In GulliverÆs Travels, Jonathan Swift launches an elaborate satire on many aspects of human behavior, as well as against the political and religious institutions of his day. His assaults against thinly veiled, and therefore easily recognizable, targets take the form of an explanation to the uninitiated, so they are simplistic and pose as unbiased explication while actually steeped in vitriolic sarcasm. Swift leaves virtually no aspect of human society unscathed in his pointed take-downs of popular thought, particularly that which is ostensibly based on lofty human ideals. Among the most pointed of his barbs is the one directed at the subject of war. On this subject, Swift so thoroughly discredits both the people who engage in war and their trivial reasons for pursuing it that the reader is prompted to question why people would be willing to bring about such massive destruction for so little apparent cause. This introspective reasoning appears to be precisely what Swift is trying to provoke.
In Chapter V of Part IV, the author openly addresses the issue of war, recounting to his ôMasterö the details of the French Revolution, in which ôabout a million of YAHOOS might have been killedàand perhaps a hundred or more cities taken, and five times as many ships burnt or sunkö (Swift). When asked by his Master what the causes or motives might be that ômade one country go to war with another,ö the author responds through the character of Gulliver:
"they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood...