Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift Context

Jonathan Swift, son of the English lawyer Jonathan Swift the elder, was born in Dublin, Ireland, on November
30, 1667. He grew up there in the care of his uncle before attending Trinity College at the age of fourteen, where
he stayed for seven years, graduating in 1688. In that year, he became the secretary of Sir William Temple, an
English politician and member of the Whig party. In 1694, he took religious orders in the Church of Ireland and
then spent a year as a country parson. He then spent further time in the service of Temple before returning to
Ireland to become the chaplain of the earl of Berkeley. Meanwhile, he had begun to write satires on the political
and religious corruption surrounding him, working on A Tale of a Tub, which supports the position of the
Anglican Church against its critics on the left and the right, and The Battle of the Books, which argues for the
supremacy of the classics against modern thought and literature. He also wrote a number of political pamphlets in
favor of the Whig party. In 1709 he went to London to campaign for the Irish church but was unsuccessful. After
some conflicts with the Whig party, mostly because of Swift’s strong allegiance to the church, he became a
member of the more conservative Tory party in 1710.

Unfortunately for Swift, the Tory government fell out of power in 1714 and Swift, despite his fame for his
writings, fell out of favor. Swift, who had been hoping to be assigned a position in the Church of England,
instead returned to Dublin, where he became the dean of St. Patrick’s. During his brief time in England, Swift
had become friends with writers such as Alexander Pope, and during a meeting of their literary club, the Martinus
Scriblerus Club, they decided to write satires of modern learning. The third voyage of Gulliver’s Travels is
assembled from the work Swift did during this time. However, the final work was not completed until 1726, and
the narrative of the third voyage was actually the last one completed. After his return to Ireland, Swift became a
staunch supporter of the Irish against English attempts to weaken their economy and political power, writing
pamphlets such as the satirical A Modest Proposal, in which he suggests that the Irish problems of famine and
overpopulation could be easily solved by having the babies of poor Irish subjects sold as delicacies to feed the
rich.

Gulliver’s Travels was a controversial work when it was first published in 1726. In fact, it was not until almost
ten years after its first printing that the book appeared with the entire text that Swift had originally intended it to
have. Ever since, editors have excised many of the passages, particularly the more caustic ones dealing with
bodily functions. Even without those passages, however, Gulliver’s Travels serves as a biting satire, and Swift
ensures that it is both humorous and critical, constantly attacking British and European society through its
descriptions of imaginary countries.

Late in life, Swift seemed to many observers to become even more caustic and bitter than he had been. Three
years before his death, he was declared unable to care for himself, and guardians were appointed. Based on these
facts and on a comparison between Swift’s fate and that of his character Gulliver, some people have concluded
that he gradually became insane and that his insanity was a natural outgrowth of his indignation and outrage
against humankind. However, the truth seems to be that Swift was suddenly incapacitated by a paralytic stroke
late in life, and that prior to this incident his mental capacities were unimpaired.

Gulliver’s Travels is about a specific set of political conflicts, but if it were nothing more than that it would long
ago have been forgotten. The staying power of the work comes from its depiction of the human condition and its
often despairing, but occasionally hopeful, sketch of the possibilities for humanity to rein in its baser instincts.

Gulliver's Travels Study Guide

Gulliver's Travels, a misanthropic satire of humanity, was written in 1726 by Jonathan Swift. Like many other
authors, Swift uses the journey as the backdrop for his satire. He invents a second author, Captain Lemuel
Gulliver, who narrates and speaks directly to the reader from his own experience. The original title of Swift's
novel was Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a
Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships.

Gulliver's name probably is an allusion to King Lemuel of Proverbs 31, who was a weak-minded prophet. Swift
may also be connecting his character to a common mule, a half-ass, half-horse animal that is known for being
stubborn and stupid. A gull is a person who is easily fooled or gullible. At the same time, Gulliver represents the
everyman with his average intelligence and general good humor. The reader is able to identify with him and join
him in his travels.

Even though Swift constantly alludes to events that were happening while he was alive, the story rings true today,
bringing light to our own societal issues and to patterns of human nature. Throughout Gulliver's voyages, Swift
goes to great lengths to scrutinize, parody, and satire various aspects of human, and often English, society. He
does this in two ways, first by comparing humanity's ways with those of cultures decidedly beneath it (such as the
Yahoos and the Lilliputians); second, by comparing humanity with cultures that are far superior in intellect and
political ideals (such as the Houyhnhnms).

Gulliver embarks on four distinct journeys, each of which begins with a shipwreck and ends with either a daring
escape or a congenial decision that it is time for Gulliver to leave. The societies Gulliver comes into contact with
help him (and the reader) to examine his own culture more closely. When Gulliver's Travels was published in
1726, this examination of English culture was not appreciated. The novel was highly controversial because of the
light in which it presented humanity-and more specifically, the English. When the novel was first published,
Swift's identity was hidden because of the novel's volatile nature. The people who saw that the book made it into
print also cut out a great deal of the most politically controversial sections, about which Swift became extremely
frustrated. In a letter written under the pseudonym of Gulliver, Swift shows his annoyance with the edits made to
his novel without his consent: "I hope you will be ready to own publicly," he writes, "whenever you shall be
called to it, that by your great and frequent urgency you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect
account of my travels . . . . But I do not remember I gave you power to consent that anything should be omitted,
and much less that anything should be inserted." The version of the novel read today is complete.

Part of what has helped Gulliver's Travels to persevere since Swift's time has been its appeal to people of all ages.
The book has been read by countless children and has been made into more than one children's movie. At the
same time, it has been widely critiqued and studied by literary scholars and critics, politicians, and philosophers.
In addition, much like the works of Shakespeare, the comedy of the novel has something for people of all
intellectual levels, from toilet humor to highbrow satires of political processes and of ideas.

Summary of the Novel

In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver describes his four voyages. In the first voyage, he is the only person to reach land
after a shipwreck. He awakes to find himself tied down by tiny men; these are the Lilliputians. A Hurgo (official)
supervises them. Gulliver agrees to cooperate, and is untied and taken to the capital where he meets Lilliput’s
Emperor. He agrees to serve the Lilliputians, and is granted partial freedom in return. Gulliver prevents an
invasion from Lilliput’s enemy, Blefuscu, by stealing the enemy’s ships and is given a high title of honor. He
makes friends and enemies at court and learns details of Lilliputian society. After putting out a fire in the palace
by urinating on it, he is accused of high treason through polluting the palace. He is sentenced to be blinded and
starved. However, Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, finds a boat, sails out to sea, and is picked up by an English ship.

Two months after his return to England, Gulliver leaves on his second voyage. He lands in an unknown country
to get water and is abandoned. A giant reaper picks him up (he is in the country of the gigantic Brobdingnagians)
and takes him to a farmer, who wants him to be on exhibit as a freak. He fights a gigantic cat and other monstrous
animals. The Queen of Brobdingnag buys Gulliver and presents him to the King. The farmer’s daughter,
Glumdalclitch, who had befriended Gulliver, is hired by the King as Gulliver’s guardian and nurse. Gulliver
quarrels with the King’s dwarf, but describes England in detail to the King. Gulliver is carried around in a box
and tours the kingdom. He fights birds and animals and finds the King’s Maids of Honor, who undress before
him, disgusting him because of their great size. Gulliver’s box is picked up by a gigantic eagle and dropped into
the sea; he is picked up by an English ship and returns to England.

Shortly after his return, Gulliver leaves on his third voyage. His ship is captured by pirates, who set him adrift in
a small boat. He arrives on the flying island of Laputa, which flies over the continent of Balnibarbi. The people
he meets are interested only in abstract speculations. Their king asks Gulliver only about mathematics in
England. Gulliver learns that the island is kept flying by magnetism. He travels to Balnibarbi, and he is shown the
Academy of Laputa, where scholars devote all their time to absurd inventions and ideas. He then goes to
Glubbdubdrib, an island of magicians. The king is waited on by ghosts, and he calls up the ghosts of dead
historical characters at Gulliver’s request. He then goes to Luggnagg, where the Struldbruggs who have eternal
life but not eternal youth. After spending time in Japan, Gulliver returns to England.

On his fourth voyage, Gulliver is set on shore in an unknown land by mutineers. This is the land of the
Houyhnhms: intelligent, rational horses who hold as servants repulsive animal-like human beings called Yahoos.
A dapple-gray Houyhnhm who becomes his master is unable to understand the frailties and emotions in
Gulliver’s account of England. The Assembly is distressed at the idea of a partly-rational Yahoo living with a
Houyhnhm, votes to expel Gulliver. He makes a boat and is picked up by a Portuguese ship. On his return to
England, Gulliver is so disgusted with human beings that he refuses to associate with them, preferring the
company of horses.

The Life and Times of Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift, dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, was a major figure in literature and politics in both
Ireland and England. He was famous in his own time as a witty satirist of many aspects of life. He later became
world-famous as the author of a children’s classic, Gulliver’s Travels, which was not originally intended by its
author as a children’s book. He was born in Dublin to a well-to-do family partly of English descent, was educated
at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford University, and worked as secretary to the retired politician Sir William
Temple. These other experiences acquainted him with the vanity and follies of leading figures in British life.
Later, after difficulties in obtaining employment as a clergyman of the Church of England, he increased his
acquaintance with fashionable society and acquired the tinge of bitterness that characterizes much of his literary
work.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Swift (already a fashionable satirist), received the degree of Doctor of
Divinity from the University of Dublin and began to write political satires. In 1704, having already published
some widely-read political works, Swift became famous with the publication of The Battle of the Books and The
Tale of a Tub. Other satirical works spread Swift’s fame to London, which he visited frequently. Swift was a
major figure in the Tory party as well as a journalist and writer when, in 1713, he became the dean of St.
Patrick’s Cathedral, the Anglican (Episcopal) cathedral of Dublin. As dean, he was assistant to the bishop,
supervising the cathedral’s day-to-day affairs.

Although he never married, Swift had a long and close friendship with Esther Johnson, known to him as Stella, to
whom the published diary called the Journal to Stella was addressed. After becoming dean, Swift met Ester
Vanhomrigh, daughter of a wealthy merchant. He called her “Vanessa,” and they too had a close friendship. In
1723, Vanessa, hearing of Swift’s friendship with Stella, died.

Gulliver’s Travels, which Swift began writing by 1720, was published anonymously in 1726. Additional
successful satirical works were written in the following years, but as Swift grew old, his health deteriorated. In
1742, after suffering several strokes, he was declared insane. He died several years later in 1745.

Swift’s numerous works, including articles as well as books, attacked many of the evils of his time, particularly
political corruption and the oppression of the Irish by the English. His wit and satire attract, amuse, and educate
the reader.
Jonathan Swift Biography
Early Years and Education

Jonathan Swift was born into a poor family that included his mother (Abigail) and his sister (Jane). His father, a
noted clergyman in England, had died seven months before Jonathan's birth. There is not much known of Swift's
childhood, and what is reported is not always agreed upon by biographers. What is accepted, however, is that
Jonathan's mother, after the death of her husband, left the children to be raised by relatives (probably uncles),
while she returned to her family in England (Leicester). It is also reported that Swift, as a baby, was taken by a
nurse to England where he remained for three years before being returned to his family. This is open to
conjecture, but the story contributes to the lack of information available regarding Swift's childhood.

Beginning in 1673, Swift attended Kilkenny Grammar School, where he enjoyed reading and literature and
excelled especially in language study. In 1682, Swift entered Trinity College where he received a B.A. by
"special grace," a designation for students who did not perform very well while there. Upon leaving Trinity
College, Swift went to England to work as a secretary (a patronage position) for Sir William Temple. In 1692,
Swift received an M.A. from Oxford; in 1702, he received a D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) from Dublin University.

Swift's Career

From approximately 1689 to 1694, Swift was employed as a secretary to Sir William Temple in Moor Park,
Surrey, England. In 1694, he was ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland (Anglican Church) and assigned as
Vicar (parish priest) of Kilroot, a church near Belfast (in northern Ireland). In 1696, he returned to working with
Sir William Temple, and in 1699, after the death of Sir William, he became chaplain to Lord Berkley.

In 1700, Swift became the Vicar of Laracor, Ireland, and he was also appointed prebend (an honorary clergyman
serving in a cathedral) at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. In 1707, Swift was appointed as an emissary to the
Church of Ireland, and in 1713, he was appointed as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Throughout all
this time, and, indeed, after his appointment as Dean of St. Patrick's, Swift continued writing satirically in various
genres, including both prose and poetry, using various forms to address different causes, including personal,
behavioral, philosophical, political, religious, civic, and others.

Swift's Major Literary Works

Between the years 1696-99, Swift wrote two major works: Tale of a Tub, defending the middle position of the
Anglican and Lutheran churches, and Battle of the Books, taking the part of the Ancients (those who believed in
the superiority of the classics and the humanities) against the Moderns (those who upheld the superiority of
modern science, modern scholarship, modern politics, and modern literature). In The Mechanical Operation of
the Spirit (1704), Swift continues his satiric attack on both questionable religious views and questionable
knowledge acquisition, particularly scientific knowledge. In Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, Swift
shares his reactions to the Test Act, a law enacted by Charles II, requiring office holders to declare their
allegiance to the king over the church. The Journal to Stella (1710-1713), a series of letters written by Swift to
Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley, includes the poem "The Windsor Prophecy," a satirical attack on the
person and personality of the Duchess of Somerset, Queen Anne's red-haired attendant who did not care for Swift
because of disparaging remarks Swift had written about her family.

Swift is also recognized as a defender of Ireland. In A Modest Proposal (1729), a reaction to English commercial
practices that negatively impacted Ireland, Swift wrote one of the greatest works of sustained irony in English or
any other language. Instead of maintaining that English laws prevent the Irish from manufacturing anything to
sell, he argues that the only items of commerce that the English don't restrict are Irish babies and reasons that the
Irish would be better off as cattle to be butchered than as a colony to be starved by the English. The Drapier's
Letters (1724) is Swift's response to the continued subjugation of all aspects of the lives of those living in Ireland
by England. The Letters aroused so much opposition that the English offered a reward of £300 for the name of
the author. Although the Irish knew that he had written the letters, they did not betray him. They made him a
national hero instead.

In his most recognized novel, Gulliver's Travels (1726), Swift presents a satire on all aspects of humanity by
pointing out the weaknesses, vices, and follies inherent in all human beings; the satire reaches its apex in Swift's
comparison of Houyhnhnms (horses) and Yahoos (human-like creatures) in Book IV.

In 1727, Swift visited England for the last time. He was declared mentally incompetent in 1742 and died in
October 1745, leaving his estate to charity.

HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT

In general, from the very beginning, we can say that during Jonathan Swift’s lifetime (from 1667 to 1745)
England was a powerful and rich empire, though there were internal political problems arising now and then
during the 17-18th centuries.

To start with, during the Elizabethan period, the English fleet defeated the Spanish Armada. Continuing the
competition with Spain, the English went to Americas where their first colony was founded by Walter Raleigh in
1585 and called Virginia. In the East England was competing with the Dutch and French. With the East India
Company, which was formed initially to trade with the East Indies, England ended up trading mainly with China
and the Indian subcontinent. Later on, England will continue the process of colonization and expansion
throughout the world.

In 1642-1646 the Civil War broke out between the supporters of the king Charles I and those of the Parliament,
with an interwoven part of a wider war of the Three Kingdoms that included Scotland and Ireland. As the result
Charles I was captured and beheaded in 1649. The kingdom was replaces with the Commonwealth with Oliver
Cromwell as Lord Protector ruling the country.

In 1658 Cromwell died and after his son’s resignation the period of Restoration followed with Charles II
returning from France to take the throne as a new monarch. According to the new constitution, the king and the
Parliament should rule together, though it was not fully put into practice until the next century. The court was
holding power.

At that time the Royal Society (a learned society for science) was founded that led to the encouragement of arts
and sciences.

In Parliament two factions appeared: the Tories and the Whigs, the former being royalists and the latter – liberals.

In 1685 Charles died, and his brother James II (a Roman Catholic) mounted the throne. Despite his promise to
maintain the political and religious status quo and protect the Church of England, he started reintroducing Roman
Catholicism that resulted in the threat of “popery”. When he had a male hair it became clear that the crown would
pass to him, a Roman Catholic, rather than to the king’s Anglican siblings.

Though initially the Tories supported James II, in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 some of them, together with
the Whigs, deposed him and invited his daughter Mary with her husband William, Prince of Orange, to become
monarch. However, for the next 100 years England would feel constant threat from France, threat of an invasion
that would restore Stuart, and thus Roman Catholic, rule. During the rule of George I in 1715 and then under the
reign of George II in 1745 two Jacobites’ rebellions took place, supported by France. However, in 1745 the
Jacobites were forced back and slaughtered at the battle of Culloden, effectively ending the conflict forever.

In 1707 after the agreement between the parliaments of England and Scotland was achieved, the two countries
joined in political union, thus becoming the Kingdom of Great Britain. However, some institutions as law or
church of each remained separate.
Under the newly created Kingdom of Great Britain, science and engineering were flourishing. It helped much to
establish the famous British Empire, which became the largest in history. It originated in the overseas colonies
and trading posts established by England in the 16-17th centuries, and by 1922 it covered more than 34 million
square kilometres, almost a quarter of the Earth's total land area. British Empire turned into the foremost global
power.

Of course, there were many domestic changes as well. In the 18th century the Industrial Revolution started
together with other socioeconomic and cultural changes. The result was industrialised agriculture, manufacture,
engineering and mining, as well as new and pioneering road, rail and water networks to facilitate the expansion
and further development of the Empire.

Gulliver's Travels Summary (Masterpieces of World Literature, Critical

Edition)
Lemuel Gulliver, the title character of Gulliver’s Travels, is a capable, brave, and educated Englishman whose
unlucky adventures drive him to sickness and madness. His simple, straightforward way of telling his story
suggests that he lacks the imagination to understand what he has experienced.

Gulliver is shipwrecked off the shore of Lilliput and captured by humans only six inches tall. Practical man that
he is, he promises to obey their laws controlling him. He finds Lilliput, not unlike Europe, in a state of perpetual
and petty disorder. Low-heelers and High-heelers squabble over politics much as do the Whigs and Tories of
Swift’s day. Courtiers compete for distinctions by leaping over sticks and other such ridiculous games.
Protestants and Catholics are mirrored as Big-enders and Little-enders, who cannot agree on which end of the egg
should be cracked first. The war between England and France is parodied in the conflict between Lilliput and its
neighbor Blefuscu. Gulliver becomes a hero by wading into the surf and carrying off the tiny Blefuscan navy.
When he puts out a fire in the palace by urinating on it, he falls from favor at court and joins the Blefuscans, who
help him salvage the wrecked ship in which he makes his escape.

Gulliver’s next voyage takes him to Brobdingnag, the opposite of Lilliput. Proportions are reversed. People stand
as tall as steeples. Gulliver is a caged pet exhibited as a freak. The queen buys him and brings him to court, where
he is imperiled by the lewd curiosity of the ladies, by a dwarf who nearly drowns him in a bowl of cream, and by
a monkey who almost dashes his brains out.

Yet Brobdingnagian society is a utopia, based on useful studies of poetry and history, not on metaphysics,
theology, and speculative science, as in Europe. The king rules a prosperous state not torn by strife. In
Brobdingnag, a law cannot be written using more than twenty-two words, and to comment on laws is a capital
crime. Horrified by Gulliver’s description of England’s government, the king concludes that Englishmen must be
“the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the
Earth.”

His third voyage, to Laputa and other islands, is the most fantastic of them all. Gulliver finds himself on the
airborne island of Laputa. Its people are devoid of practicality, so lost in abstraction that servants must flap their
mouths and ears with inflated bladders to keep their minds on conversations. Though bent upon music,
mathematics, and astronomy, they lack reason and cannot construct walls perpendicular to the floor. The monarch
is proud of his dominion over the island of Balnibari below. Any mutiny can be literally crushed by dropping
Laputa upon it, smashing whole towns. Yet the monarch is reluctant to use this power for fear of cracking Laputa,
and, besides, Laputians own country estates on the nether island. Swift here satirizes England’s dominion over
Ireland.

At the Academy of Lagado, Gulliver witnesses the absurdities of misapplied scholarship. There, the projectors
experiment with building houses from the top down, making pillows out of marble, extracting sunshine from
cucumbers, and the like. He visits nearby Glubbdubdrib, where the governor by sorcery summons dead persons
back to life for a day. Gulliver thus meets with Alexander the Great, Homer, Aristotle, and René Descartes, who
admits his philosophy is confounded conjecture. In Luggnagg, Gulliver views the ghastly spectacle of human
immortality. The wretched Struldbrugs live forever, not in perpetual youth but in unending decay. From there,
Gulliver makes a short trip to Japan, and thence back to England.

Gulliver leaves behind a pregnant wife to make his final journey to a land ruled by intelligent horses, called
Houyhnhnms. These purely rational creatures know neither pride nor passion. Without love or lust, they procreate
merely to meet a social obligation. They live in stoical calm, without government and without crime. They are
served by a despised underclass of Yahoos, depraved, libidinous creatures quite unlike themselves but strongly
resembling humans. Gulliver shares the Houyhnhnms’ disgust and disdain for them. When a lusty Yahoo woman
tries to embrace him, he is repulsed. The Houyhnhnms, however, decide that Gulliver must live as a Yahoo or
else leave, so he departs on a Portuguese ship with Captain Pedro de Mendez. Still, Gulliver cannot bear the smell
of the captain and crew. He shuns their civilities and tries to jump overboard. He arrives in England only under
shackles. Now too proud to associate with humans, whom he sees as Yahoos, Gulliver faints when his wife kisses
him, and he abandons his family to consort with horses at pasture.

Gulliver himself has become the object of the satire, for he has lost all reason and proportion. The very
Houyhnhnms he so admires do him the greatest wrong, but he scorns humanity with irrational pride. Having seen
him from so many different perspectives, a reader recognizes that Gulliver’s weaknesses are those of humankind.

Gulliver's Travels Summary (Critical Survey of Literature for Students)

Lemuel Gulliver, a physician, takes the post of ship’s doctor on the Antelope, which sets sail from Bristol for the
South Seas in May, 1699. When the ship is wrecked in a storm somewhere near Tasmania, Gulliver has to swim
for his life. Wind and tide help to carry him close to a low-lying shore, where he falls, exhausted, into a deep
sleep. Upon awakening, he finds himself held to the ground by hundreds of small ropes. He soon discovers that
he is the prisoner of humans six inches tall. Still tied, Gulliver is fed by his captors; then he is placed on a special
wagon built for the purpose and drawn by fifteen hundred small horses. Carried in this manner to the capital city
of the small humans, he is exhibited as a great curiosity to the people of Lilliput, as the land of the diminutive
people is called. He is kept chained to a huge Lilliputian building into which he crawls at night to sleep.

Gulliver soon learns the Lilliputian language, and through his personal charm and natural curiosity, he comes into
good graces at the royal court. At length, he is given his freedom, contingent upon his obeying many rules
devised by the emperor prescribing his deportment in Lilliput. Now free, Gulliver tours Mildendo, the capital
city, and finds it to be similar, except in size, to European cities of the time.

Learning that Lilliput is in danger of an invasion by the forces of the neighboring empire, Blefuscu, he offers his
services to the emperor of Lilliput. While the enemy fleet awaits favorable winds to carry their ships the eight
hundred yards between Blefuscu and Lilliput, Gulliver takes some Lilliputian cable, wades to Blefuscu, and
brings back the entire fleet by means of hooks attached to the cables. He is greeted with great acclaim, and the
emperor makes him a nobleman. Soon, however, the emperor and Gulliver quarrel over differences concerning
the fate of the now helpless Blefuscu. The emperor wants to reduce the enemy to the status of slaves; Gulliver
champions their liberty. The pro-Gulliver forces prevail in the Lilliputian parliament; the peace settlement is
favorable to Blefuscu. Gulliver, however, is now in disfavor at court.

He visits Blefuscu, where he is received graciously by the emperor and the people. One day, while exploring, he
finds a boat from a wreck washed ashore. With the help of thousands of Blefuscu artisans, he repairs the boat for
his projected voyage back to his own civilization. Taking some cattle and sheep with him, he sails away and is
eventually picked up by an English vessel.

Back in England, Gulliver spends a short time with his family before he boards the Adventure, bound for India.
The ship is blown off course by fierce winds. Somewhere on the coast of Great Tartary a landing party goes
ashore to forage for supplies. Gulliver, who wandered away from the party, is left behind when a gigantic human
figure pursues the sailors back to the ship. Gulliver is caught in a field by giants threshing grain that grows forty
feet high. Becoming the pet of a farmer and his family, he amuses them with his humanlike behavior. The
farmer’s nine-year-old daughter, who is not yet over forty feet high, takes special charge of Gulliver.

The farmer displays Gulliver first at a local market town. Then he takes his little pet to the metropolis, where
Gulliver is put on show repeatedly, to the great detriment of his health. The farmer, seeing that Gulliver is near
death from overwork, sells him to the queen, who takes a great fancy to the little curiosity. The court doctors and
philosophers study Gulliver as a quaint trick of nature. He subsequently has adventures with giant rats the size of
lions, with a dwarf thirty feet high, with wasps as large as partridges, with apples the size of Bristol barrels, and
with hailstones the size of tennis balls.

He and the king discuss the institutions of their respective countries, the king asking Gulliver many questions
about Great Britain that Gulliver finds impossible to answer truthfully without embarrassment. After two years in
Brobdingnag, the land of the giants, Gulliver miraculously escapes when a large bird carries his portable quarters
out over the sea. The bird drops the box containing Gulliver, and he is rescued by a ship that is on its way to
England. Back home, it takes Gulliver some time to accustom himself once more to a world of normal size.

Soon afterward, Gulliver goes to sea again. Pirates from a Chinese port attack the ship. Set adrift in a small
sailboat, Gulliver is cast away upon a rocky island. One day, he sees a large floating mass descending from the
sky. Taken aboard the flying island of Laputa, he soon finds it to be inhabited by intellectuals who think only in
the realm of the abstract and the exceedingly impractical. The people of the island, including the king, are so
absentminded that they have to have servants following them to remind them even of their trends of conversation.
When the floating island arrives above the continent of Balnibari, Gulliver receives permission to visit that realm.
There he inspects the Grand Academy, where hundreds of highly impractical projects for the improvement of
agriculture and building are under way.

Next, Gulliver journeys by boat to Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers. By means of magic, the governor of the
island shows Gulliver such great historical figures as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and
Thomas More. Gulliver talks to the apparitions and learns from them that history books are inaccurate.

From Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver ventures to Luggnagg. There he is welcomed by the king, who shows him the
Luggnaggian immortals, or Struldbrugs—beings who will never die. Gulliver travels on to Japan, where he takes
a ship back to England. He has been away for more than three years.

