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A Voyage to Lilliput, conclusion
Manage episode 500431072 series 3540370
What I like best about a man like Swift is not that the satirist tells the whole truth about human nature. He doesn’t pretend to. It’s that he tells those truths about us that we don’t always care to hear, and he tells them with a twist of the scalpel, yet somehow he causes us to delight in hearing them. Partly that works because, with his cunning use of irony, he invites us, with a wink, to join him in the judge’s box. We’re in the know. So, if we are the objects of his satire, as are all human beings, we are also participants in the satire, enjoying the enterprise. That’s hard to pull off! You can’t be bitter or snide or merely flippant, but can’t pull punches, either. A tall order.
Here’s the finale of Book One, when Gulliver escapes from Lilliput, because his enemies at court, the Emperor now among them, accuse him of capital crimes when all he has done is to the benefit of that empire. The forms of the politics change from age to age and nation to nation, but the passions do not.
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcasts on a wide variety of topics. Paid subscribers receive audio-enhanced posts, on-demand access to our full archive, and may contribute comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, join us as a subscriber. We thank you for reading Word and Song!
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