Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels.

Introduction

The book mingles all the seemingly incompatible genres: a light-hearted travel and adventure novel, a serious minded treatise on the aspects of society (politics, religion, education, etc.), and a witty contemporary satire. It is set explicitly in Swift's own lifetime and has a representative Englishman for a protagonist.

Moral Treatise: The narrator is an educated and upright young man who finds himself in strange exotic worlds, which on a closer look however prove to be but duplicates of contemporary England. The author allows himself for much philosophical speculation in modelling his fictional worlds on the one he knows, usually exaggerating several aspects of English society, positive or negative, to expose them to a probing analysis. He gives a grave warning when leading a negative aspect into its extreme (e.g. the war over the right way of breaking an egg), and an insightful suggestion for a change when emphasizing a positive aspect and its impact on the society he describes (e.g. not only punishing criminals, but motivating honest citizens by rewards for their not breaking law in Part I).

Contemporary Satire: The power of the book lies in its ingenious use of satire. There is a strong ironic tension between what the reader and the author knows to be true and what the character of Gulliver presents to the reader. Gulliver is essentially a naively innocent protagonist, which may be seen as echoed in his very name: Gulliver rhymes very well with gullible. He is a loyal subject to the Crown and speaks about his country in admiring terms. It is by a simple juxtaposition of Gulliver's idealized views of England and the views and actions of uninvolved commentators that the satirical effect is created (e.g. Gulliver's presentation of his country versus the observation on the primitive brutality of Gulliver's people by the prince in Part II). The whole of the book is a closely interwoven web of satirical observations, the author satirizes both phenomena relating specifically to his own time (the court intrigues in Part I) and the universal shortcomings of human society (the satire of academia in Part III).

"A Letter from Captain Gulliver to His Cousin Sympson"

In the letter, prefaced to the book, the author complains about the insertions and omissions which were made in the manuscript without his consent before publication. He especially protests against the insertion of a tribute to Queen Anne. Originally he said that the Queen did govern by a prime minister, but the published version claims the contrary.

He expresses his deep disappointment with the effects of the published work. He owes that he intended his account as way of reforming the mankind, but he sees that his design failed utterly. The Yahoos, that is the human race, proved to be hopelessly incorrigible, and the author states that he gives up any further ambitious designs for their improvement.

Dated April 2, 1727.

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This short note actually precedes Gulliver's letter, but it reacts to its contents. It expresses pity at the misunderstandings that marked the publication of the work.

"The Publisher to the Reader"

The publisher Richard Sympson explains that he is a relative to the author and that he was presented the manuscript of the work to do with it as he likes. He emphasizes that the author is a reliable person who is known for his truthfulness. He further admits to have abridged the original work, having left out mostly passages describing sea-faring.

Part I. A Voyage to Lilliput.

Summary

Shipwreck: The first-person narrator-protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, gives a brief account of his family background, education, and adulthood. He studied medicine, but learned also mathematics and navigation because he always felt tempted to travelling. He has already undertaken several voyages before he embarked on the Antelope bound for East Indies in 1699. The ship is driven off course by a violent storm and wrecked. Gulliver is marooned on an unknown island, where he finds a miniature empire inhabited by miniature creatures, the Lilliputians.

Lilliputians: When he first wakes up on the land he realizes he is bound as a captive of the Lilliputians. He is taken away to the largest building in the empire, a former cathedral disgraced by a murder, and lodged there. The Lilliputians treat Gulliver as their guest, though they at first distrust him and keep him in bondage. The Emperor appoints scholars to teach him their language, which Gulliver soon manages. Having been disarmed before, he is finally granted freedom on the condition that he will be helpful to the empire and will not do any harm. He is given the name Quinbus Flestrin, Man-Mountain.

Wars: Gulliver visits the capital of the empire, Mildendo, and engages in a conversation with the principal secretary of the state. The secretary explains the reasons of enmity of their empire with a neighbouring one, based on what he calls a matter of religious controversy. The question is whether to break one's eggs at the smaller end, as the law requires in this empire, or at the larger end, which is a habit of the other empire. Gulliver consents to serve the Emperor in his wars.

Victory: Making use of his here extraordinary height and strength, Gulliver seizes a fleet of ships from the enemy and brings them to the harbour of his Emperor. In this way he prevents an invasion and makes ambassadors from the Emperor of Blefuscu, the enemy empire, arrive to sue for peace. Gulliver is celebrated and is awarded a high title of honour. He however refuses to continue in the war on the grounds of his conscience.

Departure: Gulliver is plotted against by a powerful enemy, the highest admiral, who has felt antipathetic towards him from the beginning and whose jealousness was strengthened by Gulliver's naval success at Blefuscu. He initiates a charge against Gulliver for treason. The first article of the charge records the supposedly desecrating act of Gulliver who saved the burning royal palace by urinating at it. A sympathetic Lilliput warns Gulliver, who retires to the empire's former enemy, pretending to be on a previously arranged formal visit. By a lucky chance Gulliver gets hold of a strayed boat and makes arrangements to leave the Lilliputians. His boat is spotted by an English ship and in 1702 Gulliver returns to England where he provides for his wife and children before embarking on his next adventure.

Analysis

The satire focuses on the court life, including political corruption, religious controversies, and warfare.

Court Corruption: The whimsical monarch of the Lilliputian empire amuses himself by court dance, but also by ordering his ministers to perform dangerous jumping tricks on a tightrope. Those who want to partake in the government must perform leaping over and crawling under a stick according to the commands of their monarch who holds the stick.

Sacred Wars: Wars between the two empires are based on a matter of religious controversy: the Lilliputians are Small-endians, breaking their eggs on the smaller end, their enemies are Big-endians, breaking their eggs on the larger end. Even though victory is achieved, the Lilliputians seek to continue the war in order to colonise and enslave the other nation. Gulliver is kept as a war weapon, and a very expensive one, considering how much food and drink he consumes.

Society Arrangement: One chapter is devoted to the arrangement of the Lilliputian society. Its sentiments echo those of Swift's Modest Proposal, with the difference that here the inhumane schemes for the relief of the poor are actually implemented. Children are taken away from poor parents and placed in emotionally sterile institutions to be brought up.

Part II. A Voyage to Brobdingnag.

Summary

Marooning: Gulliver, being a restless man, embarks on another voyage on the board of the Adventure in the same year that he returned to England. There is a storm in which the ship gets off course. The sailors discover a strange peninsula at the North American coast and come ashore to explore it. The crew gets frightened by the sight of an enormous human being and leave the land hastily, leaving Gulliver behind.

Market Performer: The peninsula is inhabited by giants and everything in the land is in proportion to the size of its habitants. Gulliver is taken into the house a farmer, is discovered to be an intelligent being, and is taught the language by his master's daughter. The girl gives Gulliver the name Grildrig, meaning a manikin, and the two develop an affectionate relationship. Gulliver's master makes him perform at markets and earn him profit. Gulliver is soon exhausted by the performances. His master believes that Gulliver is about to die and sells him to the court.

Court Pet: Though still a slave, Gulliver has more leisure at the court and is kept as a pet by the Queen. His nurse is received at the court, too, to care for Gulliver. Gulliver is provided all the thinkable comfort and has all the necessary things made specially for him so as to fit to his size. Gulliver's life is however in constant danger, as he is being attacked by enormous rats, flies, wasps, etc.

Gulliver gives the prince a lengthy account of the ways of the English nation and tries to defend the obvious shortcomings of his people. The society of Brobdingnag is based on common sense, reason, and practicality, therefore the prince necessarily takes a disapproving attitude to the human race. Gulliver offers the prince the knowledge of the gunpowder, but the prince is shocked and refuses.

Return: Gulliver is left unattended on the beach and his house, or a cage, is grabbed by an eagle. The beast drops the cage in the sea and Gulliver is happily discovered by a ship which brings him to England in 1706.

Analysis

The satire focuses on the vanity of human efforts and on the incomprehensible brutality and primitiveness of the human race.

Disproportioning: The prince wonders at the seriousness with which Gulliver talks about the achievements of his nation. All of the human efforts seem small from the point of view of a greater being, both physically and mentally superior. There is a cosmic irony in the obvious smallness of our achievements when seen from a larger perspective. The prince's proper reaction to Gulliver's narrative is laughter by which he observes the actual trifling nature of what we call our grand issues.

Gulliver expresses his disgust at the sight he has to suffer when ladies use him as a toy, placing him on their toilet tables and feeling free to make their toilet and show themselves naked before him. The imperfections of their skin take on horrible dimensions when observed with a keen eye. The same applies to any thing or phenomenon when observed from too close a distance.

Primitive Brutality: Gulliver sincerely tries to present England in the most favourable light, but the prince provides rational arguments and easily shows that Gulliver's society is very defective. "He [the prince] was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting it was only 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, and ambition could produce" (139). The prince finally concludes that the human race is "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth" (140).

Part III. A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan.

