Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
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.
About Gulliver's Travels
It is unusual when a masterpiece
develops out of an assignment, but that is, more or less, what happened in the
case of Gulliver's Travels. The Martinus Scriblerus
Club, made up of such notables as Pope, Arbuthnot, and Gay, proposed to
satirize the follies and vices of learned, scientific, and modern men. Each of
the members was given a topic, and Swift's was to satirize the numerous and
popular volumes describing voyages to faraway lands. Ten years passed between
the Scriblerus project and the publication of the Travels, but
when Swift finished, he had completed what was to become a children's classic
(in its abridged form) and a satiric masterpiece.
Swift kept the form of the voyage book
but expanded his target. Instead of simply parodying voyage literature, he
decided to attack what he considered were people's most conspicuous vices. He
makes the abstract become concrete. Ideas are metamorphosed into grotesque,
foreign creatures; absurd customs are represented by absurd objects; and the
familiar becomes new and surprising.
Character List
Lemuel Gulliver A traveler and an adventurer. Gulliver is the protagonist of
the Travels. He is an observer of other beings and other cultures.
Golbasto Momaren Evlame Gurdilo Shefin
Mully Ully Gue The Emperor of Lilliput. Swift uses the
Emperor as an example of rulers who must always have some type of support
before making a decision.
Flimnap Lord High Treasurer of Lilliput.
Reldresal A Lilliputian councilor, Principal Secretary of Private Affairs.
Skyresh Bolgolam High admiral of Lilliput, a counselor of the Emperor.
Slamecksan and Tramecksan Lilliputian political parties. The first represents the Low Heels;
the second represents the High Heels.
Glumdalclitch The daughter of Gulliver's master in Brobdingnag. She acts as Gulliver's
nurse and protector.
The King of Laputa Leader of Laputa. He is preoccupied with mathematics and music.
The Academy Projectors
(Professors) Balnibarbian reformers who plan reforms
without considering effects.
Munodi The Governor of Lagado, on Balnibarbi. He represents the
traditionalists, who are opposed to the reformers.
The Struldbruggs A race of humans who age without dying; they are immortal, but
their immortality has none of its supposed delights.
Houyhnhnms Superior, totally rational horses, who are the masters of the
Yahoos.
Yahoos The repugnant anthropoids held in subjection by the Houyhnhnms.
The Grey Horse (The Master) Gulliver's master in the Country of the Houyhnhnms.
Summary and Analysis Part I:
Chapter 1: Summary
On this voyage, Gulliver goes to the
sea as a surgeon on the merchant ship, Antelope. The ship is
destroyed during a heavy windstorm, and Gulliver, the only survivor, swims to a
nearby island, Lilliput. Being nearly exhausted from the ordeal, he falls
asleep. Upon awakening, he finds that the island's inhabitants, who are no
larger than six inches tall, have captured him. After the inhabitants examine
Gulliver and provide him with food, the Emperor of this country orders his
subjects to move Gulliver to a little-used temple, the only place large enough
to house him.
Analysis
In this first chapter, Swift
establishes Gulliver's character. He does this primarily by the vast amount of
details that he tells us about Gulliver. Clearly, Gulliver 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, college. 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, Gulliver gradually discovers, moving from
one exact detail to another, that he is a prisoner of men six inches tall.
Concerning the political application of
this chapter, note that Gulliver is confined in a building that was emptied
because a notorious murder was committed there. The building probably
represents Westminster Hall, where Charles I was tried and sentenced to death.
Glossary
to alter my condition to marry.
hosier a haberdasher, a person whose work or business is selling men's
furnishings, such as hats, shirts, neckties, and gloves.
four hundred pounds for a portion The part of a man's money or property contributed by his bride;
here, meaning Gulliver's dowry.
East and West Indies East: Malay Archipelago; especially, the islands of Indonesia;
West: the large group of islands between North America and South America; it
includes the Greater Antilles, Lesser Antilles, and the Bahamas.
Van Diemen's Island former name for Tasmania.
declivity a downward slope or sloping, as of a hill.
several slender ligatures the ropes used to tie Gulliver to the ground.
buff jerkin a short, closefitting, sleeveless jacket or vest made of soft
brownish leather.
durst dared.
hogshead a large barrel or cask holding from 63 to 140 gallons.
retinue a body of assistants, followers, or servants attending a person of
rank or importance.
Signet Royal an official seal.
express a special messenger; courier.
soporiferous medicine medicine that causes or tends to cause sleep.
latitude angular distance, measured in degrees, north or south from the
equator.
Summary and Analysis Part
I: Chapter 2
Summary
In this chapter, the Imperial Majesty
(the Emperor) and Gulliver carry on a conversation as best they can. After the
Emperor's visit, six Lilliputians shoot arrows at Gulliver. Gulliver retaliates
by pretending to eat the little archers and then releases them. This clemency,
and Gulliver's cooperation, so impress the Imperial Council that they debate
whether or not to free Gulliver. An officer takes inventory of Gulliver's
possessions, which will be held until Gulliver's fate is settled upon.
