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Jonathan Swift----GULLIVERS TRAVELS

While Henry Fielding employed humour to criticise the failings of the eighteenth
century, Swift used hard hitting and at times bitter satire. He is best remembered for three
great satirical works: The Battle of the Books, A Tale of a Tube, and Gullivers Travels. Swift
published Gullivers Travels under a pseudonym because he feared government persecution.
Gullivers Travels was originally entitled Travels into Remote Nations of the World.
Along with Pope and other literary light, Swift was a member of the MartinusScriblerus Club.
The purpose of this club was to satirize the foolishness of modern man. Each member was
given a topic, Swifts was to satirize the current boom in travel literature. The final result,
ten years later, was Gullivers Travels.
Gullivers Travels is the tale of Lemuel Gulliver as he voyages to the strange lands of
Lilliput, Brobdingnag, the kindom of Laputa, and the Land of Hoyhnhnms. G.T appeals
to both children & adults for different reasons. Children are fascinated by the lone traveller
who has adventure after adventure in strange lands peopled by tiny midgets, giants and talking
horses. For an adult the book is highly sarcastic. In this fantastic tales, Swift satirizes the
political events in England and Ireland in his day, as well as English values and institutions.
He ridiculesacademics, scientists, and Enlightenment thinkerswho value rationalism above
all else, and finally he targets human condition.
THEMES
1.HUMAN CONDITION: Gullivers Travels is political satire in the form of an adventure
novel.Swift subscribed to the pre-Enlightenment Protestant idea that the man is by nature
sinful, having fallen from perfection in the Garden of Eden. Man is a rational animal; his
rationality is not always used for good. It is the human condition, Swift felt, to sin.
Gullivers physical & moral inferiors, the Lilliputians, have illogical and even unethical
ideas about justice, schooling children, and choosing political leaders.Gullivers physical &
moral superiors, the Brobdingnagians, do not suffer war or strife because their political and
social structures are far superior to Englands. Part III is a scathing indictment of how
Enlightenment thinkers value rationality, science, discoveries, and new ideas over traditional,
practical ways of doing this. In part IV, Swift contrasts the best that man was (in the Garden of
Eden before the Fall), represented by the Houyhnhnm, with the debased state to which he can
fall, represented by the Yahoo.

2.POLITICS. Swift was not only a clergyman but a political writer and activist, writing for
the Tory paper and writing political pamphlets. He was deeply involved in the battles between
the Whigs and Tories and active in trying to help Englands oppression of Ireland. Most of
Swifts scathing political satire can be found in Part I.
3.CULTURE CLASH. Gulliver is the odd man out whenever he travels to other countries, and
is curious about the customs of people he meets. He is quite surprised by the differences
between his way of life and theirs. The Brobdingnagian king is horrified at the concept of
gunpowder. The Houyhnhnm cant understand the concept of lying and are amazed and
horrified to hear that in England, horses are enslaved by men, because in their country the
humanoid Yahoos are their slaves. The more Gulliver tries to explain Englands ways, the more
shocked and repulsed the Houyhnhnm and Brobdingnagians are.
4.CUSTOM&TRADITION. Swift is acclaimed because of his clever use of language &
symbolism to make his points in a humorous way. Satire often involves irony. Gulliver
reporting absurdities creates irony. For example, he tells us matter-of-factly that the Lilliputians
bury their dead head first because they believe that when the end of the world comes the flat
earth will flip upside down, leaving them right side up for the afterlife. He notes that many
Lilliputians no longer believe this is necessary, but follow tradition.
5.SCIENCE&TECHNOLOGY. Swift also parodies the scientists of his day. He drew upon
actual scientific experiments in Part III, when the scientists of Balnibarbi defy the law of
nature with such experiments as extracting sunshine from cucumbers.
STYLE
POINT OF VIEW:LemuelGulliver himself narrates the story of Gullivers T., but this firstperson narrator is not completely reliable. Swift deliberately makes Gulliver naive and
sometimes even arrogant for two reasons.First, it makes the reader more skeptical about the
ideas presented in the book. Second, it allows the reader to have a good laugh at Gullivers
expense when he doesnt realize the absurdity of his limited viewpoint (for example, he
sounds foolish when extolling the qualities of gunpowder to the peaceful Brobdingnagians). At
the end of the novel, the reader can see that Gulliver has turned into a misanthrope.
SETTING:The novel was written in the 1720s, and Gulliver travels to the area that were still
unknown or little explored during this time. The book was written before the discovery of the
Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, for ex., where Brobdingnag is supposedly located. It

was also before the discovery of an effective means of measuring latitude. Like the travelogues,
he parodies ,Gullivers T even provides maps of Gullivers journeys in the book to lend more
truthfulness to the story.
STRUCTURE:Is divided into four parts with two introductory letters at the beginning of the
book. Part I follows Gullivers journey to Lilliput and its tiny people; Part II to Brobdingnag
and its giants; Part III to several islands and countries near Japan; Part IV follows Gulliver
to the country of theHouyhnhnm. The 1st& 2nd parts set up contrasts that allow Swift to satirize
European politics and society. The 3 rd part satirizes human institutions & thinking. The final
section examines the flawed nature of humanity itself.
UTOPIA: The idea of a perfect society began with the ancient Greeks and was explored by
Thomas Mores, Utopia. Many writers before and since Swift toyed with the idea of utopia
and some contemporary writers have written novels about anti-utopia (dystopia): George
Orwells, 1984 and Aldous Huxleys Brave New World. Gulliver finds a near-utopia in the land
of Brobdingnagians, where war and oppression are unheard of. Being humanlike their utopia is
not perfect. Swift comes close to creating a perfect utopia with the Houyhnhnm,but suggest that
man never really fit in a perfect society.
ALLEGORY: In Part 1 many of the things Gulliver experiences can be linked to actual
historical events of Swifts time. The religious/political controversy between the Big Enders and
Little Enders corresponds with the conflicts between Protestants & Catholics. Lilliput stands
for England, whileBlefuscu stands for France. The two-faced Treasurer Flimnap corresponds
to The Whig leader, Sir Robert Walpole. The Lilliputian Emperor- tyrannical, cruel, corrupt,
and obsessed with ceremony- though a timeless symbol of bad government is George I, King of
England. The Lilliputian Empress stands for Queen Anne, who blocked Swifts advancement
in the Church of England, having taken offense at some of his earlier, signed satires. There are 2
political parties in Lilliput, the Low-Heels and the High-Heels. There correspond respectively to
the Whigs and Tories, the two major British political parties.
The two levels of meaning, the adventure & the satire, come from Swifts use of a popular kind
of literature, the travel narrative.

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