Summary

Pirates: In 1706 Gulliver embarks on another voyage as a surgeon on the board of the Hopewell, bound for the East Indies. The ship is attacked by pirates who dispose of Gulliver by putting him in a small boat and abandoning him.

Laputa, Academics: Gulliver gets to a federation of two interconnected floating islands which are moved by their ruler in the air by the means of a magnetic device. The upper island is inhabited by the Laputans, ugly people with their heads reclining either to left or to right and with one of their eyes turned inward, the other gazing up to the zenith. They are quarrelsome, always arguing against the views of their opponents; fearsome, always in fright that a catastrophe occurs and sweeps them from the surface of the earth; and restless, always waking up from their sleep with a start.

Balnibarbi, Scientists: Gulliver finds little enjoyment at Laputa and visits the lower island Balnibarbi. He is shown the Academy where various odd scientists experiment with extracting sun-beams from cucumbers, deriving food from human excrements, or building houses starting with the roof. Gulliver is shown the country by a lord who is the only prosperous man there because he sticks to traditional methods in agriculture, for which he is looked on with contempt. All the others comply to the experimental projects of the Academy: "The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and, in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste; the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes: by all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes; driven equally on by hope and despair" (189).

Glubbdubdrib, Resurrections: Gulliver resolves to return home and travels to Luggnagg from where he intends to take a ship to Japan and then to England. As no ship is ready at the moment, Gulliver makes a trip to Glubbdubdrib, the Island of Magicians. He is received by a prince who has the power to resurrect dead people to life. In this way Gulliver comes to talk to Alexander the Great, to Caesar and Brutus, to Aristotle and Homer, etc.

When comparing the ancients with the moderns, Gulliver finds out with disgust how much the modern society degenerated from the ancient glory to the present pitiful condition. As lie is useless in the other world, Gulliver receives truthful answers to the questions he asks the resurrected people. In this way he for instance learns from Alexander the Great that he was not poisoned, but died of excessive drinking.

Luggnagg, Immortals: Gulliver is granted a reception by the prince and must follow the court prescription of licking the dust before the king's throne, which is meant literally. He is told about the immortals who are occasionally born in the country and fantasizes about what he would do with life if he were immortal himself, much to the amusement of the court. He realizes his naivety when he encounters the Struldbruggs, the immortals themselves. Their immortality proves to be a punishment, for it is accompanied by all the defects of old age, as failure of memory, loss of taste, physical deformity, diseases, etc.

Japan, Return: Gulliver pretends to be a Dutch merchant as no other Europeans are admitted to Japan. Even Dutchmen are required to undergo the ceremony of trampling upon the crucifix if they wish to trade with the Japanese. This implies that they are obliged to choose between moral integrity and profit from trade. Due to an influential friend from Luggnagg, Gulliver manages to avoid this ceremony. In 1710 Gulliver lands safely in England.

Analysis

Academic Ignorance: The Laputans are divided into academia and into commoners. The academics are constantly immersed in their own problems and are unable to participate in conversation unless an attendant gently slaps their mouth and their ear. The commoners do not need this device, for their minds are not that busy. The only concern of the Laputans are music and mathematics, they are uninterested in anything else. The academics are highly impractical, for instance they despise of simple geometry, so their houses have no rectangular angles. Gulliver finds the academic ignorant and useless and is able to converse with the commoners only who are at least capable of delivering reasonable answers.

Strained Science: The Balnibarbians put the basic principle of science on its head: instead of using science to make their lives easier, they let pseudo-science effectively complicate their lives. For instance they seek to replace spoken language by showing actual things to their partner in conversation. The language would be universally comprehensible, but it requires its users to carry all the things one may possibly need for conversation with themselves in sacks.

Political Arrangement: In relation to the strained proposals of the Academy, Gulliver mentions its ideas of politics. The Academy proposes that the ruler should choose for promotion not persons of connections, but persons of quality. Gulliver obviously holds this scheme for equally extravagant as the other unhappy designs of the Academy. The idea of the ruler picking up the best rather than the best connected is put at the same level as for instance the solution for contrary views in politics, which consists in making the opponents mutually exchange one half of their brain so as to balance the conflicting ideas. Gulliver proposes further improvements to the Academy, by which he admits that the academia of the human race is much the same as that of the Balnibarbians.

Part IV. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms.

Summary

Conspiracy: In 1710 Gulliver takes charge of the Adventure as a captain. The ship is bound to the South Sea to trade with the Indians. The crew conspires against Gulliver and sets him on shore in an unknown land.

