Some of the words Swift uses are formal and pompous an example of one of these words is, ‘Leathern Jerkin,’ This is a posh word for a leather coat, it’s effect on the reader is it shows them that Gulliver is a well educated man who has a wide vocabulary. I believe that this was swift’s intention. This is the affect as it had on me as a reader.
In the whole book there are a lot of long paragraphs longer than you would normally find in a book today. These can make the book hard for some people to read and it can also make the reader forget what beginning of the paragraph was before they finish it; however some modern books have long paragraphs as well, (I read a book recently and it had lots of long paragraphs which made the story very hard to keep track of and understand). I don’t think Swift intended to confuse his readers but he might have confused some of them.
Swift also used very long sentences throughout this novel an example of one from chapter five is, ‘I had not yet seen it, and upon this notice of an intended invasion, I avoided appearing on that side of the coast, for fear of being discovered by some of the enemy’s ships, who had received no intelligence of me, all intercourse between the two empires having been strictly forbidden during the war, upon pain of death, and an embargo laid by our Emperor upon all vessels whatsoever.’ As you can see that is a very long sentence that probably isn’t very common in more modern pieces of writing. I think that when Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels sentences were longer or they used more commas instead. I think that the effect of these long sentences on the reader is that they might find them hard to understand and may even have to read sentences through twice to fully get the meaning. I think that Swift’s intended effect on the reader was to get them to think about what they were reading.
I think the reason why Swift’s Sentences and Paragraphs are so long is that he uses a lot of detail to describe objects and places. Large amounts of detail can make the reader understand what is going on better and help them create a better picture of the place in their head; however readers could also find that the amount of detail that is used just make the passage with it in hard to understand. Nowadays I think most writers use lots of description but not as much as Swift so as not to confuse their readers.
In a book that has things out of the ordinary like, giants, tiny people and floating islands; the author needs to use imaginary words because his subjects are imaginary. An imaginary word that Swift uses is, ‘Lilliput,’ which is an imaginary place in his book. The effect of these words on the reader is that they make an unbelievable story more believable, they also help the reader to imagine what this made up place could be like; I think that they make the story more interesting.
Swift uses satire to make his book humorous in places an example of this is when he writes, ‘I voided in such quantity,’ this is dark humour describing how much Gulliver urinated. I think that his use of satire makes the book amusing an fun to read. Some of the satire he uses isn’t meant to be funny though, it is there to take the micky out of something or someone.
Swift’s use of language throughout the book Gulliver’s Travels is old fashioned and different and I don’t think an audience of today would find it as interesting as Swift intended it to be; this isn’t a bad thing though because if he wrote the book for an audience of the 1720’s and it is still being read now it shows that he wrote a good book! Also I think that the audience of the 1720’s would have appreciated it more, because all the effects Swift tried to create with different techniques would of been created on them, because they are the people the effect was intended to be made on, they would of understood the pompous words; whereas an audience today wouldn’t get the desired effect because it wasn’t intended for them, and they would probably find bits of the book confusing.
