GULLIVER’S TRAVEL

- JONATHAN SWIFT

Overview

Author - Jonathan Swift

Year it was Published - 1726

Type - Novel

Perspective and Narrator

Gulliver's Travels features a first-person narrator in Gulliver. As the only dynamic character in
the novel, Gulliver provides the lens through which Swift filters his insights regarding England.

About the Title

Gulliver's Travels takes its name from the novel's protagonist and narrator, Lemuel Gulliver, a
trained surgeon who travels by sea to a number of strange lands.

About the Author

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland, on November 30, 1667. Swift's father died
before he was born, and his mother left the young Swift in the care of his uncle. The family was
not wealthy, but it had good connections. Swift attended secondary school at Kilkenny College in
Dublin, earning his bachelor's degree from Trinity College. He then moved to England, where he
attended Hertford College at Oxford and earned a master's degree that would make him eligible to
join the clergy, a backup plan to his political aspirations.

Swift was assigned a post as a parish priest for the Church of Ireland in Derry when he was
32, but he continued to work and write actively in politics. His first work of satire, "A Tale of a
Tub," was published anonymously in 1704 and expanded in 1710. This publication earned him the
scorn of Queen Anne of England, who misunderstood the work, even though Swift was active in
the English Tory party (political conservatives whose policies Anne supported) throughout the
early 1700s, dividing his time between London and Ireland. He became dean of St. Patrick's
Cathedral in Dublin in 1713, but in the following year, the queen died. George I took the throne,
the Whig party dominated the English government, and these events effectively ended Swift's
hopes for advancement in the church or government. He returned to Ireland and focused on his
writing, pouring many of his political opinions and experiences into his best-known
work, Gulliver's Travels.

When it was first published in 1726, Gulliver's Travels became an immediate success with
adults and children, requiring multiple reprints in its first few months on the shelves. Adventure
stories were all the rage at the time, made popular by the publication of Daniel Defoe's Robinson
Crusoe a few years earlier. Almost 300 years later, Gulliver's Travels remains Swift's most famous
work and is a staple of the English literary canon. The novel has remained in print consistently
since 1726 and has been adapted to picture books, comics, and a number of films, including a 2010
adaptation starring Jack Black. The 1965 Japanese adaptation Gulliver's Travels Beyond the
Moon places the title's character in outer space.

The novel also introduced new terms into the English language. Lilliputian, derived from
the six-inch-tall Lilliputians Gulliver visits on the island of Lilliput, is used as an adjective to
describe things that are very small, and Brobdingnagian, derived from the 60-feet-tall giants
Gulliver visits in the country of Brobdingnag, is an adjective to describe something that is very
large. Yahoo, derived from the term the Houyhnhnm horses use to describe humans, is perhaps
better known as an exclamation or an Internet search engine, but it is also used as a noun for "a
person who is very rude, loud, or stupid" according to Merriam-Webster.

In Ireland, Swift remained politically active, writing pamphlets supporting Irish causes,
such as Irish independence from British colonialism. The most famous of these, "A Modest
Proposal," published in 1729, brought attention to poverty in Ireland with its outrageous and
sarcastic suggestion that starving Irish families sell their children as food for the wealthy English.
This and other writings established Swift as an Irish political hero. Swift's commitment to social
good extended beyond his death, through the money he donated for the establishment of a mental
hospital in Dublin; St. Patrick's Hospital, known in its early days as "Dr. Swift's," remains in
operation today.

In his personal life, Swift cultivated friendships with other prominent literary figures,
including poet Alexander Pope and playwrights William Congreve and John Gay. His lifelong
friendship with Esther Johnson, better known as Stella, has inspired scholarly and non-scholarly
speculation over the years. When Swift died on October 19, 1745, he was buried in St. Patrick's
Cathedral in Dublin next to Stella.

Context

Satire

Jonathan Swift built a strong reputation as a satirist with publications such as "A Tale of a
Tub" (1704), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and the essay "A Modest Proposal" (1729). As a genre,
satire dates back at least as far as ancient Greece. The term is often confused with comedy. While
satire can include humorous elements, it does not necessarily have to be funny. Rather, the term
refers to a text that uses literary techniques to provide criticism of political and cultural practices
in a society. Common techniques used in satire include parody, or imitation of another source,
usually the target of the satire's criticism; hyperbole or exaggeration to highlight absurdity;
understatement, which minimizes an issue to point out absurdity; irony, which emphasizes the gap
between intent and reality; and sarcasm, which uses a biting tone to express that the intended
meaning of words may differ from what is actually said.

