According to Abrams, “satire is a literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking towards it attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn or indignation”. Therefore the subject of a satire is diminished or derogated by the satirist in order to create an atmosphere of concern and contempt towards the particular subject. Thus the satirist works at two levels; at one level he or she portrays the subject in a poor and degraded manner whereas at the other level the satirist creates an atmosphere where the people reading the satire show great moral concern for the effects that arise due to the degradation and derogation of the specific subject. The subject of the satirist can range form a particular person to a particular group of people; for example Pope wrote The Rape of the Lock in order to satirise the British upper class. Similalry satirists may satirise the moral decadence of society or mankind like Jonathan Swift does in Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal. Jonathan Swift has also used a similar technique of projecting his subject in a ridiculous and derogatory manner. Therefore Swift tries to portray his subjects as extremely evil in order to elicit a response of horror, indignation and concern from his readers. Thus Swift satirises mankind and human beings by depicting the Yahoos and the Brobdingnagian women and he satirises the concept of ‘reason’ by depicting the Laputans in Gulliver’s Travels. Similarly Swift satirises reason and mankind’s values based on materialism. The objective of the present article is to discuss the satirical elements in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal.