Name: Pablo Toledo, Ana Mónica Rueda, William Romero Date: 20-6-2023

SATIRE

from Gulliver’s Travels

Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift specialized in satire, writing that pokes fun at institutions,
groups, and ordinary citizens by exaggerating their flaws and portraying their
beliefs in absurd ways. To be successful, a satire must capture much of the
truth of a situation but in doing so reveal the pretensions and misconceptions
of the people being portrayed.
Swift’s satire employs hyperbole, understatement, and irony for comic effect.
Hyperbole is exaggeration that demonstrates through its excess something
absurd about the situation, such as a house that is the size of a mountain.
Understatement is the opposite of hyperbole, deliberately minimizing rather
than maximizing, such as calling a $500 dinner check “modest.” Irony is a
contradiction between expectation and outcome, appearance and reality, or
meaning and intention. For example, if there is a big buildup to someone’s
speech but then the person comes to the podium and merely says “Thank
you,” the outcome is ironic because it contradicts the expectation.
DIRECTIONS: Identify each example from Gulliver’s Travels as hyperbole,
understatement, or irony. Explain your answers.
Example from Gulliver’s Travels Satirical Device Explanation

I stepped over the great western gate.…
Whereupon the emperor his father
published an edict, commanding all his
subjects, upon great penalties, to break
the smaller end of their eggs.
irony Because it says he stepped on
the great gate when you
couldn’t step on something if it
is great.
irony It is an irony because it says
that the penalty for something
so insignificant as the side in
which you open an egg is great

… our philosophers are in much doubt, hyperbole It says that their philosophers
and would rather conjecture that you think he dropped from the
dropped from the moon.… moon which is unrealistic.

These civil commotions were constantly understatement It is talking about how as

fomented by the monarchs of Blefuscu. monarchs; they have to
promote order and not
disagreements among civilians.
And which is the convenient end, seems, understatement It is talking about something
in my humble opinion to be left to every important from them but says
man’s conscience. it’s his “humble opinion”.

It is computed that eleven thousand irony You can’t die several times
persons have at several times suffered
death, rather than submit to break their
eggs at the smaller end.

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