There's a great deal of humor in Gulliver's Travels, which is why, as the recent movie adaptation proves, it still appeals to modern audiences. But something not everyone realizes about Jonathan Swift’s greatest work is that it is a brilliant social commentary on the people of Swift’s age.
Gulliver, a rather gullible, normal, average middle-class man, is a representation of the average English Everyman who might have picked up the book. The book opens with a letter to the editor attempting to persuade readers that the tales of Gulliver are all true – drawing on the readers’ own gullibility a bit before throwing them into the stories.
In part one, Gulliver first finds himself surrounded by little people – both figuratively and literally – who have captured him. They are short in stature, certainly, but it is their small-mindedness, pettiness, and cruelty that make them "small" in the moral, human sense. Gulliver, and the readers he represents, recognize these flaws, and perhaps even feel a sense of moral superiority for not being that small themselves.
Gulliver is next surrounded by giants on Brobdingnag. He is again under the power of others, but this time it is a group that are morally superior as well as physically superior. He is treated kindly, and the tales of his own small, petty culture shock the King of this kinder, gentler nation. In these first two parts, Swift challenges the reader to look at the worst and best possible outcomes of morality.
In part three, Swift switches his focus from the moral to the intellectual possibilities of humanity. Gulliver’s journey to Laputa explores what happens when man relies too much on science or too much on the possibility of miracles. In part four, he examines the philosophical journeys a man can take through the comparison of the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms.
By the end of the book, the reader has been taken on extraordinary travels to incredible places, but the real adventure has been one of the mind. Swift's story challenges the reader to examine life on the moral, physical, intellectual, spiritual and philosophical levels – all while delivering one whale of a great and entertaining tale.