SYMBOLS&THEMES IN TALE OF TUB

A symbols Themes inTale of Tub

About writer:

 Jonathan  Swift was (born Nov. 30, 1667, Dublin, Ire.—died Oct. 19, 1745, Dublin), Anglo-Irish author, who was the foremost prose satirist in the English language. Besides the celebrated novel Gulliver’s Travels (1726), he wrote such shorter works as A Tale of a Tub (1704) and “A Modest Proposal” (1729). The writer is quite confusing . The readers can not find that the writer is classified or modern. The writer drives a reader towards madness. Swift is very critical towards government as well as religion.the writer just putting his opinion forward. Swift believes in written truth.he talks about such facts about religion and government.

About tale of tub:

A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, arguably his most difficult satire and perhaps his most masterly[opinion]. The Tale is a prose parody divided into sections each delving into the morals and ethics of the English. Composed between 1694 and 1697, it was eventually published in 1704. A satire on the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches and English Dissenters, it was famously attacked for its profanity and irreligion, starting with William Wotton, who wrote that the Tale had made a game of "God and Religion, Truth and Moral Honesty, Learning and Industry" to show "at the bottom [the author's] contemptible Opinion of every Thing which is called Christianity.The work continued to be regarded as an attack on religion well into the nineteenth century.

In the tale, the writer talks about  the story of three brothers who were represented  as the three branches of Christianity  there are three  brothers  named Peter, Tom,  and Martin.  Peter represented as  branch of romancatholic,  Martin is represented  the angelican church when Jack represented  the protestant church.

Meaning of digression 

Digression means to distract the readers . Here the writer wants to distract the readers because he wants to change the mindset of the reader and by the part of this digression  reader can change their path  easily.from religion to any other topic.

In the second part  or it can be called part of digression, the narrator talks about two types of critics. He also  makes a difference between modern & ancient ways of thought.

Symbols in tale of tub:

 Three coats:

The three brothers' coats are the central symbol of A Tale of a Tub. (Tubs, despite the title, figure only incidentally in the work.) Outwardly plain and simple, the coats are the brothers' sole inheritance from their father, who promises that they will last for a lifetime if cared for properly. In his will, he warns them against altering the coats in any way. These coats represent the practises of Christianity as originally revealed and commanded by God and as stipulated in the Bible (the father's will). Like the early Church written about in the New Testament, the brothers initially do a good job of sticking to the rules laid down by the will. It isn't long, however, before they are finding ways to excuse themselves from following the will too scrupulously when it conflicts with their immediate desires. This behaviour is dramatised as a gradual altering of the coats in spite of the father's express wish to the contrary.

A tub:

The tub represents the diversion that sailors would throw out so that whales would not overturn their ships. Here, Swift suggests that the whale is representative of “Hobbes’s Leviathan, which tosses and plays with all other schemes of religion and government.In this case, the whale is trying to destroy the steady ship of government and religion, and those in power are throwing out a diversion, but the whale keeps coming. Although “A Tale of a Tub” within the text would seem to be a diversion, it is designed as a commentary on the state of religion and government in England.

The Father's  will:

The father's will represents the Bible, which Swift regards as Christianity's fundamental instruction manual. Swift's paramount claim in A Tale of a Tub is that the Bible should be consulted for basic, immutable guidance on all Church matters. Practises prohibited by the Bible cannot and should not be embraced by the Church, while practises required by the Bible cannot simply be set aside.

Themes in tale of tub:

True Christianity Adheres to the Bible:

of A Tale of a Tub, Swift makes a claim about the true practice of Christianity by satirising the various (in his opinion) false alternatives. In altering their coats and deviating from their father's will, the three brothers in the story to various degrees are rejecting the Bible as the overarching guide to church doctrine and discipline. By showing these alterations as both wicked and frivolous, Swift suggests that the brothers are debasing themselves with every step they take away from the authority of Scripture. Conversely, Swift praises any effort to mend the coats according to the father's will. This back-and-forth reveals the differences in the three major branches of contemporary Western Christianity as Swift understands them.

Only Moderation Can Fix Excess

Beneath the specifics of its religious satireA Tale of a Tub is a Goldilocks-like cautionary tale about the dangers of immoderate reform. Peter, who represents the Catholic Church, doubles down on the errors that he and his brothers introduce into their Christian practice. When Martin and Jack part ways with Peter , they are naturally eager to avoid a way of life that has turned their older brother into a mad tyrant. To them, reform is both a survival mechanism—they don't want to end up like Peter—and a moral imperative: they feel guilty for having disobeyed their late father all these years. Yet by showing Martin as wise and cool headed  while lampooning Jack as a cultist  and lunatic, Swift suggests that reform taken too far can be just as bad as no reform at all.

Problems of the Modern Author:

Largely absent from the main body of A Tale of a Tub but constantly on display in the "Digressions" is a lament about the peculiar problems facing modern society and, in particular, modern writers. On the surface, Swift's attitude toward his plight and that of his fellow moderns contains amusement, even disdain. Underneath the breezy Enlightenment prose, however, are some real issues that writers and thinkers of Swift's era had to confront. The problems of modernity—meaning, for Swift, early modernity—are ones with which anyone living in the 21st century is still familiar: too much information, too many choices, and a general sense that there is "nothing new under the sun."

The rise of the popular press in Britain had somewhat democratised both the writing and reading of literature, leading to an explosion in works written for a "middlebrow" readership. At the same time, influential Augustan writers and critics venerated the ancients, whose literature they often attempted to imitate. The result, evidently very displeasing to Swift, was that a huge portion of modern writing was being written off as rubbish: the good, the bad, and the indifferent all got lumped together. Swift, who had once gallingly been told that he would never succeed as a poet, could easily have looked at the critical treatment of his contemporaries and felt lost in the shuffle. Certainly, this seems to be the spirit in which he wrote "The Epistle Dedicatory," printed at the beginning of the story. There, Swift urges readers of the future to take another look at contemporary literature before dismissing it all as forgettable or ephemeral.

Moreover, as the sciences (then called "natural philosophy") progressed and specialised, it became difficult for even the most avid intellectuals to claim to be masters of all trades. The ideal of the "Renaissance man" was getting harder to maintain as discoveries were continually announced: British scientist Isaac Newton's works on calculus and optics, for example, appeared in the same year as A Tale of a Tub was first published. The mere task of organising this new knowledge was a daunting one, and early efforts were often awkward and unsystematic. (Real encyclopaedias in the modern sense began to appear only much later in Swift's career.) Thus, it's no surprise, despite his efforts, to find Swift cracking jokes about the futility of staying informed, let alone of writing informatively for a modern reader.

Conclusion

To sum up this  text, the readers came across the fact that the writer is the most remarkable critic of the 18th century; he mostly criticises the government as well as religion also. By this text he tries to satire on religion.