Gulliver's Travels contains humorous moments, most memorably those related to bodies
and bodily functions, but its criticism reaches across a number of topics and uses a number of other
techniques. For example, portrayals of ruthless and self-centered monarchs in Gulliver's
Travels use parody to address the chaos of English government during the 1700s. Intellectuals
whose thoughts and experiments divorce them from reality illustrate the irony of academic studies
during the 1700s, which provided some theoretical benefit but little practicality. Each
society Gulliver encounters adheres to a different moral code, providing ample basis for
comparison with English morality and its strengths and shortcomings. Gulliver's Travels also
addresses issues related to gender roles, war, religion, history, and literature itself.

While effective satire addresses issues specific to a particular time and place, the use of literature
as the means of conveying criticism creates the potential for universal resonance. Gulliver's
Travels directly criticizes the social and political problems of 18th-century England, but the novel
has remained popular and relevant because so many of the issues it addresses government
corruption, needless war, academic ignorance also remain relevant.
Historical Influences

Gulliver's Travels contains several examples of the tyrannies of monarchs and other
leaders. Many of these examples reference the English monarchy of the 1600s and 1700s. The
Anglo-Irish Swift saw how English oppression affected lives in his home country, and he was
driven from Ireland to England by the violence that erupted after the Catholic King James II was
deposed (and fled to Ireland) and replaced with the Protestant William of Orange. Armed conflicts
erupted between the Jacobites, who supported James II, and the Orangemen, who supported
William. But these conflicts were simply the latest wave in the battle between Catholics and
Protestants that had been raging since Henry VIII's break with the church in 1534. Gulliver's
Travels makes repeated reference to the absurdity of religious conflict between Christian factions.

Likewise, conflicts between the Whig and Tory parties in English government in the early
1700s affected Swift's own career aspirations. He rose to the rank of Dean of St. Patrick's
Cathedral, but no higher. The Whigs and Tories attacked each other through a series of infighting,
double-dealing, and treachery that inspired much of the criticism in the novel of governments
mired in their own corruption, unable to serve the common good.

The novel also takes aim at the burgeoning expansion of scientific and mathematical
inquiry, largely inspired by the work and writings of Swift's contemporary, Sir Isaac Newton, some
of which Swift took more direct issue with in his other writings. Swift also references the creation
of the Royal Society in London in the 1660s, criticizing facile learning and abstractionism, leading
to incomplete knowledge as a danger to society. Beginning with the Age of Discovery at the end
of the 15th century, Europeans who traveled to unfamiliar worlds frequently wrote accounts of
their experiences, called travel narratives; these were not always accurate and often contained
grossly exaggerated stories about the strange people and beings that travelers encountered. The
fantastic beings Gulliver meets on his voyages simultaneously reference and mock these travel
narratives.

Characters

Gulliver

Lemuel Gulliver is surgeon on a ship. The last of his voyages are the strangest he has ever
known. He is taken prisoner by a race of tiny men called Lilliputians. Then he becomes a pet for
the giants of Brobdingnag. Later he visits a city on an island in the sky called Laputa and visits the
quirky academies of Laputa's sister island below, Balnibarbi. He talks to the dead on Glubbdubdrib
and meets immortals on Luggnagg. His final adventure finds him living with horses called
Houyhnhnms, discovering the deep flaws of the human race, or Yahoos, primitive humanlike
creatures. Having learned about the evils of his own species, Gulliver reluctantly returns home.

Emperor of Lilliput

The emperor of Lilliput treats Gulliver well as long as he believes Gulliver is showing him
respect and obedience. In fact, the emperor expects obedience from everyone in his court.
Disobedience is met with a death sentence, as evidenced by the treason charges leveled at Gulliver
the result of Gulliver's politeness toward visitors from a neighboring kingdom during peace talks
and the danger Gulliver's friend faces in warning him about said charges.

Glumdalclitch

Glumdalclitch is the name Gulliver calls the farm girl who becomes his caretaker, as it
means "little nurse." The girl is devoted to Gulliver, keeping him comfortable as her father works
Gulliver nearly to death by making him perform for money. Although there are social advantages
to her acceptance at court, Glumdalclitch makes a presumably difficult decision to leave her family
behind out of loyalty to Gulliver and a desire to protect him after the queen buys him. Her kindness
and devotion give Gulliver a safe and comfortable life in Brobdingnag.

King of Laputa

The king of Laputa, like his subjects, absorbs himself in the abstract contemplations of
science, mathematics, and astronomy. At the same time, he is a monarch, subject to the abuse of
power all monarchs display on some level in Gulliver's Travels. Although his power is limited by
his ministers, he is not above threatening the lands he governs below with the possibility that he
might use the floating island of Laputa as a weapon against them.

Houyhnhnm Master

The Houyhnhnm Master treats Gulliver with kindness and provides him with a home and
sustenance, in keeping with Houyhnhnm principles of benevolence and hospitality. He also sees
Gulliver as a lesser creature, not as primitive as the island Yahoos but also not terribly evolved.
He is deeply critical of Gulliver's accounts of life in Europe, and his criticism eventually convinces
Gulliver of his own inferiority.

Governor of Glubbdubdrib

The governor is a mysterious figure, and he tends to be feared by those who know of him.
He is a necromancer, meaning he can raise the dead to serve him. He also shows Gulliver total
hospitality, going beyond the standard provisions of food and shelter and offering to use his own
magical gifts to allow Gulliver an extraordinary and life-changing opportunity to talk to dead
leaders and scholars from the whole of history.

Ambassador of Blefuscu

The ambassador is sent to negotiate peace with Lilliput and is friendly with Gulliver.

James Bates

Bates is the doctor Gulliver apprentices with in his early career.

John Biddel

Biddel is captain of the ship that brings Gulliver home from Lilliput and Blefuscu.

Mary Burton

Mary is Gulliver's wife, who raises their children while he is at sea.

Customs agent

A Japanese customs agent advises Gulliver on the safest way for him to travel with the
crew of a Dutch ship to Europe.

Don Pedro

Don Pedro captains the Portuguese ship that rescues Gulliver after his time with the
Houyhnhnms and convinces Gulliver to go home.

Emperor of Blefuscu

The emperor of Lilliput's enemy country offers Gulliver sanctuary when Gulliver is
accused of treason in Lilliput.
Emperor of Japan

The ruler of Japan allows Gulliver passage back to Europe.

Empress of Lilliput

The emperor's wife likes Gulliver until he extinguishes a palace fire by urinating on her
rooms

Farmer

A Brobdingnagian giant finds Gulliver and puts him on display for money.

Flimnap

The Lilliputian Secretary of the Treasury resents Gulliver and encourages his downfall.

King of Brobdingnag

The giant monarch finds Gulliver amusing and never takes him seriously.

King of Luggnagg

The king demands that all those who enter his court lick the floor before his throne.

Laputan lord

A lord in Laputa arranges Gulliver's passage to Balnibarbi.

Lilliputian friend

Gulliver's Lilliputian friend informs him of his treason and describes the plan for his
execution.

Munodi

A prosperous lord hosts Gulliver when he arrives in Balnibarbi.

John Nicholas

The captain sails the Adventure, on which Gulliver serves before he is stranded in
Brobdingnag.
William Prichard

The captain of the Antelope is lost at sea when Gulliver lands on Lilliput.

Projectors

Incompetent scholars who rule in Balnibarbi and are bent on bettering life there.

Queen of Brobdingnag

The queen buys Gulliver from a farmer and makes him her pet.

Reldresal

Gulliver's friend in the Lilliputian court argues for merciful punishment when Gulliver is
accused of treason.

William Robinson

Robinson captains the Hopewell, the ship Gulliver travels on to Laputa.

Struldbrugs

In each generation a few immortals are born in Luggnagg who age normally and are cursed
to an eternity of old age.

Thomas Wilcocks

Wilcocks captains the ship that returns Gulliver to England from Brobdingnag.

Summary

Gulliver's Travels is the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon who takes to the seas. He
completes many voyages without incident, but his final four journeys take him to some of the
strangest lands on the planet, where he discovers the virtues and flaws in his own culture by
comparing it with others.

