is likely to find their Rabelaisian character quite congenial.
Equally in line with modern trends is the occasional violence
of the satire. Thackeray described Part IV as 'filthy in word,
filthy in thought, furious, raging, obscene', ⁴ and Edmund
Gosse thought that 'the horrible foulness of this satire on the
Yahoos . . . banishes from decent households a fourth part' ⁵
of the book; but nowadays most people would agree that
shock-tactics are a legitimate element in satiric technique,
and that Swift's 'horrible foulness' is usually justified by his
moral purpose.

The story, then, the humour, and the satire have as much
appeal for our period as they had for the eighteenth century;
and certain passages may have even more. The sapce-age
reader should find a special interest in that artificial satellite,
the Island of Laputa; and all the moral issues raised by nu-
clear weapons are implied in Gulliver's offer to the King of
Brobdingnag of enough destructive power to 'destroy the
whole Metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his
absolute Commands'. The thinking-machine devised by the
Professor at Lagado is clearly a prototype of the computer;
and one of his colleagues is equally up to date in proposing a
system of reciprocal brain-transplants between political party-
leaders. George Orwell saw the Houyhnhnm community as a
totalitarian state, with the Yahoos playing the role of the Jews
in Nazi Germany, and found in Part III 'an extraordinarily
clear prevision of the spy-haunted "police state", with its
endless heresy-hunts and treason-trials'. ⁶ Finally, the episode
of the Struldbrugs poses a major problem which was not at
all urgent in Swift's day, but, thanks to modern medicine,
is becoming increasingly urgent in ours: the problem whether
it is right to prolong life after the capacity to enjoy life has
gone.

In these and similar passages Gulliver's Travels may well be
said to have more topical interest today than when it was
originally published.

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