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Gulliver

Gulliver’s Travels and Slaughterhouse Five Comparison and Contrast Essay

The novels, Gulliver’s Travels and Slaughterhouse Five, are two unusual but very intriguing books, based on events that happened during both of the author’s lifetimes and illustrated in satires. The novels are narratives about the lives of two fictional characters. They incorporate such elements as satire, themes of the absurd and human vices. Gulliver’s Travels was published in 1726 and Slaughterhouse Five was published in 1969. Even though Gulliver’s Travels and Slaughterhouse Five were written in different time periods, they do, however, share the same satirical writing about human vices and the theme of the absurd.
The use of satire by the authors of the two novels is an integral part of both and led to them being such successes. Gulliver’s Travels satirizes four different human doctrines; legal, naval, political, and scientific. We see the legal principle satirized when Gulliver signs the agreement with the Lilliputian Emperor to give up some of his liberties, but in the end to become a citizen of theirs. Gulliver travels to all these absurd societies through boats, and at the beginning of every part, the story is about his voyage to each of them. The naval doctrine is very heavily satirized in part two of the book; “The ship wore bravely. We belayed the fore-downhaul; but the sail was split, and we hauled down the yard, and got the sail into the ship, and unbound all the things clear of it.”(Swift 93). Swift satirizes the exaggeration of naval voyages when sailors tell their stories by narrating with colloquial naval terms. Much of the paragraph is not clearly understood, but it still sounds exciting, as would a sailor’s story. However, in Slaughterhouse Five a futuristic system of travel is used, which is similar to the naval voyages seen in Gulliver’s Travels. The Traflamadorians use spaceships to take Billy Pilgrim to Tralfamadore; “We are where we have to be just now- three...