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How does Jonathan Swift use Gulliver’s Travels to satirize English customs and politics?

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Illustration of Lemuel Gulliver lying on the ground, tied down by tiny Lilliputians, with crowds and small buildings in the background, from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. — Gulliver’s Travels Lemuel Gulliver in Lilliput, illustration from an edition of Jonathan Swift's *Gulliver's Travels*.

Jonathan Swift uses Gulliver’s Travels to satirize the follies of English society, politics, and human nature through the lens of fantastic voyages.12

In Lilliput, Swift mocks the petty nature of political factions, specifically the Whigs and Tories, by depicting their disputes as trivial disagreements over shoe-heel heights or which end of an egg to break. These conflicts, treated with the gravity of religious doctrine, highlight the absurdity of sectarian and partisan divisions.3

Swift further targets institutional incompetence and intellectual vanity in Book III. The Academy of Lagado serves as a travesty of England’s Royal Society, where intellectuals pursue useless, impractical projects. Additionally, the work reflects Swift’s hostility toward the Walpole regime and the Hanoverian court. Ultimately, the novel functions as a radical critique of humanity itself; by contrasting the rational Houyhnhnms with the base Yahoos, Swift challenges readers to confront the inherent flaws and prideful delusions of the human condition.12