Gulliver becomes restless after a brief stay at his home, and he signs as captain of a ship that sails from
Portsmouth in August, 1710, destined for the South Seas. The crew mutinies, keeping Captain Gulliver prisoner
in his cabin for months. At length, he is cast adrift in a longboat off a strange coast. Ashore, he comes upon and is
nearly overwhelmed by disgusting half-human, half-ape creatures who flee in terror at the approach of a horse.
Gulliver soon discovers, to his amazement, that he is in a land where rational horses, the Houyhnhnms, are
masters of irrational human creatures, the Yahoos. He stays in the stable house of a Houyhnhnm family and
learns to subsist on oaten cake and milk. The Houyhnhnms are horrified to learn from Gulliver that horses in
England are used by Yahoolike creatures as beasts of burden. Gulliver describes England to his host, much to the
candid and straightforward Houyhnhnm’s mystification. Such things as wars and courts of law are unknown to
this race of intelligent horses. As he did in the other lands he visited, Gulliver attempts to explain the institutions
of his native land, but the friendly and benevolent Houyhnhnms are appalled by many of the things Gulliver tells
them.

Gulliver lives in almost perfect contentment among the horses, until one day his host tells him that the
Houyhnhnm Grand Assembly has decreed Gulliver either be treated as an ordinary Yahoo or be released to swim
back to the land from which he had come. Gulliver builds a canoe and sails away. At length, he is picked up by a
Portuguese vessel. Remembering the Yahoos, he becomes a recluse on the ship and begins to hate all humankind.
Landing at Lisbon, he sails from there to England; on his arrival, however, the sight of his own family repulses
him. He faints when his wife kisses him. His horses become his only friends on earth.
Character Analysis Lemuel Gulliver
Gulliver is the undistinguished third of five sons of a man of very modest means. He is of good and solid — but
unimaginative — English stock. Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, a sedate county without eccentricity. He
attended Emmanuel College, a respected, but not dazzling, school. The neighborhoods that Gulliver lived in —
Old Jury, Fetter Lane, and Wapping — are all lower-middle-class sections. He is, in short, Mr. British middle
class of his time.

Gulliver is also, as might be expected, "gullible." He believes what he is told. He is an honest man, and he
expects others to be honest. This expectation makes for humor — and also for irony. We can be sure that what
Gulliver tells us will be accurate. And we can also be fairly sure that Gulliver does not always understand the
meaning of what he sees. The result is a series of astonishingly detailed, dead-pan scenes. For example, when
Gulliver awakens in Lilliput, he gradually discovers, moving from one exact detail to another, that he is a
prisoner of men six inches tall.

In Book I, Gulliver's possesses moral superiority to the petty — and tiny — Lilliputians, who show themselves to
be a petty, cruel, vengeful, and self-serving race. Morally and politically, Gulliver is their superior. Here, Swift,
through Gulliver, makes clear that the normal person is concerned with honor, gratitude, common sense, and
kindness. The representative person (a Lilliputian) is a midget, figuratively and literally, compared with a moral
person (Gulliver).

In Brobdingnag (Book II), Gulliver is still an ordinary moral man, but the Brobdingnagians are moral giant men.
Certainly they are not perfect, but their moral superiority is as great to Gulliver as is their physical size. In his
loyalty to England, we see that Gulliver is, in deed, a very proud man and one who accepts the madness and
malice of British politics and society as the natural and normal standard. For the first time, we see Gulliver as the
hypocrite — he lies to the Brobdingnagian king in order to conceal what is despicable about his native England.
Gulliver's moral height can never reach that of the Brobdingnagians. Swift reinforces the idea of the giant's moral
superiority by having Gulliver identify the English with the Lilliputians. This association also makes Gulliver
ridiculous. It demonstrates the folly and self-deception that Gulliver practices in identifying himself with the
moral giants. Gulliver's pride is at the root of his trouble. Swift dramatizes this with the mirror Gulliver cannot
bear to look into.

In Book IV, Gulliver represents the middle ground between pure reason (as embodied by the Houyhnhnms) and
pure animalism (as embodied by the depraved Yahoos), yet Gulliver's pride refuses to allow him to recognize the
Yahoo aspects in himself. Therefore, he identifies himself with the Houyhnhnms and, in fact, tries to become one.
But the horses are alien to Gulliver; yet Gulliver thinks of the Yahoos as alien and animal. Separating himself
from his naturally depraved cousins, the Yahoos, Gulliver also separates himself from the European Yahoos. He
is near to madness — because of pride. Gulliver has "reasoned" himself into rejecting his species and his nature:
Gulliver is virtually a madman. His attitudes when he arrives in London make him a source of derision, for
Gulliver seeks to change his basic nature by thinking; reason becomes the sole guide of his life.

In the end, Gulliver is still trying to acclimate himself to life as — and among — the Yahoos. Concluding, he
confesses that he could be reconciled to the English Yahoos "if they would be content with those Vices and
Follies only which Nature hath entitled them to. I am not in the least provoked at the sight of a Lawyer, a Pick-
pocket, a Colonel, a Fool, a Lord, a Gamster, a Politician, a Whoremunger, a Physician, . . . or the like: This is all
according to the due Course of Things: but, when I behold a Lump of Deformity, and Diseases both in Body and
Mind, smitten with Pride, it immediately breaks all the Measures of my patience."

Character Analysis The Lilliputians

The Lilliputians are men six inches in height but possessing all the pretension and self-importance of full-sized
men. They are mean and nasty, vicious, morally corrupt, hypocritical and deceitful, jealous and envious, filled
with greed and ingratitude — they are, in fact, completely human.
Swift uses the Lilliputians to satirize specific events and people in his life. For example, Swift's model for
Flimnap was Robert Walpole, the leader of the Whigs and England's first prime minister in the modern sense.
Walpole was an extremely wily politician, as Swift shows, by making Flimnap the most dexterous of the rope
dancers. Reldresal, the second most dexterous of the rope dancers, probably represents either Viscount
Townshend or Lord Carteret. Both were political allies of Walpole.

The articles that Gulliver signs to obtain his freedom relate the political life of Lilliput to the political life of
England. The articles themselves parallel particular English codes and laws. Similarly, the absurd and
complicated method by which Gulliver must swear to the articles (he must hold his right foot in his left hand and
place the middle finger of his right hand on top of his head with the right thumb on the tip of his ear) exemplifies
an aspect of Whig politics: petty, red-tape harassing.

Swift also uses the Lilliputians to show that English politicians were bloody-minded and treacherous. In detail, he
records the bloody and cruel methods that the Lilliputians plan to use to kill Gulliver; then he comments
ironically on the mercy, decency, generosity, and justice of kings. The Lilliputian emperor, out of mercy, plans to
blind and starve Gulliver — a direct reference to George's treatment of captured Jacobites, whom he executed —
after parliament had called him most merciful and lenient.

By the end of Book I, Swift has drawn a brilliant, concrete, and detailed contrast between the normal, if gullible,
man (Gulliver) and the diminutive but vicious politician (the Lilliputian); the politician is always a midget
alongside Gulliver.

Character Analysis The Brobdingnagians

The Brobdingnagians are the epitome of moral giants. Physically huge — 60 feet tall — their moral stature is also
gigantic. Brobdingnag is a practical, moral utopia. Among the Brobdingnagians, there is goodwill and calm
virtue. Their laws encourage charity. Yet they are, underneath, just men who labor under every disadvantage to
which man is heir. They are physically ugly when magnified, but they are morally beautiful. We cannot reject
them simply because Gulliver describes them as physically gross. If we reject them, we become even more
conscious of an ordinary person's verminous morality.

Set against the moral background of Brobdingnag and in comparison to the Brobdingnagians, Gulliver's
"ordinariness" exposes many of its faults. Gulliver is revealed to be a very proud man and one who accepts the
madness and malice of European politics, parties, and society as natural. What's more, he even lies to conceal
what is despicable about them. The Brobdingnagian king, however, is not fooled by Gulliver. The English, he
says, are "odious vermin."

Nevertheless, the Brobdingnagians are not without their flaws. Unlike Gulliver, who always considered the
Lilliputians to be miniature men, the Brobdingnagians cannot think of Gulliver as a miniature Brobdingnagian.
Even the King, who is sincerely fond of Gulliver, cannot view him as anything except an entertaining, albeit sly
little fellow, one who is not to be trusted. The maids of honor in the Brobdingnagian court treat Gulliver as a
plaything. To them, he is a toy, not a man, so they undress in front of him without a thought of modesty, and they
titillate themselves with his naked body. Still, this "abuse" of Gulliver — denying his humanity and his man-hood
— is done for amusement, not out of malice. Although they are not perfect, the Brobdingnagians are consistently
moral. Only children and the deformed are intentionally evil.

In short, Swift praises the Brobdingnagians, but he does not intend for us to think that they are perfect humans.
They are superhumans, bound to us by flesh and blood, just bigger morally than we are. Their virtues are not
impossible for us to attain, but because it takes so much maturing to reach the stature of a moral giant, few
humans achieve it.

Character Analysis The Houyhnhnms

Gulliver's description of the horses, the Houyhnhnms, is almost idyllic: "The behaviour of these animals was . . .
orderly and rational . . . acute and judicious." Indeed, it is a horse that rescues him from the Yahoos — not by any
overt, physical action, but by simply appearing on the road — no physical action being necessary.

Houyhnhnms live simple lives wholly devoted to reason. They speak clearly, they act justly, and they have
simple laws. Each Houyhnhnm knows what is right and acts accordingly. They are untroubled by greed, politics,
or lust. They live a life of cleanliness and exist in peace and serenity. They live by the grand maxim: Cultivate
Reason and be totally governed by it. So perfect is their society, in fact, that they have no concept of a lie, and
therefore no word to express it. The only word for evil is "Yahoo."

Swift defines Houyhnhnm as meaning "perfection of nature." This definition establishes an important distinction.
The horses are uncorrupted by passion — either base or noble. They are devoid, for example, of charity. Also,
they are not subject to temptation. Swift, however, never suggests that the Houyhnhnms stand for perfected
human nature; on the contrary, they manifest innocent human nature. What they do — and what they say and
think — is akin to human nature, but the character of the Houyhnhnms is far from Gulliver's. They are ignorant
of many things which most people would consider venial. They cannot, for example, understand lying — or even
the necessity for lying.

Swift thus establishes a range, or spectrum, of existence. The horses are literally innocent, having never (in
theological terms) "fallen"; the Yahoos are super-sensual and seem depraved. The Houyhnhnms are ice-cold
reason; the Yahoos are fiery sensuality. In between these extremes is Gulliver.

Character Analysis The Yahoos

Yahoos are the human-like creatures that Gulliver first encounters in the Country of the Houyhnhnms. Not
recognizing their link with humanity, Gulliver describes the Yahoos as animals: " . . . deformed . . . . Their heads
and breasts were covered with thick hair . . . but the rest of their bodies were bare . . . . They had no tails and
often stood on their hind feet . . . ." He concludes with, "I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an
animal."

Although they are human in form and feature, the Yahoos are, indeed, animals. They are filthy and they stink.
They are omnivorous but seem to prefer meat and garbage. (Significantly, they eat nearly everything prohibited
by the biblical and Levitical food codes.) They are "the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animals which nature
ever produced . . . " and they are "restive and indocible, mischievous and malicious."

The Yahoos, however, are not merely animals; they are animals who are naturally vicious and represent Mankind
depraved. Swift describes them in deliberately filthy and disgusting terms, often using metaphors drawn from
dung. In terms of their evolution, the words used to describe the Yahoos are "degenerating by degrees."

Swift positions Gulliver midway — figuratively and literally — between the super-rational, innocent horses (the
Houyhnhnms) and the filthy, depraved Yahoos. Gulliver, however, reacts to the Yahoos with immediate and
overpowering detestation and is horrified by the Yahoos' similarity to him. He lacks the humility to see himself as
a sort of Yahoo. Rather, his pride leads him to try to become a horse. Gulliver will try with admirable
determination to improve himself; he will try to change himself into a more horse-like state, but he will fail. He
is, simply, more of a Yahoo than a Houyhnhnm.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes

Might Versus Right

Gulliver’s Travels implicitly poses the question of whether physical power or moral righteousness should be the
governing factor in social life. Gulliver experiences the advantages of physical might both as one who has it, as a
giant in Lilliput where he can defeat the Blefuscudian navy by virtue of his immense size, and as one who does
not have it, as a miniature visitor to Brobdingnag where he is harassed by the hugeness of everything from insects
to household pets. His first encounter with another society is one of entrapment, when he is physically tied down
by the Lilliputians; later, in Brobdingnag, he is enslaved by a farmer. He also observes physical force used
against others, as with the Houyhnhnms’ chaining up of the Yahoos.

But alongside the use of physical force, there are also many claims to power based on moral correctness. The
whole point of the egg controversy that has set Lilliput against Blefuscu is not merely a cultural difference but,
instead, a religious and moral issue related to the proper interpretation of a passage in their holy book. This
difference of opinion seems to justify, in their eyes at least, the warfare it has sparked. Similarly, the use of
physical force against the Yahoos is justified for the Houyhnhnms by their sense of moral superiority: they are
cleaner, better behaved, and more rational. But overall, the novel tends to show that claims to rule on the basis of
moral righteousness are often just as arbitrary as, and sometimes simply disguises for, simple physical
subjugation. The Laputans keep the lower land of Balnibarbi in check through force because they believe
themselves to be more rational, even though we might see them as absurd and unpleasant. Similarly, the ruling
elite of Balnibarbi believes itself to be in the right in driving Lord Munodi from power, although we perceive that
Munodi is the rational party. Claims to moral superiority are, in the end, as hard to justify as the random use of
physical force to dominate others.
The Individual Versus Society

Like many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands, Gulliver’s Travels explores the idea of utopia—an
imaginary model of the ideal community. The idea of a utopia is an ancient one, going back at least as far as the
description in Plato’s Republic of a city-state governed by the wise and expressed most famously in English by
Thomas More’s Utopia. Swift nods to both works in his own narrative, though his attitude toward utopia is much
more skeptical, and one of the main aspects he points out about famous historical utopias is the tendency to
privilege the collective group over the individual. The children of Plato’s Republic are raised communally, with
no knowledge of their biological parents, in the understanding that this system enhances social fairness. Swift has
the Lilliputians similarly raise their offspring collectively, but its results are not exactly utopian, since Lilliput is
torn by conspiracies, jealousies, and backstabbing.

The Houyhnhnms also practice strict family planning, dictating that the parents of two females should exchange a
child with a family of two males, so that the male-to-female ratio is perfectly maintained. Indeed, they come
closer to the utopian ideal than the Lilliputians in their wisdom and rational simplicity. But there is something
unsettling about the Houyhnhnms’ indistinct personalities and about how they are the only social group that
Gulliver encounters who do not have proper names. Despite minor physical differences, they are all so good and
rational that they are more or less interchangeable, without individual identities. In their absolute fusion with their
society and lack of individuality, they are in a sense the exact opposite of Gulliver, who has hardly any sense of
belonging to his native society and exists only as an individual eternally wandering the seas. Gulliver’s intense
grief when forced to leave the Houyhnhnms may have something to do with his longing for union with a
community in which he can lose his human identity. In any case, such a union is impossible for him, since he is
not a horse, and all the other societies he visits make him feel alienated as well.

Gulliver’s Travels could in fact be described as one of the first novels of modern alienation, focusing on an
individual’s repeated failures to integrate into societies to which he does not belong. England itself is not much of
a homeland for Gulliver, and, with his surgeon’s business unprofitable and his father’s estate insufficient to
support him, he may be right to feel alienated from it. He never speaks fondly or nostalgically about England, and
every time he returns home, he is quick to leave again. Gulliver never complains explicitly about feeling lonely,
but the embittered and antisocial misanthrope we see at the end of the novel is clearly a profoundly isolated
individual. Thus, if Swift’s satire mocks the excesses of communal life, it may also mock the excesses of
individualism in its portrait of a miserable and lonely Gulliver talking to his horses at home in England.

The Limits of Human Understanding

The idea that humans are not meant to know everything and that all understanding has a natural limit is important
in Gulliver’s Travels. Swift singles out theoretical knowledge in particular for attack: his portrait of the
disagreeable and self-centered Laputans, who show blatant contempt for those who are not sunk in private
theorizing, is a clear satire against those who pride themselves on knowledge above all else. Practical knowledge
is also satirized when it does not produce results, as in the academy of Balnibarbi, where the experiments for
extracting sunbeams from cucumbers amount to nothing. Swift insists that there is a realm of understanding into
which humans are simply not supposed to venture. Thus his depictions of rational societies, like Brobdingnag and
Houyhnhnmland, emphasize not these people’s knowledge or understanding of abstract ideas but their ability to
live their lives in a wise and steady way.

The Brobdingnagian king knows shockingly little about the abstractions of political science, yet his country
seems prosperous and well governed. Similarly, the Houyhnhnms know little about arcane subjects like
astronomy, though they know how long a month is by observing the moon, since that knowledge has a practical
effect on their well-being. Aspiring to higher fields of knowledge would be meaningless to them and would
interfere with their happiness. In such contexts, it appears that living a happy and well-ordered life seems to be
the very thing for which Swift thinks knowledge is useful.

Swift also emphasizes the importance of self-understanding. Gulliver is initially remarkably lacking in self-
reflection and self-awareness. He makes no mention of his emotions, passions, dreams, or aspirations, and he
shows no interest in describing his own psychology to us. Accordingly, he may strike us as frustratingly hollow
or empty, though it is likely that his personal emptiness is part of the overall meaning of the novel. By the end, he
has come close to a kind of twisted self-knowledge in his deranged belief that he is a Yahoo. His revulsion with
the human condition, shown in his shabby treatment of the generous Don Pedro, extends to himself as well, so
that he ends the novel in a thinly disguised state of self-hatred. Swift may thus be saying that self-knowledge has
its necessary limits just as theoretical knowledge does, and that if we look too closely at ourselves we might not
be able to carry on living happily.

Motifs
Excrement

While it may seem a trivial or laughable motif, the recurrent mention of excrement in Gulliver’s Travels actually
has a serious philosophical significance in the narrative. It symbolizes everything that is crass and ignoble about
the human body and about human existence in general, and it obstructs any attempt to view humans as wholly
spiritual or mentally transcendent creatures. Since the Enlightenment culture of eighteenth-century England
tended to view humans optimistically as noble souls rather than vulgar bodies, Swift’s emphasis on the common
filth of life is a slap in the face of the philosophers of his day. Thus, when Gulliver urinates to put out a fire in
Lilliput, or when Brobdingnagian flies defecate on his meals, or when the scientist in Lagado works to transform
excrement back into food, we are reminded how very little human reason has to do with everyday existence.
Swift suggests that the human condition in general is dirtier and lowlier than we might like to believe it is.

Foreign Languages

Gulliver appears to be a gifted linguist, knowing at least the basics of several European languages and even a fair
amount of ancient Greek. This knowledge serves him well, as he is able to disguise himself as a Dutchman in
order to facilitate his entry into Japan, which at the time only admitted the Dutch. But even more important, his
linguistic gifts allow him to learn the languages of the exotic lands he visits with a dazzling speed and, thus, gain
access to their culture quickly. He learns the languages of the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnagians, and even the
neighing tongue of the Houyhnhnms. He is meticulous in recording the details of language in his narrative, often
giving the original as well as the translation. One would expect that such detail would indicate a cross-cultural
sensitivity, a kind of anthropologist’s awareness of how things vary from culture to culture. Yet surprisingly,
Gulliver’s mastery of foreign languages generally does not correspond to any real interest in cultural differences.
He compares any of the governments he visits to that of his native England, and he rarely even speculates on how
or why cultures are different at all. Thus, his facility for translation does not indicate a culturally comparative
mind, and we are perhaps meant to yearn for a narrator who is a bit less able to remember the Brobdingnagian
word for “lark” and better able to offer a more illuminating kind of cultural analysis.

Clothing

Critics have noted the extraordinary attention that Gulliver pays to clothes throughout his journeys. Every time he
gets a rip in his shirt or is forced to adopt some native garment to replace one of his own, he recounts the clothing
details with great precision. We are told how his pants are falling apart in Lilliput, so that as the army marches
between his legs they get quite an eyeful. We are informed about the mouse skin he wears in Brobdingnag, and
how the finest silks of the land are as thick as blankets on him. In one sense, these descriptions are obviously an
easy narrative device with which Swift can chart his protagonist’s progression from one culture to another: the
more ragged his clothes become and the stranger his new wardrobe, the farther he is from the comforts and
conventions of England. His journey to new lands is also thus a journey into new clothes. When he is picked up
by Don Pedro after his fourth voyage and offered a new suit of clothes, Gulliver vehemently refuses, preferring
his wild animal skins. We sense that Gulliver may well never fully reintegrate into European society.

But the motif of clothing carries a deeper, more psychologically complex meaning as well. Gulliver’s intense
interest in the state of his clothes may signal a deep-seated anxiety about his identity, or lack thereof. He does not
seem to have much selfhood: one critic has called him an “abyss,” a void where an individual character should
be. If clothes make the man, then perhaps Gulliver’s obsession with the state of his wardrobe may suggest that he
desperately needs to be fashioned as a personality. Significantly, the two moments when he describes being
naked in the novel are two deeply troubling or humiliating experiences: the first when he is the boy toy of the
Brobdingnagian maids who let him cavort nude on their mountainous breasts, and the second when he is
assaulted by an eleven-year-old Yahoo girl as he bathes. Both incidents suggest more than mere prudery. Gulliver
associates nudity with extreme vulnerability, even when there is no real danger present—a pre-teen girl is hardly
a threat to a grown man, at least in physical terms. The state of nudity may remind Gulliver of how nonexistent
he feels without the reassuring cover of clothing.

Symbols
Lilliputians

The Lilliputians symbolize humankind’s wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence. Swift fully intends the
irony of representing the tiniest race visited by Gulliver as by far the most vainglorious and smug, both
collectively and individually. There is surely no character more odious in all of Gulliver’s travels than the
noxious Skyresh. There is more backbiting and conspiracy in Lilliput than anywhere else, and more of the
pettiness of small minds who imagine themselves to be grand. Gulliver is a naïve consumer of the Lilliputians’
grandiose imaginings: he is flattered by the attention of their royal family and cowed by their threats of
punishment, forgetting that they have no real physical power over him. Their formally worded condemnation of
Gulliver on grounds of treason is a model of pompous and self-important verbiage, but it works quite effectively
on the naïve Gulliver.

The Lilliputians show off not only to Gulliver but to themselves as well. There is no mention of armies proudly
marching in any of the other societies Gulliver visits—only in Lilliput and neighboring Blefuscu are the six-inch
inhabitants possessed of the need to show off their patriotic glories with such displays. When the Lilliputian
emperor requests that Gulliver serve as a kind of makeshift Arch of Triumph for the troops to pass under, it is a
pathetic reminder that their grand parade—in full view of Gulliver’s nether regions—is supremely silly, a
basically absurd way to boost the collective ego of the nation. Indeed, the war with Blefuscu is itself an absurdity
springing from wounded vanity, since the cause is not a material concern like disputed territory but, rather, the
proper interpretation of scripture by the emperor’s forebears and the hurt feelings resulting from the
disagreement. All in all, the Lilliputians symbolize misplaced human pride, and point out Gulliver’s inability to
diagnose it correctly.

Brobdingnagians

The Brobdingnagians symbolize the private, personal, and physical side of humans when examined up close and
in great detail. The philosophical era of the Enlightenment tended to overlook the routines of everyday life and
the sordid or tedious little facts of existence, but in Brobdingnag such facts become very important for Gulliver,
sometimes matters of life and death. An eighteenth-century philosopher could afford to ignore the fly buzzing
around his head or the skin pores on his servant girl, but in his shrunken state Gulliver is forced to pay great
attention to such things. He is forced take the domestic sphere seriously as well. In other lands it is difficult for
Gulliver, being such an outsider, to get glimpses of family relations or private affairs, but in Brobdingnag he is
treated as a doll or a plaything, and thus is made privy to the urination of housemaids and the sexual lives of
women. The Brobdingnagians do not symbolize a solely negative human characteristic, as the Laputans do. They
are not merely ridiculous—some aspects of them are disgusting, like their gigantic stench and the excrement left
by their insects, but others are noble, like the queen’s goodwill toward Gulliver and the king’s commonsense
views of politics. More than anything else, the Brobdingnagians symbolize a dimension of human existence
visible at close range, under close scrutiny.
Laputans

The Laputans represent the folly of theoretical knowledge that has no relation to human life and no use in the
actual world. As a profound cultural conservative, Swift was a critic of the newfangled ideas springing up around
him at the dawn of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, a period of great intellectual experimentation and
theorization. He much preferred the traditional knowledge that had been tested over centuries. Laputa symbolizes
the absurdity of knowledge that has never been tested or applied, the ludicrous side of Enlightenment
intellectualism. Even down below in Balnibarbi, where the local academy is more inclined to practical
application, knowledge is not made socially useful as Swift demands. Indeed, theoretical knowledge there has
proven positively disastrous, resulting in the ruin of agriculture and architecture and the impoverishment of the
population. Even up above, the pursuit of theoretical understanding has not improved the lot of the Laputans.
They have few material worries, dependent as they are upon the Balnibarbians below. But they are tormented by
worries about the trajectories of comets and other astronomical speculations: their theories have not made them
wise, but neurotic and disagreeable. The Laputans do not symbolize reason itself but rather the pursuit of a form
of knowledge that is not directly related to the improvement of human life.

Houyhnhnms

The Houyhnhnms represent an ideal of rational existence, a life governed by sense and moderation of which
philosophers since Plato have long dreamed. Indeed, there are echoes of Plato’s Republic in the Houyhnhnms’
rejection of light entertainment and vain displays of luxury, their appeal to reason rather than any holy writings as
the criterion for proper action, and their communal approach to family planning. As in Plato’s ideal community,
the Houyhnhnms have no need to lie nor any word for lying. They do not use force but only strong exhortation.
Their subjugation of the Yahoos appears more necessary than cruel and perhaps the best way to deal with an
unfortunate blot on their otherwise ideal society. In these ways and others, the Houyhnhnms seem like model
citizens, and Gulliver’s intense grief when he is forced to leave them suggests that they have made an impact on
him greater than that of any other society he has visited. His derangement on Don Pedro’s ship, in which he snubs
the generous man as a Yahoo-like creature, implies that he strongly identifies with the Houyhnhnms.

But we may be less ready than Gulliver to take the Houyhnhnms as ideals of human existence. They have no
names in the narrative nor any need for names, since they are virtually interchangeable, with little individual
identity. Their lives seem harmonious and happy, although quite lacking in vigor, challenge, and excitement.
Indeed, this apparent ease may be why Swift chooses to make them horses rather than human types like every
other group in the novel. He may be hinting, to those more insightful than Gulliver, that the Houyhnhnms should
not be considered human ideals at all. In any case, they symbolize a standard of rational existence to be either
espoused or rejected by both Gulliver and us.

England

As the site of his father’s disappointingly “small estate” and Gulliver’s failing business, England seems to
symbolize deficiency or insufficiency, at least in the financial sense that matters most to Gulliver. England is
passed over very quickly in the first paragraph of Chapter I, as if to show that it is simply there as the starting
point to be left quickly behind. Gulliver seems to have very few nationalistic or patriotic feelings about England,
and he rarely mentions his homeland on his travels. In this sense, Gulliver’s Travels is quite unlike other travel
narratives like the Odyssey, in which Odysseus misses his homeland and laments his wanderings. England is
where Gulliver’s wife and family live, but they too are hardly mentioned. Yet Swift chooses to have Gulliver
return home after each of his four journeys instead of having him continue on one long trip to four different
places, so that England is kept constantly in the picture and given a steady, unspoken importance. By the end of
the fourth journey, England is brought more explicitly into the fabric of Gulliver’s Travels when Gulliver, in his
neurotic state, starts confusing Houyhnhnmland with his homeland, referring to Englishmen as Yahoos. The
distinction between native and foreign thus unravels—the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos are not just races populating
a faraway land but rather types that Gulliver projects upon those around him. The possibility thus arises that all
the races Gulliver encounters could be versions of the English and that his travels merely allow him to see
various aspects of human nature more clearly.

Gulliver's Travels Themes

The Body
Throughout Gulliver's Travels the narrator spends a great deal of time discussing the human body-going so far as
to detail his own urination and defecation. In each of the various lands to which Gulliver travels, he comes face to
face with excrement. In Lilliput he urinates on the queen's apartment to put out a fire; in Luggnagg the professors
work to turn excrement back into the food it began as; in the country of the Houyhnhnms the Yahoos throw their
excrement at each other and at him.

Looking at the body from new perspectives gives Gulliver a special insight into the body's materiality. When he
is relatively small, he can see the minute, ugly details of others' bodies. By looking closely at the body as a
material thing and paying attention to what humans do on a daily basis, Swift makes it impossible to look at
humans as exclusively spiritual or intellectual beings.

Literature and Language

Gulliver is a reader: "My Hours of Leisure I spent in reading the best Authors ancient and modern, being always
provided with a good number of books." He reads whenever he has the time. And on each of the islands he visits,
he makes a point of noticing whether the inhabitants write or do not write. The Lilliputians, for instance, write
diagonally like the ladies of England. The Houyhnhnms lack a form of writing, but Gulliver spends a great deal
of time considering how they pass on their history.

Gulliver is also a master linguist, making him a man of virtually all peoples. On each of the islands he visits, he
learns the language quickly, sometimes being taught by learned scholars (as in Lilliput) and once being taught by
a young girl (in Brobdingnag). His ability to communicate suggests the value of communication across cultures.
Once Gulliver has learned the language of a given society, he visits the King or Queen or Emperor or Governor
and discusses politics. This ability to share knowledge is beneficial to both parties.
Narrow-Mindedness and Enlightenment
Throughout his journeys Gulliver comes into contact with several different races of people, all of which are
narrow-minded in some way. Many of the peoples are conspicuously narrow-minded, such as the Lilliputians,
who have wars over the correct way to cut open an egg. (Such squabbles over unimportant matters are a common
object of satire.) Even the Houyhnhnms, who are so revered by Gulliver, cannot believe there are other
reasonable ways of living.

Much of Swift's satirical focus is on people who cannot see past their own ways, their own power, or their own
beliefs. Readers (especially his contemporary readers) can see themselves in some of this satire.

Otherness
Otherness plays a large part in Gulliver's Travels. Throughout his journeys Gulliver never quite fits in, regardless
of how long he stays. Partly this is a matter of size. In Lilliput, he is the only giant. In Brobdingnag, everyone
else is giant and he is small. Mainly, however, it is a matter of being different and simply from elsewhere. On his
final journey, when he is captain and his crew mutinies, they leave him on an uncharted island. In Houyhnhnm,
where there actually are human beings, they are disgusting creatures with whom Gulliver certainly cannot relate.
Finally, after spending years with the Houyhnhnms and coming to consider them better in every way than
humanity, Gulliver is still a human. Yet, his experience has made him an outsider in England, completely
disgusted with even his own wife and children.

Perspective and Relativity

In Gulliver's Travels the reader comes to realize that much in the world really is relative. Gulliver's first journey
lands him in Lilliput where he is called the Mountain Man, because the people there are only five to six inches
tall. On the other hand, in Brobdingnag, Gulliver is tiny compared to the enormous creatures who find him and
keep him as a pet.

Gulliver spends a great deal of time pondering this situation when he arrives in Brobdingnag. He writes, "In this
terrible Agitation of Mind I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose Inhabitants looked upon me as the
greatest Prodigy that ever appeared in the World: where I was able to draw an Imperial Fleet in my Hand .... I
reflected what a Mortification it must prove to me to appear as inconsiderable in this Nation as one single
Lilliputian would be among us." Gulliver adds, "Undoubtedly Philosophers are in the right when they tell us, that
nothing is great or little otherwise than by Comparison."

Perspective and relativity do not only apply to size, however, in Gulliver's Travels. After spending time with the
Houyhnhnms, Gulliver considers them above humanity in nearly every way. Returning to England, Gulliver is
repulsed by the humans he formerly loved and instead chooses to spend his time in the barn with his horses. The
question remains about what in the world is not relative after all; size is relative, but what about space itself? Is
time relative in the novel as well? A careful reader will find many universals in the midst of so much cultural
relativity.

Travel
The novel is set in the traditional mode of satirical travel literature. Many other classic works use the same
device, such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Homer's Odyssey. Travel in the case of Gulliver's Travels gives
Swift the opportunity to compare the ways of humanity, more specifically those of the English, with several other
ways of living. Travel also keeps the story entertaining. It is not often that a person finds a book with four sailing
journeys each interrupted by torrential storms, although one should remember that the Age of Exploration in
Europe provided many stories of travels and discoveries of new lands and new peoples.
Truth and Deception
Truth and deception are prominent themes in Gulliver's Travels. For one thing, the reader is constantly
questioning whether or not Gulliver is a reliable narrator-simply because what he is conveying is so fantastic.
Most critics and readers determine that Gulliver is reliable, however. One sign of his honesty is established
within the first few pages, when he tells the reader about where he came from.

Our comfort with Gulliver's reliability is challenged in the last chapter of the novel, though, when Gulliver tells
his readers he cannot tell a lie and swears this oath: "Nec si miserum Fortuna Sinonem Finxit, vanum etiam,
mendacemque improba finget," which in English means, "Nor if Fortune had molded Sinon for misery, would
she also in spite mold him as false and lying."

Lying does appear within Gulliver's journeys. In Lilliput he learns that for the Lilliputians lying is a capital
punishment and is considered worse than stealing. In the country of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver is surprised to
learn that the Houyhnhnms have no concept of what it means to lie. Their complete honesty is part of what makes
Gulliver decide that they are the noblest creatures on Earth.

Major themes
Gulliver's Travels has been the recipient of several designations: from Menippean satire to a children's story,
from proto-Science Fiction to a forerunner of the modern novel.

Published seven years after Daniel Defoe's wildly successful Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels may be read as
a systematic rebuttal of Defoe's optimistic account of human capability. In The Unthinkable Swift: The
Spontaneous Philosophy of a Church of England Man, Warren Montag argues that Swift was concerned to refute
the notion that the individual precedes society, as Defoe's novel seems to suggest. Swift regarded such thought as
a dangerous endorsement of Thomas Hobbes' radical political philosophy and for this reason Gulliver repeatedly
encounters established societies rather than desolate islands. The captain who invites Gulliver to serve as a
surgeon aboard his ship on the disastrous third voyage is named Robinson.

Scholar Allan Bloom points out that Swift's critique of science (the experiments of Laputa) is the first such
questioning by a modern liberal democrat of the effects and cost on a society which embraces and celebrates
policies pursuing scientific progress.[15]

A possible reason for the book's classic status is that it can be seen as many things to many different people.
Broadly, the book has three themes:

 A satirical view of the state of European government, and of petty differences between religions

 An inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt or whether they become corrupted

 A restatement of the older "ancients versus moderns" controversy previously addressed by Swift in The
Battle of the Books

In terms of storytelling and construction the parts follow a pattern:

 The causes of Gulliver's misadventures become more malignant as time goes on—he is first shipwrecked,
then abandoned, then attacked by strangers, then attacked by his own crew.

 Gulliver's attitude hardens as the book progresses—he is genuinely surprised by the viciousness and
politicking of the Lilliputians but finds the behaviour of the Yahoos in the fourth part reflective of the
behaviour of people.
  Each part is the reverse of the preceding part—Gulliver is big/small/wise/ignorant, the countries are
complex/simple/scientific/natural, and the forms of government are worse/better/worse/better than
England's.

 Gulliver's viewpoint between parts is mirrored by that of his antagonists in the contrasting part—Gulliver
sees the tiny Lilliputians as being vicious and unscrupulous, and then the king of Brobdingnag sees
Europe in exactly the same light; Gulliver sees the Laputians as unreasonable, and his Houyhnhnm master
sees humanity as equally so.

 No form of government is ideal—the simplistic Brobdingnagians enjoy public executions and have streets
infested with beggars, the honest and upright Houyhnhnms who have no word for lying are happy to
suppress the true nature of Gulliver as a Yahoo and are equally unconcerned about his reaction to being
expelled.

 Specific individuals may be good even where the race is bad—Gulliver finds a friend in each of his
travels and, despite Gulliver's rejection and horror toward all Yahoos, is treated very well by the
Portuguese captain, Don Pedro, who returns him to England at the novel's end.

Of equal interest is the character of Gulliver himself—he progresses from a cheery optimist at the start of the first
part to the pompous misanthrope of the book's conclusion and we may well have to filter our understanding of the
work if we are to believe the final misanthrope wrote the whole work. In this sense Gulliver's Travels is a very
modern and complex novel. There are subtle shifts throughout the book, such as when Gulliver begins to see all
humans, not just those in Houyhnhnm-land, as Yahoos.

Throughout, Gulliver is presented as being gullible; he believes what he is told, never perceives deeper meanings,
is an honest man, and expects others to be honest. This makes for fun and irony; what Gulliver says can be
trusted to be accurate, and he does not always understand the meaning of what he perceives.

Also, although Gulliver is presented as a commonplace "everyman", lacking higher education, he possesses a
remarkable natural gift for language. He quickly becomes fluent in the native tongue of any strange land in which
he finds himself, a literary device that adds much understanding and humour to Swift's work.

Despite the depth and subtlety of the book, it is often classified as a children's story because of the popularity of
the Lilliput section (frequently bowdlerised) as a book for children. One can still buy books entitled Gulliver's
Travels which contain only parts of the Lilliput voyage.

Critical Essays Philosophical and Political Background of Gulliver's

Travels
Swift has at least two aims in Gulliver's Travels besides merely telling a good adventure story. Behind the
disguise of his narrative, he is satirizing the pettiness of human nature in general and attacking the Whigs in
particular. By emphasizing the six-inch height of the Lilliputians, he graphically diminishes the stature of
politicians and indeed the stature of all human nature. And in using the fire in the Queen's chambers, the rope
dancers, the bill of particulars drawn against Gulliver, and the inventory of Gulliver's pockets, he presents a series
of allusions that were identifiable to his contemporaries as critical of Whig politics.

Why, one might ask, did Swift have such a consuming contempt for the Whigs? This hatred began when Swift
entered politics as the representative of the Irish church. Representing the Irish bishops, Swift tried to get Queen
Anne and the Whigs to grant some financial aid to the Irish church. They refused, and Swift turned against them
even though he had considered them his friends and had helped them while he worked for Sir William Temple.
Swift turned to the Tories for political allegiance and devoted his propaganda talents to their services. Using
certain political events of 1714-18, he described in Gulliver's Travels many things that would remind his readers
that Lilliputian folly was also English folly — and, particularly, Whig folly. The method, for example, which
Gulliver must use to swear his allegiance to the Lilliputian emperor parallels the absurd difficulty that the Whigs
created concerning the credentials of the Tory ambassadors who signed the Treaty of Utrecht.

Swift's craftiness was successful. His book was popular because it was a compelling adventure tale and also a
puzzle. His readers were eager to identify the various characters and discuss their discoveries, and, as a result,
many of them saw politics and politicians from a new perspective.

Within the broad scheme of Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver seems to be an average man in eighteenth-century
England. He is concerned with family and with his job, yet he is confronted by the pigmies that politics and
political theorizing make of people. Gulliver is utterly incapable of the stupidity of the Lilliputian politicians,
and, therefore, he and the Lilliputians are ever-present contrasts for us. We are always aware of the difference
between the imperfect (but normal) moral life of Gulliver, and the petty and stupid political life of emperors,
prime ministers, and informers.

In the second book of the Travels, Swift reverses the size relationship that he used in Book I. In Lilliput, Gulliver
was a giant; in Brobdingnag, Gulliver is a midget. Swift uses this difference to express a difference in morality.
Gulliver was an ordinary man compared to the amoral political midgets in Lilliput. Now, Gulliver remains an
ordinary man, but the Brobdingnagians are moral men. They are not perfect, but they are consistently moral.
Only children and the deformed are intentionally evil.

Set against a moral background, Gulliver's "ordinariness" exposes many of its faults. Gulliver is revealed to be a
very proud man and one who accepts the madness and malice of European politics, parties, and society as natural.
What's more, he even lies to conceal what is despicable about them. The Brobdingnagian king, however, is not
fooled by Gulliver. The English, he says, are "odious vermin."

Swift praises the Brobdingnagians, but he does not intend for us to think that they are perfect humans. They are
superhumans, bound to us by flesh and blood, just bigger morally than we are. Their virtues are not impossible
for us to attain, but because it takes so much maturing to reach the stature of a moral giant, few humans achieve
it.

Brobdingnag is a practical, moral utopia. Among the Brobdingnagians, there is goodwill and calm virtue. Their
laws encourage charity. Yet they are, underneath, just men who labor under every disadvantage to which man is
heir. They are physically ugly when magnified, but they are morally beautiful. We cannot reject them simply
because Gulliver describes them as physically gross. If we reject them, we become even more conscious of an
ordinary person's verminous morality.

In Books I and II, Swift directs his satire more toward individual targets than firing broadside at abstract
concepts. In Book I, he is primarily concerned with Whig politics and politicians rather than with the abstract
politician; in Book II, he elects to reprove immoral Englishmen rather than abstract immorality. In Book III,
Swift's target is somewhat abstract — pride in reason — but he also singles out and censures a group of his
contemporaries whom he believed to be particularly depraved in their exaltation of reason. He attacks his old
enemies, the Moderns, and their satellites, the Deists and rationalists. In opposition to their credos, Swift believed
that people were capable of reasoning, but that they were far from being fully rational. For the record, it should
probably be mentioned that Swift was not alone in denouncing this clique of people. The objects of Swift's
indignation had also aroused the rage of Pope, Arbuthnot, Dryden, and most of the orthodox theologians of the
Augustan Age.

This love of reason that Swift criticizes derived from the rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
John Locke's theories of natural religion were popularly read, as were Descartes' theories about the use of reason.
Then a loosely connected group summarized these opinions, plus others, and a cult was born: They called
themselves the Deists.

In general, the Deists believed that people could reason, observe the universe accurately, and perceive axioms
intuitively. With these faculties, people could then arrive at religious truth; they did not need biblical revelation.
Orthodox theology has always made reason dependent on God and morality, but the Deists refuted this notion.
They attacked revealed religion, saying that if reason can support the God described by the Bible, it may also
conclude that God is quite different from the biblical God. The answer depends upon which observations and
axioms the reasoner chooses to use.

Even before he wrote the Travels, Swift opposed excessive pride in reason. In his ironical Argument Against
Abolishing Christianity, he makes plain what he considers to be the consequences of depending on reason, rather
than upon faith and revelation. Disbelief, he said, is the consequence of presumptuous pride in reasoning, and
immorality is the consequence of disbelief. Swift believed that religion holds moral society together. A person
who does not believe in God by faith and revelation is in danger of disbelieving in morality.

To Swift, rationalism leads to Deism, Deism to atheism, and atheism to immorality. Where people worship
reason, they abandon tradition and common sense. Both tradition and common sense tell humankind that murder,
whoring, and drunkenness, for example, are immoral. Yet, if one depends on reason for morality, that person can
find no proof that one should not drink, whore, or murder. Thus, reasonably, is one not free to do these things?
Swift believed that will, rather than reason, was far too often the master.

Alexander Pope agreed with the position that Swift took. In his Essay on Man, he states that people cannot
perceive accurately. Our axioms are usually contradictory, and our rational systems of living in a society are
meaninglessly abstract. People, he insists, are thoroughly filled with self-love and pride; they are incapable of
being rational — that is, objective. Swift would certainly concur.

In Book III, Laputan systematizing is exaggerated, but Swift's point is clear and concrete: Such systematizing is a
manifestation of proud rationalism. The Laputans think so abstractly that they have lost their hold on common
sense. They are so absorbed in their abstractions that they serve food in geometric and musical shapes.
Everything is relegated to abstract thought, and the result is mass delusion and chaos. The Laputans do not
produce anything useful; their clothes do not fit, and their houses are not constructed correctly. These people
think — but only for abstract thinking's sake; they do not consider ends.

In a similar fashion, Swift shows that philology and scholarship betray the best interests of the Luggnaggians;
pragmatic scientism fails in Balnibarbi; and accumulated experience does not make the Struldbruggs either happy
or wise. In his topical political references, Swift demonstrates the viciousness and cruelty, as well as the folly,
that arise from abstract political theory imposed by selfish politicians. The common people, Swift says, suffer. He
also cites the folly of Laputan theorists and the Laputan king by referring to the immediate political blunders of
the Georges.

The Travels is structured very much like a variation on the question, "Why are people so often vicious and
cruel?" and the answer, "Because they succumb to the worst elements in themselves." Man is an infinitely
complex animal; he is many, many mixtures of intellect and reason, charity and emotion. Yet reason and intellect
are not synonymous — even if they might profitably be; nor are emotion and charity necessarily akin to one
another. But few people see Man as the grey mixture of varying qualities that he is. Man oversimplifies, and, in
the last book of the Travels, Swift shows us the folly of people who advance such theories. In his time, it was a
popular notion that a Reasonable Man was a Complete Man. Here, Swift shows us Reason exalted. We must
judge whether it is possible or desirable for Man.

The Houyhnhnms are super-reasonable. They have all the virtues that the stoics and Deists advocated. They
speak clearly, they act justly, and they have simple laws. They do not quarrel or argue since each knows what is
true and right. They do not suffer from the uncertainties of reasoning that afflict Man. But they are so reasonable
that they have no emotions. They are untroubled by greed, politics, or lust. They act from undifferentiated
benevolence. They would never prefer the welfare of one of their own children to the welfare of another
Houyhnhnm simply on the basis of kinship.
Very simply, the Houyhnhnms are horses; they are not humans. And this physical difference parallels the abstract
difference. They are fully rational, innocent, and undepraved. Man is capable of reason, but never wholly or
continuously, and he is — but never wholly or continuously — passionate, proud, and depraved.

In contrast to the Houyhnhnms, Swift presents their precise opposite: the Yahoos, creatures who exhibit the
essence of sensual human sinfulness. The Yahoos are not merely animals; they are animals who are naturally
vicious. Swift describes them in deliberately filthy and disgusting terms, often using metaphors drawn from dung.
The Yahoos plainly represent Mankind depraved. Swift, in fact, describes the Yahoos in such disgusting terms
that early critics assumed that he hated Man to the point of madness. Swift, however, takes his descriptions from
the sermons and theological tracts of his predecessors and contemporaries. If Swift hated Man, one would also
have to say that St. Francis and St. Augustine did, too. Swift's descriptions of depraved Man are, if anything,
milder than they might be. One sermon writer described Man as a saccus stercorum, a sack filled with dung. The
descriptions of the Yahoos do not document Swift's supposed misanthropy. Rather, the creatures exhibit
physically the moral flaws and natural depravity that theologians say plague the offspring of Adam.

Midway between the poles of the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, Swift places Gulliver. Gulliver is an average
man, except that he has become irrational in his regard for reason. Gulliver is so disgusted with the Yahoos and
so admires the Houyhnhnms that he tries to become a horse.

This aspiration to become a horse exposes Gulliver's grave weakness. Gullible and proud, he becomes such a
devotee of reason that he cannot accept his fellow humans who are less than totally reasonable. He cannot
recognize virtue and charity when they exist. Captain Pedro de Mendez rescues Gulliver and takes him back to
Europe, but Gulliver despises him because Mendez doesn't look like a horse. Likewise, when he reaches home,
Gulliver hates his family because they look and smell like Yahoos. He is still capable of seeing objects and
surfaces accurately, but he is incapable of grasping true depths of meaning.

Swift discriminates between people as they are idealized, people as they are damned, people as they possibly
could be, and others as they are. The Houyhnhnms embody the ideal of the rationalists and stoics; the Yahoos
illustrate the damning abstraction of sinful and depraved Man; and Pedro de Mendez represents virtue possible to
Man. Gulliver, usually quite sane, is misled when we leave him, but he is like most people. Even dullards,
occasionally, become obsessed by something or other for a while before lapsing back into their quiet, workaday
selves. Eventually, we can imagine that Gulliver will recover and be his former unexciting, gullible self.

Swift uses the technique of making abstractions concrete to show us that super-reasonable horses are impossible
and useless models for humans. They have never fallen and therefore have never been redeemed. They are
incapable of the Christian virtues that unite passion and reason: Neither they nor the Yahoos are touched by grace
or charity. In contrast, the Christian virtues of Pedro de Mendez and the Brobdingnagians (the "least corrupted"
of mankind) are possible to humans. These virtues are the result of grace and redemption. Swift does not press
this theological point, however. He is, after all, writing a satire, not a religious tract.

Critical Essays Swift's Satire in Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels was unique in its day; it was not written to woo or entertain. It was an indictment, and it was
most popular among those who were indicted — that is, politicians, scientists, philosophers, and Englishmen in
general. Swift was roasting people, and they were eager for the banquet.

Swift himself admitted to wanting to "vex" the world with his satire, and it is certainly in his tone, more than
anything else, that one most feels his intentions. Besides the coarse language and bawdy scenes, probably the
most important element that Dr. Bowdler deleted from the original Gulliver's Travels was this satiric tone. The
tone of the original varies from mild wit to outright derision, but always present is a certain strata of ridicule. Dr.
Bowdler gelded it of its satire and transformed it into a children's book.
After that literary operation, the original version was largely lost to the common reader. The Travels that proper
Victorians bought for the family library was Bowdler's version, not Swift's. What irony that Bowdler would have
laundered the Travels in order to get a version that he believed to be best for public consumption because,
originally, the book was bought so avidly by the public that booksellers were raising the price of the volume, sure
of making a few extra shillings on this bestseller. And not only did the educated buy and read the book — so also
did the largely uneducated.

However, lest one think that Swift's satire is merely the weapon of exaggeration, it is important to note that
exaggeration is only one facet of his satiric method. Swift uses mock seriousness and understatement; he parodies
and burlesques; he presents a virtue and then turns it into a vice. He takes pot-shots at all sorts of sacred cows.
Besides science, Swift debunks the whole sentimental attitude surrounding children. At birth, for instance,
Lilliputian children were "wisely" taken from their parents and given to the State to rear. In an earlier satire (A
Modest Proposal), he had proposed that the very poor in Ireland sell their children to the English as gourmet
food.

Swift is also a name-caller. Mankind, as he has a Brobdingnagian remark, is "the most pernicious race of little
odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." Swift also inserted subtly hidden
puns into some of his name-calling techniques. The island of Laputa, the island of pseudo-science, is literally (in
Spanish) the land of "the whore." Science, which learned people of his generation were venerating as a goddess,
Swift labeled a whore, and devoted a whole hook to illustrating the ridiculous behavior of her converts.

In addition, Swift mocks blind devotion. Gulliver, leaving the Houyhnhnms, says that he "took a second leave of
my master, but as I was going to prostrate myself to kiss his hoof, he did me the honor to raise it gently to my
mouth." Swift was indeed so thorough a satirist that many of his early readers misread the section on the
Houyhnhnms. They were so enamored of reason that they did not realize that Swift was metamorphosing a virtue
into a vice. In Book IV, Gulliver has come to idealize the horses. They embody pure reason, but they are not
human. Literally, of course, we know they are not, but figuratively they seem an ideal for humans — until Swift
exposes them as dull, unfeeling creatures, thoroughly unhuman. They take no pleasure in sex, nor do they ever
overflow with either joy or melancholy. They are bloodless.

Gulliver's Travels was the work of a writer who had been using satire as his medium for over a quarter of a
century. His life was one of continual disappointment, and satire was his complaint and his defense — against his
enemies and against humankind. People, he believed, were generally ridiculous and petty, greedy and proud; they
were blind to the "ideal of the mean." This ideal of the mean was present in one of Swift's first major satires, The
Battle of the Books (1697). There, Swift took the side of the Ancients, but he showed their views to be ultimately
as distorted as those of their adversaries, the Moderns. In Gulliver's last adventure, Swift again pointed to the
ideal of the mean by positioning Gulliver between symbols of sterile reason and symbols of gross sensuality. To
Swift, Man is a mixture of sense and nonsense; he had accomplished much but had fallen far short of what he
could have been and what he could have done.

Swift was certainly not one of the optimists typical of his century. He did not believe that the Age of Science was
the triumph that a great majority of his countrymen believed it to be. Science and reason needed limits, and they
needed a good measure of humanism. They did not require absolute devotion.

Swift was a highly moral man and was shocked by his contemporaries' easy conversion to reason as the be-all
and end-all of philosophy. To be so gullible amounted to non-reason in Swift's thinking. He therefore offered up
the impractical scientists of Laputa and the impersonal, but absolutely reasonable, Houyhnhnms as embodiments
of science and reason carried to ridiculous limits. Swift, in fact, created the whole of Gulliver's Travels in order to
give the public a new moral lens. Through this lens, Swift hoped to "vex" his readers by offering them new
insights into the game of politics and into the social follies of humans.
Critical Essays Gulliver as a Dramatis Persona
Jonathan Swift is not, of course, Lemuel Gulliver; nor does Swift seriously use Gulliver as either a mask or a
mouthpiece. This truism, however, is not as obvious as one might think. For too many years, critics of Gulliver's
Travels were infuriated with Swift. After they had finished the fourth book of the Travels, they believed that
Swift had imbued Gulliver with his own mad and misanthropic traits. Thackeray, for instance, said that Swift
should be "hooted" because he had written a book "filthy in word, filthy in thought . . . raging [and] obscene."
Swift's early critics were quick to forget — or carelessly overlooked in their horror — that Gulliver's
denunciation of the Yahoos and his veneration for the Houyhnhnms belonged to Gulliver — a character in an
allegorical adventure tale. He was Swift's creation, but never the creator himself.

Gulliver is a simple, naive creature; Swift is one of the most complex personalities in English letters. Swift
merely incensed his early critics, and they wanted a scapegoat on which to vent their ire. The same critics would
not have dreamed of identifying Swift with Gulliver while Gulliver was amongst the Lilliputians, but when Swift
placed Gulliver between the extremes of the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms, then the satire became less topical.
Swift, in the fourth book, is assailing Man, not merely English, political men. But it is not Swift who is saying
that all humankind is worthless; it is Gulliver who thought so. Swift set up the antithetical worlds of the Yahoos
and the Houyhnhnms to shock, not to define. Gulliver, if properly viewed, is a fool when the Travels is finished.
He prefers the company of horses to other men and even to his own family. Ironically, he worships reason but is
almost wholly devoid of reason.

The kind of a man Swift was and the kind of a man Gulliver is are antithetical to one another. Gulliver is an
"innocent-eyed" narrator; Swift was an ironist. Gulliver tells us what he believes is the truth; Swift reveals
ambiguities. Gulliver reports to us as precisely as he can, often not realizing the implications of his observations.
Swift, in contrast, lets us know the implications. Gulliver, for example, is impressed by the Lilliputians' grandeur;
Swift lets us see beyond Gulliver's narrative line and realize the irony in the juxtaposition of the miniscule
Lilliputians and their grandiose notions. Gulliver gives us his perspective of his adventures; then Swift pulls us
farther back so that Gulliver himself is seen in perspective. Yet one thing that we can always count on, as far as
Gulliver is concerned, is his honesty as a reporter. We can trust him because he is neither discreet nor imaginative
enough to either withhold or insert inventive adventures on his own.

The tone that Swift has Gulliver use in reporting is one of the key factors separating author from hero. Gulliver
reports to us as though we were as gullible as he is. Of course we are not. We can feel superior to Gulliver even
though we like him. He has a fascinating curiosity and gets himself into many scrapes precisely because of his
gullibility. Had he been as clever as Swift, there would have been no adventures. In fact, Swift would probably
have so infuriated the Brobdingnagians that they would have snuffed out his life. They would not have tolerated
the stinging-tongued little Dean.

One may argue that ultimately Gulliver is disillusioned about man, and so is Swift. But Swift was never so
disillusioned about people that he boarded in a stable. Swift's disillusionment took an indignant turn. That's why
he wrote his satires — to point out imperfections, to chasten, and to educate. Swift was his own judge. But
Gulliver accepts the Houyhnhnms' judgment of himself. And he finally believes that he, though he hates to admit
it, is terribly Yahoo-like. Gulliver worships the Houyhnhnm ideal; Swift subtly mocks it by letting Gulliver
praise it; then he slowly reveals that it is an ideal devoid of any spark of life. In this way, Swift shows us that
Gulliver is incapable of critically thinking and reasoning. Gulliver is worshipping something as lifeless as a
mathematical equation. And, when we finish the book, the horses and their ideals are as uninteresting to us as
they are captivating to Gulliver.

Gulliver is completely befuddled at the end of the Travels. He has reached for an unhuman ideal and has rejected
the sub-human Yahoos as too thoroughly human. He believes that the Travels is a defense of himself, showing
how morally he acted. In truth, the Travels is the best evidence one could have that Gulliver often acted very
ridiculously. He imagines one type of audience; Swift created for another. Gulliver's gullibility and his simplicity
are responsible for his downfall. He does not realize that human beings are infinitely more complex than the
Yahoos or the Houyhnhnms. Being a simple man, he simplifies to disastrous extremes. He has come full turn —
from being proud of being a European man to disgust for all people. Gulliver believes his distorted vision. Swift
does not. He holds it up only as a disconcerting, shocking mirror image — the kind one finds at a carnival. This is
the reason for his satire — to catch us off-guard, to magnify, to miniaturize, and to make us see anew.

How can Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift be related to George I?

The emperor of Lilliput is representative of George I, the king on the throne when Gulliver's Travels was
published.  The pro-Whig George I persecuted the High Church Tories.  When Gulliver details the conflict
between the two warring parties in Lilliput, the Tramecksans and Slamecksans, those who wear high heels and
low heels on their shoes, respectively, Swift is satirizing the conflict between the Tories and Whigs, respectively. 
He says that the emperor has determined to "make use of only low Heels" in his administration, and this parallels
King George's favor of the Low Church Whig party.  The Whigs were the more liberal party; the Tories more
conservative. 

Further, the Lilliputian emperor is highly susceptible to influence and manipulations by his administration's
ministers, and this parallels the belief that George I was too easily influenced by those people that he trusted (and,
perhaps, that those people were not altogether reliable). 

In Swift's Gulliver's Travels, what special attributes does the Emperor

of Lilliput possess which set him apart from the common folk?
The emperor of Lilliput is taller, by perhaps a centimeter or so, than anyone else in his court, and Gulliver says
that the height difference is enough to impress a beholder.  Likewise, he has "strong and masculine" features, a
graceful and regal bearing, and superior posture and proportion.  These seem to set him apart from the rabble, at
least for Gulliver.

Besides this, Gulliver tells us that the emperor is almost twenty nine years old, has reigned for approximately
seven years, and has been -- for the most part -- victorious and happy all the while.  He is an excellent horseman,
quite articulate, and very desirous, at least initially, of showing Gulliver hospitality and courtesy.  He is later
revealed to be somewhat less hospitable, especially when thwarted in his plans to defeat Blefuscu.

Who was Gulliver's worst enemy in Lilliput?

For reasons unclear, Skyris Bolgolam (the High Admiral) becomes Gulliver's "mortal Enemy" almost as soon as
Gulliver arrives in Lilliput.  Bolgolam's hatred of Gulliver increases after Gulliver's success against Blefuscu
because it made Bolgolam look bad -- Gulliver was able to defeat the Blefuscudian fleet when Bolgolam could
not.  Therefore, Bolgolam -- working with Flimnap, the High Treasurer -- accuses Gulliver of treason against the
emperor of Lilliput and has prepared several articles for impeachment against him (according to a friendly
informant who alerts Gulliver to the danger he is in).  Further, Bolgolam insists that Gulliver is a Big-Endian at
heart, and the current administration is Little-Endian.  Bolgolam insists that Gulliver "be put to the most painful
and ignominious Death," and wants to set fire to Gulliver's house at night, with an army outside, waiting to shoot
him with poisoned arrows in case he should escape the conflagration.  The emperor will not allow Gulliver to be
killed in such a manner, though he decides to starve the man-mountain instead.  Thus, Skyris Bolgolam is
Gulliver's worst enemy, as he convinces the emperor that Gulliver is no friend to the state and deserves to die.

The reason for the dispute between the Lilliputians and the Blefuscudians begins with the great debate over
which side of the egg is the proper one to break.  When the grandfather of the current emperor of Lilliput was a
boy, he broke his egg at the larger end, and he cut his finger.  Since then, everyone is supposed to break their
eggs at the smaller end, but there have been a great number of rebellions as a result of the new law, and the rulers
of Blefuscu have encouraged and fueled these civil skirmishes in Lilliput.  Further, the Blefuscudian emperors
have often "accused [the Lilliputians] of making a Schism in Religion [...]."  Many Big Endians have gone into
exile rather than begin to change their habit of egg breaking, and they've found refuge in Blefuscu, and the court
of that country has given them assistance and encouragement to continue to foment rebellion and discord in
Lilliput.  As a result of this conflict, Lilliput has lost dozens of ships and thousands of seamen.

Describe the conflict between the Big-Endians and Little-Endians.

When Gulliver is in Lilliput, he learns of the terrible conflict between those Lilliputians called the Big Endians and those
called the Little Endians.  Their conflict originated when the current emperor's grandfather, as a boy, broke open his egg at
the bigger end and cut his finger.  Since then, all subjects have been instructed to only crack their eggs at the littler end. 
However, while many people prefer the new way of cracking eggs, the Little Endians, some folks still prefer to break their
eggs in the old way, the Big Endians.  Apparently, some eleven thousand citizens have died for the cause rather than break
their eggs at the small end.  This conflict symbolizes and satirizes the religious wars that took place in England for hundreds
of years, wars between the Protestants and the Catholics. 

Describe Gulliver's stay in Blefuscu.

Gulliver goes to Blefuscu to escape the Lilliputian emperor's growing displeasure, later to find out that he has
been named a traitor to Lilliput for several reasons and that Lilliputian leadership agreed to starve him as
punishment.  While in Blefuscu, Gulliver is treated well by its monarch.  When the emperor of Lilliput demands
that the emperor of Blefuscu send Gulliver home, the Blefuscudin emperor secretly offers Gulliver his protection
and refuses to send him back to Lilliput as prisoner.  When Gulliver finds a boat, the emperor of Blefuscu
provides him with five hundred workmen to help him make sails while he repairs it, and he is given the tallow of
three hundred cows for greasing the boat as well as the assistance of the king's ship carpenters.  When Gulliver is
finally ready to leave, the king presents him with a number of gifts.  Gulliver doesn't do much in Blefuscu other
than get ready to go home.

What are the qualities of the emperor of Blefuscu in Gulliver's

Travels by Jonathan Swift?
Gulliver says that he was received at the Blefuscudian court with "Generosity."  Then, when Gulliver finds a boat
that, with repairs, could take him home, the emperor of Blefuscu is willing to loan him some ships in order to
help pull it to land.  Further, the emperor is willing to give Gulliver the materials he needs to fix the boat and also
grants him license to leave when the boat is finished (something the emperor of Lilliput had not been willing to
do since he wanted Gulliver to stay and continue to be exploited).  The emperor also generously gives Gulliver a
number of gifts when he is ready to leave: two purses full of gold, a full-length portrait of the ruler himself, food
and provisions to last him the voyage, etc.  On the whole, the emperor of Blefuscu is more giving and generous
and good than the emperor of Lilliput.  He doesn't hold it against Gulliver that Gulliver basically destroyed their
entire fleet, nor does he attempt to exploit Gulliver.  He is fair and seems more virtuous than the emperor of
Lilliput as well.

Provide a brief sketch of the governor of Glubbdubdrib.

Glubbdubdrib is an extremely prosperous island full of magicians.  The governor is the head and eldest of a
specific tribe of sorcerers that only marries one another.  The governor is a skillful necromancer, meaning that he
can conjure the spirits of the dead, and it is these spirits who serve him and his family at his great palace and
large estate.  He can only command a spirit's presence for one day, and he may not call up the same spirit for
three months after.

He longs to learn about Gulliver's home, and Gulliver stays for about ten days so that they might learn from each
other.  During this time, the governor generously allowed Gulliver to "call up whatever Persons [he] would chuse
to name" from any place or time in history.  He assures Gulliver that these spirits will tell him the truth about
anything he wants to know, and so Gulliver chooses a number of very interesting personages: Alexander the
Great, Hannibal, Caesar, and more.  Unlike many of the other leaders Gulliver meets on his travels, the governor
of Glubbdubdrib is actually pretty decent: he doesn't try to exploit Gulliver as a worker or an entertainer, and he
does not judge him for his native country's customs.  

Why did Swift make the houyhnhnms look like horses in part 4?
In this section of the satire, Swift is, in part, poking fun at the entirety of the human race and our perception of our own
intelligence and feelings of mastery over other animals or even, sometimes, other people.  The horse is a long-domesticated
beast of burden that many of Swift's contemporaries felt to be beneath them in terms of intelligence, and so he presents a
utopian society in which horses rule in order to turn this common way of thinking on its head.  Unlike human society, the
society set up by the Houyhnhnms is peaceful and reasonable, and it is actually the Yahoos, the horribly disgusting and
animalistic humanoid creatures, who are the beasts of burden for the Houyhnhnms.  By presenting humans and horses in
these ways, Swift encourages readers to reevaluate the way they see themselves and other animals and/or people to see if
their perceptions are accurate or merely the common way of thinking.

How are Yahoos better than Gulliver?

Gulliver and his Master Horse eventually come to the conclusion that Houyhnhnmland Yahoos are preferable to European
Yahoos because, with Houyhnhnmland Yahoos, what you see is what you get.  European Yahoos share all the same vicious
and terrible qualities that the Houyhnhnmland Yahoos possess -- greed, lust, violence, a general lack of common sense or
intelligence, and so forth -- however, the filthy and disgusting exteriors of Houyhnhnmland Yahoos match their terrible and
unscrupulous exteriors.  European Yahoos, on the other hand, try to hide their true, disgusting, natures under a facade of
cleanliness and politeness.  European Yahoos may look and smell and seem better than their Houyhnhnmland counterparts,
but they are just as awful, and so their appearances are really deceiving.  This makes Houyhnhnmland Yahoos better, in a
sense, because they do not hide their natures in this way.  As a European Yahoo, then, this makes Houyhnhnmland Yahoos
better than Gulliver.

In Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, what surprises await

Gulliver when he reaches Brobdingnag?
When Gulliver reaches Brobdingnag, he and the other men see no source of freshwater nor any signs of human life, and he
separates from the group, walking a mile or so in the other direction.  When he turns back, he sees the men rapidly rowing
their small boat back to the ship, and he is just about to call out to them when he sees a "huge Creature" pursuing them by
walking through the water.  The little boat is able to escape the "Monster," and, realizing he'd been abandoned, Gulliver
runs quickly onto the land; there, he sees corn that is "forty Foot" high and a man who is as "Tall as an ordinary Spire-
steeple."  Each of this man's strides is ten yards long!  When he sees a number of these figures advancing through the corn,
he attempts to hide, but he quickly begins to fear for his soon-to-be fatherless children and widow (because he believes that
his own death is imminent).  Certainly, Gulliver is surprised to be abandoned by the ship's crew, and he is even more
shocked to see the giants, some six times his size.  He is later surprised to realize how disgusting these Brobdingnagians
appear, simply because Gulliver is so much smaller and can distinguish every tiny mark on their skin; he realizes that this
must be how the Lilliputians saw him too.
In Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, how is the King of
Brobdingnag a giant not only physically, but also morally?
The king of Brobdingnag is a moral giant relative to Gulliver, certainly, and to the Europeans Gulliver describes
to him.  The king asks for a full account of Gulliver's home -- its government, its history, its way of life -- and he
is "perfectly astonished" by what he hears.  He concludes that the majority of Gulliver's countrymen are the "most
pernicious Race of little odious Vermin" that ever lived due to their violence, cruelty, hatred, and ambition. 
Gulliver describes the king as wanting knowledge and experience due to his isolation from the rest of the world,
and he believes that the king is narrow-minded, when, in reality, the king is precisely right: Gulliver's
countrymen are warlike and vengeful and greedy.  In many ways, they lack the humanity the king possesses.

Further, when Gulliver explains gunpowder to the king, that it can destroy armies, blowing up hundreds of men at
once, and laying waste to cities, he offers to share the recipe, believing that a king would absolutely want such a
weapon at his disposal.  Indeed, most kings would.  However, the king of Brobdingnag is again horrified, calling
Gulliver an "impotent and groveling Insect" with "inhuman Ideas."  The king has a great deal of humanity,
enough to fill his whole, giant person, while Gulliver seems to have comparably little in his much smaller figure.

What is the major difference between the 2 societies, the

Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagian in Gulliver’s Travels?
The major difference between the Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians is that of character. The Lilliputians though
small in size were cruel, disrespectful and ungrateful towards Gulliver. First and foremost, their cruelty manifests
in the manner in which they hand Gulliver upon his captivation. They tie him up and shoot him with arrows, a
painful experience for Gulliver who had not harmed anyone. They exploited him and used him to win the battle
against the Blefuscu with whom they had differed with over the correct method of eating eggs. In addition to that,
their ungrateful nature clearly comes to life when they condemn Gulliver to blindness and starvation after he put
out a raging inferno at the palace.

On the other hand, the Brobdingnagians though giant-like, were good-willed, virtuous and respectful towards
Gulliver. They handle him with care from the onset and constructed a dwelling place for him. Also, the queen
hired a caretaker to look after Gulliver as well as teach him. The Brobdingnagians did not use Gulliver for their
own gain as the Lilliputians did and respected the tales Gulliver narrated to them about his land.

The Brobdingnagians are a race of huge males and females. They are literally giants, over 50 feet tall. As a result
everything around them is also gigantic and Gulliver is in complete danger being that he is tiny in comparison.

This race is essentially human, going through the same feeding, breeding, and living processes as typical people.
They have a peacekeeping army, engage in conflict, and understand the difference between political factions and
parties. If they were normal-sized, they would not be any different than us. However, their massive size makes
the mundane aspects of human physiology even more shocking as they are fully displayed at a much larger scale. 

These people disgust Gulliver because he inevitably has to witness the graphic changes in their bodies, including
the good, the bad, and the ugly. Yet, as people the Brobdingnagians are relatively civil, even more than us in
comparison, because their laws are clear, and they seek for peace as their common goal.

The tiny Lilliputians are dramatically different in size compared to the Brobdingnagians. They are less than half a
foot tall, and their world is also tiny. The system of government in the island where they inhabit is comical and
ridiculous. It consists on an Emperor and the officials appointed for council, whom are elected based on
ridiculous abilities.
When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates
petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the
highest, without falling, succeeds in the office

Lilliputians are mean and fight amongst themselves all the time. They build their own weapons and are awesome
in mechanics. The politics of the Lilliputians are similar to those in England, and Swift makes sure to highlight
the differences of the two main parties the way in a way that they mirror those of the Tories and the Whigs. In all
the Lilliputians are tiny but their size is nothing to feel safe about. They have machinations in terms of
everything, from their everyday life, to the making of war machinery, to the way that people backstab each other
at court and out of court. They are little people with massive personalities.

In all, there is not just one major difference since they are two completely different races. However, for the sake
of argument, we may contend that, in both races of individuals, the size of the citizens seems to contrast with
their personalities. The Liliputians are small but able to cause big problems. The Brobdingnagians are large, but
want to avoid those "big problems" by minimizing conflict. 

What is the major conflict of the story, "Gulliver's Travels"?

This work is a satire.  Swift uses the personna of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's doctor (for credence), to satirize so
many issues in the English government.  Several conflicts which show throughout the four-book work are the
way the government officials handle things like elections, wars, and the affairs of the country--both domestic and
foreign.  He also makes fun of the scientists of his age, illogical behavior, and the vanity of humanity.  There are
many conflicts, but perhaps you could narrow it down to one major conflict in each book.

Check out the enotes summaries and choose the conflict you want to tackle for your book report in each section
of this piece of literature.  Good Luck!  Sounds like a fun project.

Each journey in this satirical work by Swift represents a specific "conflict". There are four journeys that Gulliver
undertakes and each new society that he encounters causes him to take a look at his own English society. These
insights into the politics and human nature create quite a controversy. He uses each new society as a contrast to
his own and also demonstrates how each group cannot believe there is a different way of living or any other way
of life that could be better.

You can review the enotes review of Gulliver's Travels for a more expansive review of each journey and decide
which conflict you wish to focus on for your report.

It would be difficult to state there is just one conflict unless you want to focus boradly on the idea of how Swift
saw society as narrow minded and even the ugliness of human nature.

What is Swift satirizing in Gulliver's Travels?

From the beginning of the first book in Gulliver , the Lilliputians were the first culture he met . they were small
people who captured Gulliver and controlled him by using their arrows . though they are smaller than Gulliver
but they had the power to control him . in the other hand , England is a small country , as the Lilliputians , but it
controlled the whole European countries at that time .

After that , in his later journey to Lagodo , he found some scientists who were trying to extract sunlight from a
cucumber.  in this example  the writer is attacking the sleeping scientists in England whom let everything to the
religious people .

Jonathan Swift was one of the greatest satirists and because of that Gulliver's travel was the best satire novel in
the English literature. Swift wrote it in this way to amuse the readers and to touch the reality of the situations at
that time . the satire wasn't only in the actions of the characters . the English language , the clothes that refer to
the English society and the fake hair the characters wore.

Finally, the work is a political satire.  It satirizes stupid politicians, corrupt politicians, hurtful public policies and
much more.  It satirizes the human tendency to violence, and the human practice of blindly following silly
traditions.  And the Christian denominations at that era

In Gulliver's Travels, Swift manages to satirize politicians, religion, science, society and even the king of his age.
During the first voyage, Swift satirizes political conditions when Gulliver comes to know that the king of Lilliput
chooses his ministries not on the basis of their political skills but on their ability to dance on a tight rope.
He criticizes religious conditions when he comments on the Lilliputians' religious division between those who
wear low-heeled and high-heeled shoes. and who open their eggs from the small and the large end.
The cultural satire comes in the fourth voyage where Gulliver goes to the land of Houyhnhnms. In fact, these
Houyhnhnms are rational horses and their servants are Yahoos who are presented as human beings. The
difference between Yahoos and Houyhnhnms allows Swift to criticize the nature of man more closely than in any
other voyage.
In writing Gulliver's Travels, Swift had aimed at amending and correcting his public. He wanted to shock the
people into a realization of their faults and failings.
Gulliver's Travels is an allegorical satire. this mean that Swift does not attack personalities and institutions
directly but in a veiled manner.

In Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver especially singles out "pride" as the greatest defect of human being. When Gulliver
has become an absolute and uncompromising hater of mankind and even of his own family, Swift is not to be
identified with him. Here Swift seemed to be point out to us the dangers of extreme misanthropy.
Although Jonathan Swift criticized human being strictly, his aim was to alert mankind to their faults and failings.
Swift is using Gulliver's voyages to satirize various aspects of English society.  Gulliver's various conflicts in the
lands he visits allow Swift to discuss a number of problems he sees with English society and the way England is
governed.
When Gulliver washes ashore on Lilliput, for example, he soon observes that the Emperor of Lilliput chooses his
ministers not on the basis of their ability to govern but on their ability to walk a tightrope.  This is Swift's thinly-
veiled criticism of how George I, the King of England, chooses his ministers--in this case, not on their ability to
walk a tightrope but on their connections within the court and whether or not they will make decisions based on
what King George wants them to do rather than on what is right for the English.  In another instance, Swift,
through Gulliver, criticizes the religious animosity within English society by telling us about the hatred between
those Lillitputians who open their eggs from the small end or the large end first.  The point is, of course, that it
doesn't matter what end one opens an egg, but Swift is pointing out how ridiculous some controversies are.
Again, in the third voyage, to the island of Laputa, Gulliver discovers a race of people who are so detached from
reality that they require their servants to carry inflated bladders and hit them in order to remind them bring them
back from highly speculative thought to real-world concerns.  Gulliver tells us, for example, that some of these
people are actually trying to build a house from the top down, a physical impossibility, but symptomatic of how
removed from everyday reality these people are.  Swift is satirizing the over-abundance of genuine "projectors"
in England who were constantly coming up with outlandish and unworkable ways to cure society's problems.
When Gulliver lands in the land of the Houyhnhnms, he discovers a race of horses who are perfectly rational,
unemotional, logical beings, and the uncivilized brutes of this society, the Yahoos, are human beings.  During this
experience, Gulliver actually loses his own identity and considers himself a kind of Houyhnhnm rather than a
human being, and when he returns to England, he can barely stand being around people, preferring horses for
company.  Swift is satirizing anyone who chooses a philosophy over reality.
In the end, Swift has managed--through the framework of a child's fairy tale--to point out many problems in
English society that need correction, and he has accomplished this without pointing overtly to specific people
within English society.
Gulliver's time with the Lilliputians really puts a spotlight on quite a few of humankind's flaws.  For example, the
debate between the Big Endians and the Little Endians centers on which side of the egg a person should crack:
it's completely ridiculous.  However, this conflict satirizes the wars between Catholics and Protestants in England
at this time, making the violence seem both unnecessary and ridiculous.  Why should it affect me if you want to
crack your egg on the other side than I do?  It doesn't.  Likewise, why should it affect you if I want to practice
Protestantism and you are a Catholic?  It doesn't.  Humans, in general, have a tendency to fight over basic ways
of life rather than simply live and let live.  A fair point.

In Brobdingnag, the king's perspective on Gulliver and his countrymen leads to some rather harsh, but fair,
criticisms of humankind.  The king, having listened to Gulliver's tales of wars, religious schisms, political parties,
etc., observes "how contemptible a Thing was human Grandeur."  He even makes fun of how seriously we take
ourselves given how completely ridiculous we are.  He ends up believing that humankind is essentially
"quarrelsome" and prone to all manner of sinful and hurtful behavior, and he refers to us as "little odious Vermin"
who, frankly, contribute nothing of value to the earth at all.  

In the third book, Gulliver travels to many locations, each one satirizing humankind in a myriad of ways.  His
visit to Laputa, for example, shows us to be selfish creatures who are so self-centered that we can get lost inside
our heads and forget to even recognize the presence of another person (satirized by their need to have someone
strike them in the face when it is their turn to speak, or the ear when they need to be sure to listen).  The
experiments performed at the Academy of Lagado seem to satirize the Royal Society of London for encouraging
misguided experiments that would amount to no real benefit for humankind, but that we seem to do because we
forget that science should have some useful application.  In Luggnugg, he learns of humanity's error in wishing
we could live forever when he meets the Struldbrugs, a race of miserable immortals who would rather die than
live as they do; implication: we wish for things without considering their consequences.  

In the final book, the similarities between Yahoo and human should be a bit too close for comfort.  These
disgusting creatures are the worst: they are so selfish that, even when there is more than enough food to go
around, each will try to make off with as much as he or she can out of sheer greed.  They are unreasonably
attracted to shiny objects and will kill their peers to obtain such an object of desire.  They are savage, odious
animals that are worth little and contribute less.  All in all, a pretty harsh criticism of humanity, but not entirely
without merit.

Analyze the style Jonathan Swift used in Gulliver’s Travels to satirize society.
One aspect of Swift's style is to make Gulliver (and by extension, Swift's contemporaries) appear ludicrous
through trying to explain human institutions to the various peoples he encounters. His attempts to describe the
various causes of European wars to the leader of the peaceful Houyhnhnms, is a particularly relevant example:

Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh;
whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better
to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire...Sometimes the quarrel between two Princes is to decide which of them
shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretends to any right. Sometimes one Prince
quarreleth with another, for fear the other should quarrel with him

European customs and mores make no sense to many of the peoples Gulliver encounters, and of course Swift's
point is that we ought perhaps to to reconsider some of them. Swift also wrote his story at a time when
travelogues of foreign, exotic lands were very much in vogue for European readers just becoming conscious of a
much larger world. Swift was thus able to play on an emerging sense of relativism among some European
intellectuals, as well as appeal to a common trope in contemporary literature. 

Gulliver also encounters utopias, or near utopias, such as those of the Brobdingnagians (and, for that matter,
the Houyhnhnms.) But in each case, he raises important question as to whether these sorts of societies are
obtainable for human beings. By portraying the Houyhnhnms, in particular, as horse-like beasts, he seems to be
suggesting that human passions would make the kind of peaceful society they live in impossible. 

Swift also uses characters to allegorically represent some figures that would have been recognizable to his
readers. Lilliput is England, while Blefuscu is France. Their ceaseless conflict is based on the most foolish of
reasons, namely that some in Blefescu interfere in the Lilliputian controversy over whether to break an egg at the
big end or the little end. This, of course, is a satire of the Stuarts' associations with France. Swift thus savagely
mocks political issues that had led to constant warfare in the early eighteenth century. 

Which people in Gulliver's Travels most often represent English

political figures?
It is the Lilliputians who most often represent English political figures in Gulliver's Travels. 

With the Lilliputian rope dancers who vie for political office, winning a position based on whoever can jump the
highest without falling rather than whoever is most qualified for office, Swift satirizes the English government
and the manner in which government positions are filled. Further, the feud between the Tramecksans and the
Slamecksans—those who wear high heels and low heels on their shoes—represent the animosity between the
High Church Tory party and the Low Church Whig party, respectively. When Gulliver describes "his Imperial
Highness, the Heir to the Crown" in Lilliput as having "some Tendency towards the High-heels," this royal
represents the Prince of Wales, who many Tories—including Swift—hoped would, when he became King
George II, show favor to their party.

Moreover, the drama between the Big-Endians and Little-Endians–who war over which side of the egg should be
cracked—represents the terrible struggle that existed between Catholics and Protestants since Henry VIII created
the Church of England, a struggle which was not only religious but political as well since the monarch was also
considered to be the head of the Church of England. Swift seems to downplay the disagreement as something not
worth fighting over, a matter of choice that has absolutely no effect on how others perform the same activity.