A storm destroys the ship, leaving Gulliver as the sole survivor of the wreck. He washes
up on the shores of Lilliput, an island populated by people only six inches tall. Understandably
terrified of the giant in their midst, the Lilliputians keep Gulliver restrained with ropes and chains
until he proves he can be trusted. The emperor of this land calls on Gulliver to help him defeat his
enemy country, Blefuscu, and Gulliver obliges by taking Blefuscu's entire navy. Although Gulliver
is hailed as a hero in Lilliput, things turn sour when he becomes too friendly with the ambassadors
who negotiate peace with Blefuscu, and when he puts out a fire in the emperor's palace by urinating
on it. Charged with treason, Gulliver flees to Blefuscu and leaves behind both islands in a boat he
finds by chance. He encounters an English ship and returns home to his family in England.

Gulliver does not stay at home for long and sets out on another journey that leaves him
stranded in a land known as Brobdingnag, populated by giants. A farmer's family takes in Gulliver,
but soon the farmer works Gulliver nearly to death by putting him on display and making him
perform for audiences all over the country. When the queen sees Gulliver, she offers to buy
Gulliver from the farmer, who accepts her offer. She also takes the farmer's daughter, Gulliver's
caretaker Glumdalclitch, into her service. Gulliver lives for two harrowing years in the
Brobdingnagian court, his tiny size putting him at the mercy of larger creatures at every turn. On
an outing to the beach, a bird picks up Gulliver's carrying-box and drops it into the sea. Another
English vessel finds the box afloat in the water, and the crew returns Gulliver home again.

Within weeks of his homecoming, however, Gulliver accepts a voyage to the East Indies.
When pirates take Gulliver's ship, he is set adrift and ends up on a deserted island. He is spotted
by inhabitants of the floating island of Laputa and taken to the Laputans' city in the sky. There he
finds a race of men wholly concerned with theoretical matters and constantly absorbed in abstract
thought. Although he is treated well, Gulliver grows bored and ventures to the land below Laputa,
Balnibarbi. On Balnibarbi Gulliver learns how a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, as he
sees projectors, men who have been briefly educated in Laputa, attempt to improve life in their
country through a series of absurd scientific theories and experiments. Gulliver grows frustrated
and travels to the nearby island of Glubbdubdrib, where the governor uses his magical powers to
allow Gulliver to converse with dead figures from history. Gulliver moves on to Luggnagg, where
he learns that the potential cost of immortality is a lifetime of unending old age, and then returns
to England by way of Japan and Holland.

A few months after Gulliver returns home, he is offered the chance to captain a voyage, so
he sets off again. Gulliver's crew mutinies and leaves him on an island populated by intelligent
horses called Houyhnhnms and primitive humans called Yahoos. Gulliver fears the Yahoos and
finds camaraderie with the Houyhnhnms, although the Houyhnhnms never fully accept Gulliver
because they believe he, too, is a Yahoo. Gulliver lives comfortably with his Houyhnhnm master
and his family for three years, learning the Houyhnhnm language and embracing the Houyhnhnm
philosophy of living by principles of pure reason. He comes to hate his own Yahoo heritage and
vows never to return to England, but the Houyhnhnm leaders decide a Yahoo cannot live with a
Houyhnhnm family, and they cast him out of their society. Gulliver builds a boat with the intent
of settling on a deserted island and avoiding the Yahoo world of Europe, but he is rescued by a
Portuguese ship and returns again to his family in England. He spends years readjusting to life
among the Yahoos and finds he prefers his horses' company to his wife's.

Themes

Abuse of Power

Gulliver encounters a number of monarchs and leaders, from tiny to giant, from practical
to esoteric, and they all take advantage of their superior position in some way. They either demand
absolute obedience from their subjects through humiliating rituals, as is the case with the king of
Luggnagg who makes his subjects lick the floor, or they exhibit extreme incompetence, as is the
case with the Lilliputian king who engages in an ill-conceived war with his neighbors.
Even Houyhnhnms, whom Gulliver idealizes, exploit the lesser species of their island, the Yahoos,
through extreme prejudice.

Cerebral versus Real World

The cultures Gulliver encounters in his travels either take practicality to an extreme,
rendering their practicality impractical, or focus on abstract ideas and pure reason in ways that
make life difficult, for their own people or for others. For example, the Laputans are the most
scientifically and mathematically advanced culture Gulliver encounters, yet they are unable to craft
a decent suit of clothes, and their knowledge of the universe causes them tremendous anxiety.
Likewise, the Houyhnhnms' focus on pure reason as the governing principle of their society causes
them to miss out on some of the emotional experiences, love in particular, that give life meaning.

