri with regard to language, literature and human/animal gaze, given that animals are excluded from discussions of language and power as they are not, themselves, participants in their own social construction through language. This research paper will also engage with the fact that how language is at the center of this generative process as language plays a critical role in shaping the very thought it purports to express. Language does not merely describe; it constitutes meaning and fundamentally shapes human experience. In illuminating the full capacity of how language shapes the domain of animality, I will shed light on the very question of what it is to be a human being.

Jonathan Swift, wrote Gulliver's Travels in the 18th century. Swift was a visionary as back in the 18th century when he wrote this prose, there existed no formal recognition of Animal Studies as a discipline. Swift spoke about the exploitation of animals through the perspective of satirical inversion in book four in Gulliver's Travels.

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It is during Gulliver's fourth journey that Swift's satire reaches its pinnacle, where 'Swift put his most biting, hard lines, that speak against not only the government, but human nature itself' (Glicksman,Perceptions of Satire in Gulliver's Travels, 120). In this journey, as Gulliver comes to the land of the Houyhnhnms, who are creatures that look like horses but have the ability