Gulliver’s Travels is a famous work of satire, a style of writing that uses humor to parody and criticize the bad habits or foibles of people, institutions, and/or cultural, political, and religious beliefs. Swift’s primary satirical tool in Gulliver’s Travels is irony. Gulliver discusses what he experiences and observes with the utmost sincerity, without immediately recognizing the absurdity of what he is saying. Gulliver’s sincerity, and the sincerity of the characters around him, highlights the ridiculousness of his interactions. An example of the novel’s irony is when Gulliver refers to the “Yahoos” later in the book as filthy and detestable without realizing they are a baser human figure. In other words, he is actually calling the entire human race filthy and detestable without fully knowing it.

Swift also employs juxtaposition and hyperbole in the novel. In the first two chapters, Swift juxtaposes Gulliver’s time with the diminutive people of Lilliput with his time among the giants of Brobdingnag to create humorous inversions of Gulliver’s experiences with each. Swift often uses hyperbole to mock human hierarchies and social pretensions.