A Comparison Between Swifts Gullivers Travels And

A Comparison Between Swift?s ?Gulliver?s Travels? And Orwell?s ?Animal Farm? Essay, Research Paper ????????? In many ways ?Gulliver?s Travels? is a unique work. There is little to compare it to in world literature and at first glance, ?Animal Farm? appears to be a very different kind of book.? The authors are separated by over two centuries, yet there are a surprising number of similarities between ?Animal Farm? and ?Gulliver?s Travels?. Some of the most intriguing similarities can be found when you examine the two authors, George Orwell and Jonathan Swift.? They are perhaps the most prolific political writers of their time and? share likenesses that occur throughout their upbringing, to the publication of their books. Orwell, like Swift, felt a deep sense of isolation

throughout his childhood especially in 1911, at a preparatory boarding school.? There he was distinguished among the other boys for his poverty and intellectual brilliance.? Orwell grew up a morose, withdrawn, eccentric boy, and told of the miseries of these years in his autobiographical essay, ?Such, Such Were The Joys? (1953). ????????? Orwell and Swift both received an excellent education, Orwell at Eton and Swift at Trinity College, and found themselves as editors later in their lives.? In 1943-45, Orwell became the literary editor of the Tribune, having contributed several articles to the Observer and Manchester Evening News.? Swift (as noted in ?Swift and his Satire In ?Gulliver?s Travels? And ?A Modest Proposal??), had been editor of The Examiner two hundred and fifty

years earlier. The authors? backgrounds heavily influenced their purpose for writing their novels.? Jonathan Swift was Irish and, in ?Gulliver?s Travels?, satirised George I?s court and the English landowners in Ireland.? George Orwell was English and satirised political power including Communism, in the Russian revolution and its aftermath. ?Animal Farm? is also an attack and analysis of the search for power and the ways in which corrupt figures can gain and manipulate power for their own purposes.? Lord Acton observed that: ?Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?. Orwell stated that ?Totalitarianism has abolished freedom of thought to an extent unheard of in any previous age?.? He believed that this was achieved not only by preventing or forbidding certain

thoughts or ideas but also by telling people exactly what to think.? This is demonstrated from the beginning of ?Animal Farm? when Snowball simplifies Major?s ideas into slogans, in an effort to make the less intelligent animals understand the principals of animalism.? For example, Major?s statement that ?Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy? is reduced to the slogan ?Four legs good.? Two legs bad?.? This simplification can lead to a loss of meaning and become dangerous as we see when the sheep use the chant to drown any opposition to Napoleon in the meetings.? Both Orwell and Swift made their intentions in writing their novels clear in the preface, which created great difficulties for their publication namely because of the controversial satire within them.? ?Animal Farm?,

for instance, was veiled a criticism of the regime in the Soviet Union at a time when the regime was Britain?s ally.? In order to avoid any further delays in the publication of the two books, they were subtitled ?fairy stories? to obscure the true purposes behind the writing of the two books.? In ?Animal Farm?, however, this also drew the readers? attention to the artificial nature of the story line.? ?Animal Farm? and ?Gulliver?s Travels? are both political allegories and can be read on different levels.? ?Gulliver?s Travels? can be read as a travel book, diary, fantasy and satire of the time.? ?Animal Farm, however, can be read on fewer levels: as a fable and a satire of general human nature and the Russian Revolution. Besides satire, ?Gulliver?s Travels? can be considered as