Analysis
Swift makes the Lilliputians seem
ridiculous by having Gulliver compare them to dolls. The little doll-like men
strut and posture like full-sized men. Yet we cannot take them seriously. They
are too tiny to be considered as majestic as they think they are. But "we"
are not Gulliver, and he takes them seriously, especially the
Emperor. Consider, for example, Gulliver's description of the Emperor:
"His features are strong and masculine with an Austrian lip and arched
nose, his complexion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs
well-proportioned, all his motions graceful, and his deportment majestic."
Everything that the Emperor does is respectfully detailed, which of course
makes the scene even more entertaining and ridiculous.
Swift's contemporaries were doubtless
amused by Gulliver's naive awe of the Lilliputian emperor. The Emperor's face
clearly resembles the face of George I, yet Gulliver describes the assortment
of features as handsome; George I was notoriously gross and ugly. Another
political reference in this chapter concerns the list of things found in
Gulliver's pockets. Normal, common, everyday possessions become unrecognizable
when we see them out of proportion. To the Lilliputians, Gulliver's comb
becomes a palisade. Swift is satirizing here the evidence presented against
Harley and Bolingbroke in 1715. Certain Whig commissioners did their best to
twist letters and books of the accused into treasonable meanings. Swift did not
approve and described graphically the sinister distortions that party passion
can cause in a person's mind.
Glossary
demesnes lands or estates belonging chiefly to a lord and not rented or let
but kept in his hands.
draymen persons whose work involves hauling loads in a dray (a cart).
Summary and
Analysis Part I: Chapter 3
Summary
The Lilliputian emperor is pleased that
Gulliver is friendly and cooperative, so he rewards him with some court
diversions. The diversions, however, prove to be quite different than one might
expect. It is the Lilliputian court custom that men seeking political office
demonstrate their agility in rope dancing, among other things. How long and how
skillfully a candidate can dance upon a rope determines his tenure in office.
Of the candidates, two are particularly adept: Reldresal, Gulliver's friend,
and Flimnap, the treasurer. Other diversions include noblemen competing for
official favor by crawling under or leaping over a stick, a feat for which they
are then rewarded with various colored threads. Gulliver also reviews the
Emperor's troops; he stands, legs apart, while the tiny men march through.
As a result of Gulliver's cooperation,
a pact between Gulliver and the Emperor is agreed on. Gulliver is granted
limited freedom on certain conditions. In return for abiding by the conditions,
he will receive food sufficient for 1,728 Lilliputians. Gulliver swears to the
articles in proper form, and the Emperor frees him.
Analysis
The jumping and crawling games that
Gulliver describes sound innocent, like games children might play. Politically,
however, their significance is far from innocent. The crawlers and jumpers
perform for the amusement of the monarch and are rewarded with blue, red, or
green threads. These threads represent the various orders of the Garter, the
Bath, and the Thistle. George I used these orders as cheap ways of buying
political support from social climbers. Politicians, Swift is saying, are
always ready to debase themselves by performing humiliating games, hoping for
colored ribbons, money, or titles.
Swift's model for Flimnap, the most
dexterous of the rope dancers, was Robert Walpole, the leader of the Whigs.
Walpole was England's first prime minister in the modern sense and an extremely
wily politician. He resigned in 1717 but was restored to office four years
later through the influence of the Duchess of Kendal. The Duchess was his
mistress and, figuratively, is the cushion on which Flimnap breaks his fall.
Walpole was not a pro-war Whig, but he did use war sentiment to retain power;
privately, he believed that England prospered better under peace than war.
Accordingly, Swift characterizes Flimnap's specialty as somersaults in mid-air.
It is thought that 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 relate
the political life of Lilliput to the political life of England. The first four
articles seem to parallel the ancient position of the king of England. At one
time, the king could not leave the country or enter London without permission.
In addition, his writ was effective only on his royal domains and on the royal
highways. It is possible that Swift is contrasting Gulliver, who is decent,
with modern kings to suggest a contrast between antique virtue and modern
degeneration.
The absurd and complicated method by
which Gulliver must swear to the articles exemplifies another aspect of Whig
politics: petty, red-tape harassing. The Whigs attacked the Tory's Treaty of
Utrecht, maintaining that the peace treaty was invalid because the royal
warranty was not properly countersigned. At the Lilliputian court, it is
difficult for Gulliver to 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. Yet that is how he must "countersign" his agreement.
If the thumb is not squarely on the ear, the sworn loyalty will be technically
in question.
Glossary
summerset a somersault.
trencher a wooden board or platter on which to carve or serve meat.
colossus a gigantic statue.
pikes advanced a pike is a weapon used by foot soldiers, consisting of a metal
spearhead on a long, wooden shaft; here, the weapons are held in an attacking
position.
Summary and
Analysis Part I: Chapter 4
Summary
After Gulliver's visit to the Emperor's
palace at Mildendo, Reldresal, Lilliput's Principal Secretary of Private
Affairs, pays a visit to Gulliver and explains the faction quarrels between the
High Heel Party and the Low Heel Party. The conflict, he says, started over a
religious question: At which end should the faithful break their eggs: at the
big end or at the little end? The Blefuscudians break theirs, in the original
style, at the big end. But, by royal edict, the Lilliputians must break their
eggs at the little end. There are rebels in Lilliput, Reldresal says, and
already 11,000 of them — Big Endians — have been put to death; others have fled
to the court of Blefuscu. He explains further that the Lilliputians have lost
40 ships in the war. The dilemma seems hopeless, for Lustrog, the prophet of
their religion, has said, "All true believers shall break their eggs at
the convenient end."
Analysis
Gulliver's description of Mildendo
gives Swift another chance to satirize the pretensions of the Lilliputians. The
little people, for example, call their city a "metropolis"; Gulliver,
however, describes the city as only 500 feet square. But he does not scoff at
the Lilliputians; he accepts their self-declared importance. Thus, once again,
Swift emphasizes the contrast between Gulliver's naive acceptance of the
Lilliputian viewpoint and the physical facts he reports.
Swift also uses Gulliver's
matter-of-fact tone to ridicule the religious war. Politically, Blefuscu stands
for France and Lilliput for England. The war between the two over the religious
question of egg-breaking symbolizes the long series of wars between Catholic
France and Protestant England. The egg-breaking itself may refer to a quarrel
over the nature of the sacrament, and it is also possible that it refers to the
differences in communion of the Catholic and Anglican churches. The Anglicans
receive communion by bread and wine; the Roman Catholics receive only bread.
The French and English, of course, also fought over land and loot, but Swift is
using the symbolic differences between churches to emphasize the absurdity of
any religious war.
The reference to the grandfather of the
present emperor, who cut his finger breaking an egg, is to Henry VIII. Henry
broke with Rome over the question of papal authority and also over the matter
of Anne Boleyn. The Big Endians are, therefore, Catholic, and the Little
Endians are Protestant. The emperor who lost his life is Charles I. Charles supported
Archbishop Laud and was accused of Roman Catholic sympathies. The emperor who
lost his crown is James II, who tried to restore some of the rights of the
Roman church. He also attempted to institute a standing army with Roman
Catholic officers. Consequently, he was driven out of England in 1688.
Swift also relates the folly of the
religious war between Lilliput and Blefuscu to immediate European politics. The
two Lilliputian parties stand for English political parties. The High Heels
represent Tories; the Low Heels, Whigs. The king was sympathetic to the Whigs.
He used them to support Hanover against France and appointed them to official
positions to strengthen his position against the House of Lords. Thus, as the
Lilliputian emperor, he wears low heels. The Prince of Wales, later George II,
surrounded himself with members of both parties who were out of favor. As a
Lilliputian, he wears one high and one low heel and wobbles when he walks.
Glossary
garret the space, room, or rooms just below the roof of a house; attic.
damage to the pile a pile is a long, heavy timber driven into the ground to support a
structure; here, meaning that Gulliver did not want to damage the structural
support of the Emperor's palace by stepping in the wrong place.
fortnight a period of two weeks.
schism a split or division in an organized group or society, especially a
church, as the result of difference of opinion, of doctrine, etc.
Summary and
Analysis Part I: Chapter 5
Summary
Gulliver saves Lilliput from a Blefuscudian
invasion by dragging the Blefuscudian ships to Lilliput. In gratitude, the
Lilliputian emperor rewards Gulliver with the title Nardac.
Gulliver is pleased with his new title, but he is not the Emperor's dupe. He
rejects a plan to destroy Blefuscu completely and argues for a reasonable peace
treaty. Gulliver's moderation in dealing with the Blefuscudians gives Flimnap
and Skyresh Bolgolam a chance to slander him. The Emperor listens to the
accusations and is cold to Gulliver when he grants him permission to visit
Blefuscu in the future. Later, a fire in the palace breaks out, and Gulliver
puts out the fire by urinating on it. There is a law against anyone passing
water in the royal palace, however, and the Empress is so horrified by
Gulliver's fire-fighting techniques that she never forgives Gulliver. The
Emperor softens, though, and promises Gulliver a pardon for his crime.
Analysis
Here, Swift satirizes the War of the
Spanish Succession: The Whigs had conducted a war against the Roman Catholic leaders
of France and Spain. Although it had its religious over-tones, the war also
involved trading rights with the colonies in America. The Tories, led by Harley
and Bolingbroke, were willing to make a reasonable peace with France, and when
they came to power, they immediately began to negotiate with the French. The
result was the peace treaty signed at Utrecht in 1713. Their naval policy, they
said, destroyed the Spanish fleet. The Whigs were unsatisfied. They maintained
that it was Marlborough's infantry campaigns on the continent that had brought
peace. Moreover, after the peace treaty was signed, the Whigs accused the
Tories of treason because of a failure to get colonies and ports from France
and Spain.
The fire-fighting episode may (or may
not) refer to Swift's Tale of a Tub, which he wrote to
defend the Church of England against its Puritan and Roman Catholic enemies.
The book is satirical, often coarse, and Queen Anne was reportedly offended by
Swift's coarseness. Because of this, she resisted his friends' suggestions that
he be made a dean or bishop in England.
Glossary
encomiums formal expressions of high praise.
diuretic increasing the excretion of urine.
Summary and
Analysis Part I: Chapter 6
Summary
Gulliver provides the reader with
information regarding Lilliputian culture and the personal treatment that he
receives from the Lilliputians. Regarding the Lilliputian system of laws,
Gulliver says that treason is severely punished, which is not particularly
surprising, but other laws are. These laws punish an unsuccessful accuser as
severely as a traitor; fraud is most frequently punished with death; and any
innocent man who is vindicated of a charge is rewarded. Interestingly,
ingratitude is a capital offense. Moral, rather than clever men, are appointed
to powerful positions, and atheists are barred from all government offices.
Explaining the seeming contradiction between these good laws and the
rope-dancing corruptions, Gulliver says that the latter were instituted by the
present Emperor's grandfather.
The Lilliputians believe that parents
marry out of sexual desire rather than love of children. Therefore they deny
any filial obligation and establish public schools for children. Parents with
children in school pay for each child's maintenance and are forced to maintain
those that they breed. The schools for young nobles are spartan, and students
are trained in honor, justice, courage, modesty, clemency, religion, and
patriotism. The schools for tradesmen and ordinary gentlemen are like those of
the nobles, but the duration of schooling is shorter. The Lilliputians educate
women to be reasonable, agreeable, and literate. Workers and farmers have no
schools.
Resuming his tale, Gulliver describes
the visit of the Emperor and his family. They come to dine with Gulliver and
bring Flimnap with them. The dinner proves to be a disaster because Flimnap,
the royal treasurer, is appalled when he reckons the cost of feeding and
housing Gulliver. What's more, Flimnap charges, his wife is attracted to
Gulliver and has visited him secretly.
Analysis
Swift uses Gulliver's report of the
Lilliputian laws and customs to illustrate a semi-Utopian society. He drew from
such political theorists as Plato, in the Republic, and
from More, in his Utopia, and he also used many of the
suggestions of the political reformers and pamphleteers of his own day. His
proposals were aimed at creating and enforcing moral virtue in the citizens.
Flimnap's charges against Gulliver
parallel those made against Bishop Atterbury, a Jacobite, who was tried for
treason in 1723. It is thought that the suspicions concerning Gulliver and
Flimnap's wife refer to Walpole. Rumors about Walpole's first wife, Catherine
Shorter, had accused her of misconduct, but Walpole displayed no concern.
Flimnap is dishonored by his jealousy and Walpole by his complacency. If
critics are correct about this parallel, Swift is unfair; he damns Walpole if
he does, or if he doesn't, object. Also, of course, Swift is pointing out the
absurdity of rash accusations made by politicians. Here, Gulliver is so much
larger than the lady that she could not possibly have been unfaithful.
Glossary
concupiscence strong desire; lust.
his white staff domestic staff; housekeepers.
postillion a person who rides the left-hand horse of the leaders of a four-horse
carriage.
Summary and
Analysis Part I: Chapter 7
Summary
Gulliver learns that Flimnap, Skyresh
Bolgolam, and others have approved articles of treason against him. His crimes
include putting out the fire in the palace, refusing to devastate Blefuscu,
speaking to the peace embassy from Blefuscu, and preparing to take advantage of
the Emperor's permission to visit Blefuscu. The Emperor accepts the charges,
but he refuses to kill Gulliver. Instead, he "mercifully" decides to
blind Gulliver and save money on his upkeep by starving him slowly. On learning
this, Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu.
Analysis
The Emperor's council that presses the
charges against Gulliver stands for the commission of inquiry that preferred
charges against the Tories. As a result of these charges, Harley and
Bolingbroke were threatened with trials for treason. The first article, making
water in the palace, may have reference to rumors that the Tories were
sympathetic to Roman Catholicism. It may also apply to the charge that Harley
and Bolingbroke treasonably and secretly revealed the instructions of the
English negotiators to the French negotiators. The second charge correlates
with overt attacks on the Tories for their refusal to continue the war and for
their tries at negotiating a reasonable peace. The third charge stands for the
accusation that Harley and Bolingbroke carried on secret correspondence with
French negotiators. The fourth charge reflects the accusation that Harley and
Bolingbroke intended to flee to France if their treason were discovered.
Swift uses this chapter 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. This plan seems a direct reference to George's treatment of some
captured Jacobites. He executed them — after parliament had called him most
merciful and lenient.
Glossary
the meanness of my condition my lowness in social status and rank; here, meaning that
Gulliver was of humble origins and not of the nobility.
in a close chair in an enclosed, one-person chair with glass windows, carried
on poles by two men; a sedan chair.
standing my trial facing my accusers.
Summary and
Analysis Part I: Chapter 8
Summary
A few days after his arrival at
Blefuscu, Gulliver sees a large overturned ship floating in the bay and hauls
it to port. While he is restoring the ship for his return home, a Lilliputian
envoy presents a note demanding that Gulliver be returned as a traitor. The
Blefuscudian emperor refuses to do so, hoping that Gulliver will stay as a war
deterrent between the two countries. Gulliver refuses, however, and sets sail
for home. Eventually a British merchant ship picks him up and returns him to
England where he is reunited with his wife and family.
Analysis
Gulliver's flight to Blefuscu recalls
Bolingbroke's flight from England to France to escape the charges of treason
pressed by the Whigs. The suggestions in the previous chapter that Gulliver
might have pelted and destroyed the Lilliputian capital relate to Bolingbroke
also. Supporters argued that had Bolingbroke and Harley actually intended
treason, they could have revolted successfully. The Lilliputians' thirst for
vengeance and their attempt to force the Blefuscudians to surrender Gulliver coincide
with English protests against the Jacobites who found sanctuary in France.
By the end of Book I, Swift has drawn a
brilliant, concrete, and detailed contrast between the normal, if gullible, man
and the diminutive but vicious politician; the politician is always a midget
alongside Gulliver. Swift makes it clear that the normal person is concerned
with honor, gratitude, common sense, and kindness. Swift, however, is not
through with comparisons. The representative person is a midget compared with
the truly moral person. Swift prepares to send gullible Gulliver off on a
voyage to a realm where practical morality works. The inhabitants of this realm
are as much bigger than normal people as normal people are bigger than
politicians.
Glossary
cordage cords and ropes collectively, especially, the ropes in a ship's
rigging.
cabal a small group
of persons joined in a secret, often political, intrigue.
young princes of the blood the nobility; here, meaning the succession of royalty.
the lee-side of the island the side or direction away from the wind.
ancient an ensign, or flag.
a bowling green at Greenwich a smooth lawn at Greenwich, a borough of Greater London.
the Black Bull in Fetter Lane a place of business (possibly a pub) leased by Gulliver.
leaving my family upon the parish leaving my family with no income; here, meaning Gulliver provides
financial support for his family before leaving on his second voyage.
towardly child a friendly child.
Surat a seaport in
western India, on the Arabian Sea.
Summary and Analysis Part II: Chapter 1
Summary
Gulliver is home for only two months
when he and the crew of the Adventure set sail for Surat. A
storm blows their ship far off course. When they finally sight land, the
captain sends a crew, including Gulliver, to explore. While the crew looks for
drinking water, Gulliver explores another part of the island. The men are set
upon by "a huge creature" that chases them into the ocean and back to
their ship. Gulliver, who was investigating the shore of the new country, is
left behind. Eventually, Gulliver is discovered by several of these huge
creatures that are, in reality, very large (giant-like) human beings. These
giants prove to be friendly and curious, and eventually one of the giants, a
farmer, takes Gulliver to his farmhouse where the farmer's friendly family
receives him.
Analysis
When Gulliver finds himself in
Brobdingnag, Swift first sets up the size ratio. Now the tables are turned: The
Lilliputians were midgets one-twelfth Gulliver's size. Now Gulliver is a
midget, and the giants who inhabit Brobdingnag are twelve times Gulliver's
size. Besides the size change, notice too that Swift changes perspective in
another way. When Gulliver was living among the Lilliputians, he described them
as being like "little men." The Brobdingnagians who capture Gulliver,
however, do not think of Gulliver as a "little man"
or as a "little Brobdingnagian." Some of his first Brobdingnagian
acquaintances think of him as being weasel-like or like dangerous and repulsive
vermin. Thus Gulliver, in retrospect, seems more humane than we might have
realized. To him, the Lilliputians were never insects or vermin, no matter how
odious they acted. The Brobdingnagians are a contrast; they like him, generally
speaking, but he is never a man. He is a plaything, a rare pet, but never a
man.
If the Brobdingnagians do not see
Gulliver as a man, however, we cannot condemn them on this one count. They are
a moral people, and, again and again, Gulliver will show us instances of their
moral virtue. But, at the same time, he never lets us forget that they are also
aliens. He admires their laws, but he cannot abide their display of vast areas
of flesh. He records his disgust at their physical selves in detail because he
cannot overlook, or dismiss, magnified pores and moles and stray hairs. Our own
flesh, however, would be repugnant — even to us — if we were to see it through
the eyes of a doll-sized man. Yet they are flesh, and we are flesh, and it is
this common bond that we, and Gulliver, share with the giant Brobdingnagians.
They are a positive race of people, and even if we might not be able to attain
their superior morality, we might profitably try to emulate certain of their
standards.
Glossary
the Line the equator.
ague a fever,
usually malarial, marked by regularly recurring chills.
arch boy a clever, crafty boy.
hanger a short sword, hung from the belt.
lappet a loose flap or fold of a garment.
scabbard a sheath or case to hold the blade of a sword.
sorrel any of various short, coarse weeds.
Molucca Islands group of islands of Indonesia, between Sulawesi & New Guinea.
Summary and
Analysis Part II: Chapter 2
Summary
Of all the family, the farmer's
daughter is the most fascinated by Gulliver. He seems like a walking, talking
doll to her. She enjoys caring for him and even gives him a new name: Grildrig.
She takes such good care of Gulliver that he calls her his glumdalclitch (nurse).
News of Gulliver's living at the farmer's house spreads quickly, and several
visitors come to see him. At the urging of one particular gentleman, the farmer
decides to take Gulliver to the market place and to put him on display for
others to see (for a price). This being successful, the farmer decides to take
Gulliver on tour throughout the kingdom, including visiting the kingdom's
metropolis, Lorbrulgrud. There Gulliver performs ten times a day
for all who wish to see him. By this time, though, Gulliver has presented far
too many performances; he is almost dead with fatigue.
Analysis
In this chapter, Swift demonstrates
that the giants are kind and decent. It is a delicate process because, on the
surface, Gulliver seems to be mistreated, yet the farmer is
careful with Gulliver, and Glumdalclitch (Gulliver's name for the daughter) is
especially loving with him. The farmer, it is true, almost kills Gulliver out
of thoughtlessness, but he is never cruel or malicious to Gulliver (as the
Lilliputians were). No normal Brobdingnagian is malicious; only children and
the deformed are of that temper. These giants are not perfect; they are akin to
us. Even the best of us are, sometimes, thoughtless and greedy. As for the rest
of us, we are sometimes malicious — like the Lilliputians.
There is a stray political comment in
this section that is of interest. Gulliver notes that the King of England
himself would have felt isolated and different were he to be in a foreign land.
This statement refers to George I. The English, and especially the Tories, made
much of George's German origin.
Glossary
manikin (mannequin) a little man; dwarf; here, being a translation of the
name Grildrig, the name given to Gulliver by the farmer's daughter.
pillion a cushion attached behind a saddle for an extra rider.
gimlet-holes holes made by a gimlet, a small boring tool with a handle at right
angles to a shaft having at the other end a spiral, pointed cutting edge; here,
meaning the holes bored in Gulliver's traveling box.
the Sign of the Green Eagle an inn where Gulliver performed.
Ganges a river in northern India, flowing from the Himalayas into the Bay
of Bengal.
Summary and
Analysis Part II: Chapter 3
Summary
The Queen asks for an audience with the
farmer and Gulliver, and Gulliver performs admirably and respectfully for her.
The Queen, being attracted to the novelty of this tiny man, buys Gulliver from
the farmer. Included in this arrangement is the farmer's daughter,
Glumdalclitch, who becomes a member of the Queen's court as Gulliver's nurse.
Conversing with the King, Gulliver tells him about English customs and
politics. The King is amused; he laughs at the fierceness of such tiny insects.
Gulliver dares not refute the King's opinion; indeed, before long, he adopts his
host's point of view.
The King and Queen are happy with
Gulliver, but there is one member of the royal entourage who is not happy:
the Queen's dwarf, who is jealous because Gulliver has replaced him in the
Queen's affection.
Analysis
Swift prevents us from idealizing the
giants by reminding us of their incapacity to accept Gulliver as a scaled-down
version of a Brobdingnagian. Gulliver always considered the Lilliputians as
miniature men, but this is not true of the Brobdingnagians. Even the King, who
is affectionate towards Gulliver, thinks of him as rat-like and as a
contrivance made of clockwork.
The King discredits Gulliver and his
fellow Englishmen. And, because the King is adamant toward the English, Swift
has a mouthpiece to voice some of his complaints. The English, he emphasizes,
are contradictory. They "love, fight, dispute, cheat, and betray." In
general, the Brobdingnagians do not. Interestingly, the only real
"villain" in Brobdingnag is the Queen's jester — a dwarf, diminutive
physically and lacking in the Brobdingnagian virtues, who wedges Gulliver into
the hollow of a bone and dumps him into a large silver bowl of cream.
The King also mocks human pretension,
and once again we recall our perspective. In Book I, we stood tall, like
Gulliver, and watched the Lilliputians mimic human posturings and vanities. Now
we stand small, like Gulliver, and listen to a moral giant discredit human
pride and pretense. Gulliver accepts the King's judgment. Actually, it would be
false pride not to. The King is merely telling Gulliver, and us, what we
already know about the damage that results from inflated pride. But Gulliver is
still gullible; his acceptance of the King's viewpoint reflects the fact that
he is beginning to adjust to the Brobdingnagian perspective.
Glossary
scrutore (escritoire) a writing desk or table.
equipage furnishings; accessories.
Summary and
Analysis Part II: Chapter 4
Summary
When the King and Queen go traveling
about the country, they decide to take Gulliver along. Gulliver describes the
island, the sea around the island, the city of Lorbrulgrud, the King's palace,
his [Gulliver's] method of travel on the island, several of the island's
inhabitants, and some of the sights to see on the island. In describing the
inhabitants of the island, Gulliver focuses on their illnesses and diseases. He
mentions, for instance, giant beggars, horribly deformed, with lice crawling
all over them. Gulliver compares the sights to similar sights in his homeland.
Finally, the dimensions of the King's palace are described with the kitchen
receiving particular attention.
Analysis
The exact dimensions that Gulliver
enumerates in the chapter emphasize Gulliver's smallness. The description of
the church, for example, reinforces this notion: Size denotes morality. Swift
also shows us another magnified view of human flesh. Gulliver sees people with
obvious tumors and cysts, and he states, "But the most hateful sight of
all was the lice crawling on their clothes: I could see distinctly the limbs of
these vermin . . . ." Gulliver's interest as a doctor is piqued because he
suggests that he would like to dissect one of these vermin, but he adds, "
. . . the sight was so nauseous, that it perfectly turned my stomach."
Even if we have disgust for the physique of the giant beggars, it is surpassed
by our disgust for the lice that crawl over the enormous bodies. The lesson is
this: The giant beggars may be physically revolting, but the pernicious little
vermin (humans) are even more so.
Glossary
wen a benign skin tumor, especially of the scalp, consisting of a fatty
cyst.
in battalia in full battle dress.
Summary and
Analysis Part II: Chapter 5
Summary
Gulliver's mishaps continue. The
Queen's dwarf drops barrel-sized apples on him; hailstones as big as tennis
balls batter and bruise him; a bird of prey nearly grabs him; and a spaniel
picks him up in his mouth and carries him to the royal gardener. Gulliver is
insulted to be coddled and played with by the maids of honor. To them, Gulliver
is a toy, not a man, so they undress in front of him without a thought of
modesty. The maids, perhaps comely enough, repulse Gulliver. He is particularly
annoyed when they titillate themselves with his naked self.
Because Gulliver is a sailor, the Queen
has a toy boat made for him and a trough in which to sail. The royal ladies
also take part in the game and make a brisk breeze with their fans. Disaster
strikes when a frog hops into the trough and nearly swamps Gulliver's boat, but
Gulliver bravely drives the monster off with an oar. One day a monkey seizes
Gulliver and carries him to the top of the palace. Gulliver is finally rescued
and, when he recovers, is summoned by the King, who is curious to know whether
Gulliver was afraid. Gulliver boasts that he could have protected himself with
his sword. The King guffaws at the little splacknuck's pride.
Analysis
Gulliver has begun to accept the
Brobdingnagian point of view, but Swift will not let him forget that he
is not a giant. He may adopt certain ideas of the giants, but
once Gulliver begins to have pretensions, he is literally knocked down to size.
The mishaps with the hailstones, the spaniel, and the mole hole he falls into
are not really serious, but they serve to discipline him. He is humiliated;
none of them could have happened to a giant.
The humiliating incidents multiply.
After a series of physical threats, Gulliver's emotional make-up is attacked.
The maids of honor treat him as a plaything. They strip him and are curious
about his maleness, but they ignore his masculinity. They offend his sexual
pride by treating him as though he has no sexual significance. Then, in the
abduction scene, Gulliver is likened not to a toy, but to a baby monkey. Swift
continues to reinforce Gulliver's connection with animal smallness. The
progression has been handled with great care. Gulliver's life was imperiled,
his safety was endangered, his sexual pride was assaulted, and now he has been
reduced to being monkey-like. Despite all, though, Gulliver is still tempted to
brag about himself. He is still not aware that the giants are morally superior.
Glossary
Bristol barrel a barrel made in Bristol, England.
kite any of various
birds of prey (e.g., hawks, eagles) with long, pointed wings and usually a
forked tail.
espalier a lattice or trellis on which trees and shrubs are trained to grow
flat.
cudgel a short, thick stick or club.
linnet a kind of small finch.
three tuns a tun is a large cask, especially for wine, beer, or ale.
wherry a light rowboat used on rivers.
varlet a scoundrel; knave.
Summary and
Analysis Part II: Chapter 6
Summary
Gulliver entertains himself and
demonstrates his ingenuity by using the King's beard stubble to make a comb and
by using strands of the Queen's hair to make several chairs and a purse. In
addition, Gulliver plays the spinet (piano) for the King and Queen by using
sticks formed as cudgels to bang on the keys as he runs up and down a piano
bench. The King also holds several audiences with Gulliver to discuss the
culture of Gulliver's home country, England. In these audiences, as requested
by the King, Gulliver explains the role of the people in the operation of the
government, in religion, and in the legal system, among other topics. The King,
after asking many questions related to all that Gulliver tells him, concludes
this audience with a summary and an assessment of what he hears.
In this chapter, Swift changes his
focus to European politics and institutional morality. The king is the
questioner, and Gulliver is the "expert." Immediately we sense that
what Gulliver says is naive. He is idealizing his country's customs and
institutions; he even lies about them. His distortion, therefore, is revealing:
It exposes the actual workings of the English system.
Besides attacking the English as a
whole, Swift singles out the Whigs. When the King asks whether lords are
advanced because of achievement or from political convenience, the reference is
to the Whigs' buying votes in parliament by granting nobility to politicians.
When the King asks whether bishops are ever appointed because of their
political opinions, the reference is again to the Whigs, who appointed writers
of their party to bishoprics. Conversely, clerical success was denied Swift
largely because of his political opinions. When the King asks whether members
of parliament are not sometimes elected by bribery or influence, the allusion
is to Walpole, a master at rigging elections. And when the King asks whether
judges don't sometimes get rich and dispense partial and slow justice, Swift's
inference is that justices of the peace are usually stupid and biased and that
judges in the higher courts are notoriously slow and usually very rich.
Swift has Gulliver invoke the
rhetoricians before he begins praising England; then he connects this highly
formal invocation with the ludicrous spectacle of Gulliver proudly banging on
the piano with mallets. Also, Swift uses insect imagery to surround the
discussion of the morality of Europe; Gulliver even brags that bees and ants
have a reputation for sagacity. Gulliver's praise rings hollow. The King tells
his pint-sized performer that English history is not as Gulliver describes;
rather, it is a "heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres,
revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction,
hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice,
or ambition could produce." He concludes that the bulk of Gulliver's
countrymen are "the most pernicious race of odious little vermin that
nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." — a
statement that is not only the most famous statement in the Travels,
but is perhaps the most famous in all literature in its assessment of the
nature of mankind.
Glossary
the King's levee a morning reception held by a sovereign or person of high rank
upon arising.
awl a small,
pointed tool for making holes in wood, leather, etc.
consorts seventeenth-century English chamber music ensembles, sometimes
including vocalists.
spinet an early, small variety of harpsichord with a single keyboard.
play a jig to perform a fast, gay, springy sort of dance, usually in triple
time.
sifted me to inspect or examine with care, as by testing or questioning;
here, meaning the King asked many probing questions of Gulliver.
chancery the court of the Lord Chancellor of England.
gaming the act or practice of gambling.
Summary and Analysis Part II:
Chapter 7
Summary
Gulliver decides that the King's lack of enthusiasm for England springs
from his ignorance of the country. To remedy this, Gulliver offers to teach the
King about England's magnificence. The first lesson concerns one of England's
most valuable assets: gunpowder. Describing its effects graphically and at
great length, Gulliver tells the King that gunpowder would be a great boon for
him; with it, the King could reduce all his subjects to slavery. The King is
horrified by the suggestion. He rejects such a bloodthirsty and inhumane
proposal, warning the "impotent and groveling insect" (Gulliver) that
he will be executed if he ever mentions gunpowder again.
Gulliver drops the subject of gunpowder and gives us an account of the
customs and government of his hosts. The Brobdingnagian army is a national
guard or militia; there are no professional soldiers. As for government, it is
extremely simple. There are no refinements, mysteries, intrigues, or state
secrets. Government depends upon common sense, mercy, and swift justice.
Brobdingnagian learning consists only of morality, history, poetry, and
practical mathematics. The Brobdingnagians cannot understand abstract reasoning
or ideas. Their laws must contain only twenty-two words and must be absolutely
clear. Their libraries are small, and their books are written in a clear style.
Analysis
Swift shows us that Gulliver's character seems to be changing for the
worse. His pride is growing to enormous proportions; he becomes condescending
to the King. He calls the King a nobody and says that the King's standards are
not worthy of emulation: "But great allowances should be given to a king
who lives wholly secluded from the rest of the world and must, therefore, be
altogether unacquainted with the manners and customs that most prevail in other
nations: the want of which knowledge will ever produce many prejudices, and a
certain narrowness of thinking, from which we (England) and the politer
countries of Europe are wholly exempted." He then waxes patriotic and
political over European morality, mentioning Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
Significantly, Dionysius was a partisan historian who lied when it suited his
purpose. He also sneers at the King's idea that government should be compounded
of common sense, justice, mercy, and understandable laws. Yet, the laws and
customs that the King describes are ideal; most of all, they are sensible. They
are not abstract or transcendental. They serve to keep people honest, happy,
and free.
Instead of censuring the Whigs, most of Swift's allusions in this
section draw attention to English intellectual follies. Gulliver remarks that
he could not teach the giants to think in abstractions and transcendentals;
instead their thinking was always clear. This observation anticipates Swift's
ridicule of the Modern philosophers in Book III. Swift is saucy on the subject
of the "Moderns." Already in his Battle of the Books, he
berated certain poets, philosophers, and scientists who called themselves the
"Moderns." This group cited gunpowder as evidence of Modern
superiority over the Ancients and also praised Modern philosophers who used
abstract and transcendental terms.
Swift's mention of the giants who preceded the smaller Brobdingnagians
reminds us that the Brobdingnagians are not perfect, but they are consistently
moral. They still have a remnant of their former greatness. There is prosperity
and peace, morality and common sense in Brobdingnag.
Glossary
transcendentals philosophers who propose to
discover the nature of reality by investigating the process of thought rather
than the objects of sense experience.
Summary and
Analysis Part II: Chapter 8
Summary
Gulliver spends
two years in Brobdingnag, but he is not happy despite the royal family's
pampering. He is afraid that he will never escape and will turn into a sort of
domestic, albeit royal, pet. Escape seems impossible; chance, however,
intervenes: On a trip to the seashore, an eagle swoops down, snatches up the
box Gulliver travels in, and drops it into the sea. The box is driven by the
wind close to an English ship and is spied by some sailors, who retrieve
Gulliver and his possessions. Gulliver does not adjust easily to his fellow
Englishmen. After living two years in a land of giants, he has convinced
himself that all Englishmen are midgets. Everything looks tiny back home, and
he feels like a giant. In time Gulliver's sense of perspective heals.
Analysis
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. The mirror is a standard device, just as satire is; anyone who looks
closely is shown his own flaws.
Swift has finished
his Analysis on human morality. In Gulliver's next voyage, he trains his satire
on people's intellect: how they use — and misuse — it.
Glossary
hundred leagues one
league is about three nautical miles; here, meaning about 300 nautical miles.
conceit an
idea, thought, concept.
raillery light,
good-natured ridicule or satire; banter.
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.
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.
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