Society versus Individual

All of the cultures in the countries Gulliver visits demand a certain level of conformity
from their citizens, whether that means following the rules set up in the royal courts or adhering
to broader social conventions. These rules often create problems for people who break them, or
for those who want to break the conventions but feel pressure that prevents them from doing so.
For example, Gulliver faces censure and an eventual death sentence in Lilliput because he breaks
the rules of court by behaving sympathetically toward the enemy country's ambassadors. Although
the Houyhnhnms do not have a royal hierarchy, the master's family faces pressure from friends
and neighbors to exile Gulliver for being a Yahoo.

Perspective

Nothing in the world of Gulliver's Travels is purely objective, not even the size and shape
of human beings. These differences in perspective are made literal in the appearance of
the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians, but each land Gulliver visits reveals a society firmly
enmeshed in its own point of view with little interest in exploring alternatives. The Laputans see
the universe only through the perspective of mathematical probability; the Houyhnhnms limit their
perspectives to cold reason, never emotion. All reality is filtered through the lens of each specific
society, rendering all understanding of the world even Gulliver's totally subjective.

Symbols

Lilliputians

The Lilliputians represent the human tendency to consider themselves the most important
creatures in the universe, but their tiny size and insignificance in the world as a whole reveals the
error in this belief. For example, even after peace has been reached with the neighboring island of
Blefscu, the emperor is not satisfied with his victory. He wants to enlist Gulliver in continuing the
war so he can take over Blefscu. The emperor has little regard for his neighbors because his beliefs
differ from theirs, and he thinks his own importance justifies the lives that may be lost if the war
continues.

Brobdingnagians

The Brobdingnagians' size magnifies both their best and worst aspects, symbolizing how
all humans have the capacity for great good and beauty, as well as ugliness and evil. The farmer's
family, Gulliver's first acquaintances in Brobdingnag, illustrate both extreme greed and extreme
kindness. The farmer himself has no problem with exploiting Gulliver as a kind of sideshow
attraction, to the detriment of Gulliver's health. The farmer's daughter, who Gulliver
calls Glumdalclitch, is devoted to Gulliver's care, even leaving her family behind to accompany
Gulliver to the royal court so she can protect him.

Laputans

The Laputans, and their ground-dwelling counterparts on Balnibarbi, symbolize the futility
of seeking knowledge without the means or desire to put it to practical use. The Laputans eschew
most normal human interactions, preferring a life of the mind, puzzling over mysteries of
mathematics, physics, and astronomy all day. They are unable to construct sturdy homes, and their
ideas often cause them stress, but they continue to pursue knowledge for its own sake. On
Balnibarbi, the projectors engage in studies and experiments with the aim of improving the lives
of their people, but their understanding of science and other topics is so incomplete that they lack
the ability to construct useful experiments or learn anything that might accomplish their goals.

Houyhnhnms

The Houyhnhnms symbolize the rule of rational thinking and the benefits of collective
living, but also the loss of individual identity that comes with extreme devotion to reason. While
rationality has allowed the Houyhnhnms to construct a culture based on benevolence and
friendship, peaceful and harmonious within, they are also overly beholden to the culture's rules
and norms. Therefore, a recently widowed Houyhnhnm does not outwardly mourn her husband's
passing, but she also does not live long after him. The master and his family have affection
for Gulliver but social pressures force them to exile him. The denial of normal emotions prevent a
full engagement with life.

Yahoos

The Yahoos symbolize a complete loss of rationality in a primitive state, but they also show
how ongoing oppression can drive humans into this primitive state. Ample evidence of their
propensity for violence appears in the novel; Yahoos fight one another; they hoard stones; and on
one occasion a female tries to sexually accost Gulliver. At the same time, the Yahoos have little
and are subject to abuse, enslavement, and rejection by the Houyhnhnms, which introduces a
chicken-and-egg scenario: Are the Yahoos rejected because they are primitive, or are they violent
because they have been rejected? Perhaps, as the Houyhnhnms claim, the Yahoos are a lost cause.
On the other hand, the Yahoos have very little means for survival, which drives them to extreme
measures.