Vexing the World

All of Jonathan Swift's published writings were satirical, and a rather large majority based on the governmental and economic plight of his home country, Ireland. The era and country in which he lived were the driving force behind all of Swift's writings, although it sometimes seems that any era or country would have done. Satire is rarely as directly applicable in any context other than that in which it was written, so the context itself is the important factor in how the writings actually turn out. As he wrote in one of his last works, Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, a poem which was actually intended to predict what others would say about him after he died, "[Swift] had too much satire in his vein; / and seem'd determin'd not to starve it, / because no age could more deserve it (Starkman 522)." Had he lived in a different age, Swift would probably still have found something to write about, although the writings produced would bear no resemblance to his current stack of prose and poetry.

Swift's name actually appeared on very few of his works, which he typically published under pseudonyms (Fox, 7). Had he used his real name, he would have been arrested several times, as at least two of his "angry state-of-Ireland" pamphlets were declared illegal and seditious. The Drapier's Letters, written on the state of Ireland's declining economy, inspired the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Carteret (who, incidentally, later became a close friend of Swift's) to offer a reward to anyone who would reveal the identity of their author and to arrest both John Harding, the publisher of the letters, and his wife. (Glendinning, 169)

During his lifetime, which lasted just a month short of 75 years, Swift managed to offend just about everybody who was anybody in the whole of the British isles. An admitted misanthrope where the general public was concerned, Swift wrote in a letter to Alexander Pope that "I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals... principally I hate and detest that animal called man... (Bloom, 29)." He had previously stated his entire purpose in having written his most famous work, Gulliver's Travels, had been to "vex the world rather than divert it." His purpose was in many circles extremely well accomplished.

The last part of Gulliver's Travels, "A Voyage to the Land of the Houyhnhnms," probably made the biggest splash of anything Swift wrote with its extremely unflattering portrait of humanity as seen in the grotesque Yahoos. The intent of that portion of the book had likely been to show human nature both at its best, in the virtuous horse-like Houynhnhnms, and at its worst, in the vaguely human-shaped yet entirely repulsive Yahoos. Swift entirely disagreed with the definition of man as a rational animal and instead claimed humans should rather be classified as animals potentially capable of reason. Shortly after the book's publication, an associate of Swift's, John Gay, wrote in a letter to him that it had been the conversation of the whole town. Reactions, as he went on to tell, ranged from "blaming it as a design of evil consequence to depreciate human nature" and being "in raptures at it." Unfortunately for Swift, as it undermined his whole scheme, Gay also wrote that the vast majority "agree in liking it extremely." Of course, after his death, those readers of the book in the 19th century were united in their self-righteous outrage and rejection of the book; Witness Thackeray spoke for nearly all of them when he called Swift "a monster gibbering shrieks and gnashing imprecations against mankind-tearing down all shreds of modesty...filthy in word, filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene." Swift could hardly have asked for a higher acclamation.