Gulliver’s Travels

Study Questions

STYLE

1. How does satire work and why is it such an effective means of social criticism?
2. Why does Swift use understatement (litotes) to describe things which are obviously
exaggerated and out-of-this-world?
3. What would have been the effect on the satire if Swift had used a more fantastic style
than the factual, reportorial style that he actually uses?
4. How does Gulliver’s style change as the story progresses?

CHARACTER

1. Is Gulliver an everyman figure or does he have a distinctive personality of his own?

2. Is Gulliver’s naiveté an advantage or a disadvantage in his adventures?
3. Why does Gulliver keep traveling despite his many misfortunes?
4. Does Gulliver change as the story progresses? Does he learn from his adventures?
5. Does Swift criticize Gulliver at any points in the novel? Why?

STRUCTURE

1. What is the significance, if any, of the order in which Gulliver’s journeys take place?
2. How does each adventure build on the previous one?
3. Why does Swift show Gulliver arriving at a land of giants after he has shown him
living with dwarves?
4. Why does Swift show Gulliver traveling to many different kinds of land and seeing so
many different kinds of people rather than having one big adventure in the same place?

IDEAS

1. What is the main object of criticism in the novel? Of all the negative characteristics of
man, which is the worst for Swift?
2. Do the different kinds of people that Gulliver meets on his travels have anything in
common?
3. What is the allegorical significance of the floating island of Laputa?
4. Why does Gulliver want to stay with the Houyhnhnms? Does his desire make sense in
light of the other societies he has visited?
5. Why does Gulliver react the way he does at the end of the novel, when he returns to his
family and friends in England?