GULLIVER'S FICTION

Much of the criticism dealing with Gullivers Travels* has been di? rected towards Swift's manipulation of his material for satiric purposes. "Everyone," John F. Ross wrote thirty years ago, "regards Gulliver's Travels as one of the world's very great satires,"2 and that consensus yet stands. But while the element of satire is certainly present in the Travels, and is important for an understanding of it, some of that satire has lost its edge by now. This is not to deny the Travels its satiric force?or to find a new, fashionable label for it; but while we may get the general implica? tions of the argument between the High and Low Endians, or the absurd experiments in the Grand Academy of Lagado, so many of the other, more localized, satiric barbs are available to us only through a good an? notated edition of the text. Nonetheless the Travels continues to be read and enjoyed, and we may well ask why it remains as viable a work for twentieth-century readers as it does; that is, if it were still being read mainly for its satire, the third book, which is the most obviously satiric, would be the most popular, yet it certainly is not. Dr. Johnson, curiously enough, put his finger on the answer, if only peripherally, when he commented how "Pope and Swift had an unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such as every tongue utters with un? willingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention."3 The power of Gulliver's four imaginary voyages is not that of a satire, but of a fiction; we respond to his adventures?just as we respond to those of Don Quixote or Tom Jones or even Alice in Wonderland?because under? neath the entertaining, comic surface there is a fiction structuring for us a vision of man, by confronting his pretenses, fears, and desires.