Travels into Several Remote Regions of Swift's Mind: Echoes of Swiftian Satire in George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984

Abstract

This thesis provides an analysis of Jonathan Swift’s and George Orwell’s satire, by bringing out different and similar features of their prose. Gulliver’s Travels is a masterpiece, showing a gorgeous world of imaginative characters and landscapes, but also a ferocious satire that always vexes the reader. Significantly, in his essay Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver Travels, Orwell makes a list of six books that should be always preserved, and puts Gulliver’s Travels among them. Orwell seems to criticise Swift politically and morally, but he deeply admires his savage, artistic wit. This is why it is interesting to study the way in which Orwell inherited Swift’s satirical verve and his sharp writing that often has a desperate and aggressive tone. Although Orwell argues that he is against Swift’s scepticism and pessimism, his Animal Farm is a fairy tale wisely built on a tragic, disarming satire which captured the heart and mind of every generation through Swift’s sceptical vigour. Through an examination of these two novels, their cultural and historical background, this thesis offers glimpses into the obscure world of modernity, the chaos and aberration of progress as perfectly described by Swift and Orwell. They bitterly depict the bestiality of our world, whose irrationality has totally darkened man’s lucidity and awareness. The consequence of this kind of dehumanization seems to be a perpetual state of torpor: historical tragedies narrate regimes of folly and terror, foreseen by Swift and transfigured into the dark fable of Animal Farm and the dystopia of 1984 by Orwell. The aim of this analysis is to show Gulliver’s Travels through the eyes of Orwell, demonstrating how the genius of this great satirist of the twentieth century was influenced by Swift’s vivid and brilliant satire.