The political parties of the English government are insinuated by the conservative High Heels who depict the Tories, and the progressive Low Heels, or Whigs. As per their names, the distinguishing mark of the parties is the height of their heels. Within these two parties, Swift satirizes the English political parties, and the Prince of Wales. Swift also insinuates the religion war that was going on in England through the use of the war between Lilliput and Blefuscu. Swift's use of the terms High Heels and Low Heels satirize the meaningless battles of the Whigs and Tories, such as the height of heels.
With Gulliver's next travel, we find him in Brobdingnag. His voyage satirizes the filthy mental and physical characteristics of man. Gulliver's first owner in Brobdingnag satirizes the selfishness of man. Gulliver is constantly displayed in public, abused for the profit of the owner. When his owner finds out that Gulliver is weakening, he sells him immediately, at a high price in order to milk every last penny out of Gulliver.
Gulliver's third voyage, to the floating island of Laputa is one of the most satirical of the whole book. In this voyage Swift satirizes the Royal Society of England, in which he says is composed of useless philosophers, inventors, and scientists. The floating island signifies that the inhabitants are composed of the same airy constitution as the environment. Projects done by such people are summed up by "the Universal Artist," who directs his followers to turn useful things into the exact opposite, which results in useless achievements. The flying island itself insinuates not only the desertion on the common earth of reality but their conversion of the universe to a mechanism and of living to a mechanical process.
Finally, Gulliver travels to the land of the Houyhnhnms. After he reaches land, Gulliver comes across a pack of Yahoos and is instantly appalled by them. There he quotes, "Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable and animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy". This statement is at best ironic, because Gulliver never saw the resemblances between the Yahoos, and himself. Afterwards, he encounters the rational Houyhnhnms and he immediately realizes the common characteristics he has in common with the Yahoos. He states, "my horror and astonishment are not to be described, when I observed, in this abdominal animal, a perfect human figure".
Swift portrays the Yahoos as savage animals with human characteristics, which is the biggest sarcasm of mankind in the whole book. The Yahoos were so greedy, that they would fight over enough food to feed an entire army of fifty soldiers, just to keep it to themselves. They would poison their own bodies, by sucking a root, similar to alcohol, to reach a high. The female population of the Yahoos is also given characteristics of the ladies of the royal stature. Their gestures of hiding behind bushes and trees, looking at the passing by males, gives the sarcasm of a woman hiding her face behind a fan, while looking flirtatiously over her shoulder. The smell associated with the female Yahoos satirizes the perfume ladies wear to attract men.
Through Gulliver, Jonathan Swift travels to four different foreign countries, each insinuating a corrupt part of England. Swift satirizes the corruption of these parts, and focuses on the government, society, science, religion, and man. Not only does swift satirize the customs of each country, he mocks the naive man who has the inability to figure out the double meaning of things. Gulliver, being gullible himself, believes everything he is told, which symbolizes the irony of the English system.
