Comparing Voltaire And Gulliver's Travels

Voltaire’s and Swift’s writings, although differ in their approach, contain sturdy aversion to humankind’s engagements in acts of violence and war. The issues of war take up significant amount of both writers’ criticisms of human societies. Voltaire and Swift are deeply clear about their stance against the irrational nature of justifying the horrors of wars. Both writers satirize the destructions of humankind’s obsession with war using their own literary devices and word choices, in uniquely different tones. The brilliant quality of both satires in understanding and analyzing human politics and the brutalities of war allows these 18th century writings to transcend time and space, to still have relevance to the modern world societies. Almost

It’s impossible to put those terms in the same concept as they have complete opposite connotations. Having honor and glory or becoming a hero can’t be measured through violent acts, as they have positive meanings. Yet wars bring so much devastation to a great number of populations, usually civilians. So it’s rather difficult for these reason practitioners to put them in the same context. Voltaire uses mockery when he harshly criticizes the idea of heroism in war. “Candide, who was trembling like a philosopher, hid himself as best as he could while this heroic butchery was going on” (381). Voltaire strongly opposes glorifying acts of war by stating his disgust for violence several

“ And, being no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, sea fights, ships sunk with a thousand men, twenty thousand killed on each side, dying groans, limbs flying in the air, smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horses ' feet, flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed with carcases, left for food to dogs and wolves and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroying. And to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him, "that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship, and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of the spectators" (311). Swift elaborates the destructive nature of war by this quotation. He, just a Voltaire does, shows his contempt in the ways people have found to kill one another by developing new technologies. Voltaire and Swift, as great satirists, have found various ways to embed social issues that are overlooked in times. In discussing the issues of war they both excel at being influential for readers of all times. But at the end it’s distressing that most of the issues talked about the societies of the 18th century