Houyhnhnms: On the island Gulliver is attacked by the Yahoos, ugly animals resembling apes, but is saved by Houyhnhnms, horses obviously superior in capacity to the Yahoos. Gulliver is alarmed to find out that in his appearance he resembles the primitive Yahoos rather than the noble horses. Gulliver is held for a Yahoo, though an extraordinarily gifted one. As soon as Gulliver learns the language, he engages in a serious conversation with his master about England.

Yahoos: For the first time in his travels Gulliver realizes the corruption of his country and describes it in fair terms. Gulliver's story of wars, corrupt lawyers, and power-seeking minsters makes his master indignant and Gulliver soon acquires the same attitude towards the abominable human race. In return Gulliver's master describes the manners and behaviour of the Yahoos, in which Gulliver sees the peculiarly human vices, including avarice (the Yahoos gather glittering stones), gluttony (they overeat themselves if they are given food enough), hatred (especially hatred of one another), etc.: "If you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself" (277).

Exhortation: The general assembly of Houyhnhnms is displeased with Gulliver's master treating a Yahoo, meaning Gulliver, as is he were a Houyhnhnm and "exhorts" him, that is appeals to his reason, to quit keeping Gulliver in his house. Gulliver builds himself a canoe and is forced to leave. He intends to find an uninhabited island and spend the rest of his life in seclusion. He fails to find such an island and is carried by force into a Portuguese ship which takes him to Europe. Gulliver treads like a horse, his speech resembles whining, and he shrieks from human beings whom he now condemns as Yahoos. The ship's captain makes Gulliver re-adapt himself to society against Gulliver's will and wish, but Gulliver remains the most misanthropic creature despite captain's efforts.

Conclusion: In 1715 Gulliver gets back to England. The first thing he does is buying himself two horses: "My horses understand me tolerably well, I converse with them at least four hours every day" (311). He describes his efforts to adapt himself to life with the Yahoo members of his family: "I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthest end of a long table" (317). He states that he publishes this truthful account of his more than sixteen-year travel to instruct humankind and enhance their knowledge of the world. He answers the only objection which might arise against him, that is the law that any land discovered by a subject of the Crown belongs to the Queen. Gulliver thinks the Lilliputians not worth conquering, the Brobdingnags and the floating islands impossible to defeat, and as to the Houyhnhnms, he would never allow them any harm. Gulliver takes leave from the reader, states his deep contempt for the human race, and advises anyone who is proud, which the vice Gulliver hates most, not to dare appear within his sight.

Analysis

Perfection: The Houyhnhnm society lives in an ideal Edenic state of innocence. Their language has no terms for lie, war, government, law, punishment, power, and other evils. Neither is the mind of a Houyhnhnm capable to understand these concepts. Gulliver is at pains to explain his master what a lie means and his master grasps the concept only in so far as that it is "to say the thing which is not". The name Houyhnhnm means "a perfection of nature", which the Houyhnhnms certainly represent.

Swift's choice of horses as the creators of an ideal society and of humans as "the most unteachable animals" in the land of Houyhnhnms suggests that also in our world human race is incapable of reformation, of learning from experience, and of using their faculties for their well-being rather than to the opposite effect: "Hence it follows of necessity, that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, stargazing, poisoning, whoring, canting, libelling, free-thinking, and the like occupations: every one of which terms, I was at much pains to make him [his Houyhnhnm master] understand" (269).

Nature: As Gulliver's Houyhnhnm master concludes, reason itself is an insufficient device when not assisted by virtue. Human beings do not use their faculties to enhance their existence but rather to enlarge their natural vices; the vices that are manifested in their unchecked form in the Yahoos. Human race goes against nature by covering themselves with clothes, shaving the hair from the chin, etc., and so distorts the nature's original designs.

Sterility: Even though the Houyhnhnms possess and cultivate all the admirable virtues that are appreciated in human beings, they lack the peculiarly human qualities of feelings and emotions. Their social system may be generally profitable and convenient, but it is strikingly inhumane. Marriages are arranged only within the respective breed of the horse so as to avoid mixing races. No more than two children are allowed so as to avoid overpopulating the island. If a couple happens to have two children of the same sex, they swap one child with another couple which happens to have two children of the other sex. Death of a family member or one's own death is approached with quiet stoicism, there is neither rejoicing nor mourning.

Humanity: The conclusion suggests that human beings are indeed not capable of perfection, but that it is exactly their imperfection which makes them human and so very different from the Houyhnhnms; for the worse as well as for the better.