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A Postcolonial Reading of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.

Md. Arafat Hossain Riad

23 March, 2017

Every human being needs to have their own identity, need to have their right of

independence. When people do not find their own identity, they always meet troubles as in they

are oppressed. It refers to the age of colonization, where a nation is colonized or literally

dominated by another nation. The nation who is colonized, are always deprived of their vital

needs. In a nutshell, one has the authority over many by dehumanizing people in terms of their

political power, economic power and so on. Colonist always had their mind of racism and

women were the secondary citizen of the society. This is a matter of individual’s independence,

independence of a society and independence of a nation and question rises in post-colonialism.

Post-colonialism explores the attempt to strip away the crisis of identity, feminism, racism and

many things which was the reason of trouble for colonized people. “Orientalism as a western

style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the orient” (Said). Edward Said

sees the colonialist in a positive way that they are restructuring the nation and teaching thing by

dominance. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travel portrays the theme of political satire which comments on

dehumanizing, the injustices of politics, and some surprisingly frank physical descriptions what

represents colonialism. Swift does not try to change the system but he attempt to find out flaws

and savage representation of others.

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The purpose of this paper is to interpret the novel Gulliver’s Travel from the lenses of

post colonialism theory. In order to do that, I will focus on issues of orientalism, placement and

displacement of identity crisis.

Gulliver’s Travel narrates the story of Lemuel Gulliver and his voyages around the world.

He experiences different types of culture. Swift satirically portrays the state of European

government. How they are colonizing other nation, how they are dehumanizing people by their

domination over the people.

The post-colonial concept of place and displacement leading to identity crisis is evident

in the novel. The fact of place and displacement is inherently related and almost always featured

in postcolonial writings. The term displacement is a key term in post-colonial theory which can

be applied to all migrant situations either geographical migration or mental alienation. In

essence, it refers both to physical displacement and a sense of being socially, culturally and

mentally out of place. Bill Ashcroft shares his view of placement and displacement theory of

identity crisis,

A major feature of post-colonial literatures is the concern of place and displacement. It is

here that the special post-colonial crisis of identity comes into being; [...] a valid and

active sense of self may have been eroded by dislocation resulting from migration, the

experience of enslavement, transportation, or “voluntary” removal for indentured labor.

Or it may have been destroyed by cultural denigration, the conscious and unconscious

oppression of the indigenous personality and culture by a supposedly superior racial or

cultural model (Ashcroft 9).

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Here, he says that how migration of one place to another place can cause of identity crisis which

can cause the enslavement of people as those people who migrate. As different place has

different norms, values and culture of their own, one person cannot meet all culture together.

This can be found in post-colonial literature what talks about how identity is in crisis because of

migration. Jonathan swift represents this concept in Gulliver’s Travel of Gulliver’s Character. As

four parts of novel talks about four different places and obviously they have four different

cultures. So, Gulliver does not have any idea about their culture. Firstly, he goes to the voyage of

liliputian where people are only six inch tall and Gulliver sees as giant to them. Liliputians locks

Gulliver in the cell. Gulliver has to survive to cope with the liliputians. Here, he faces the crisis

of his own identity and finally got the trust of liliputians. Moreover, A Voyage to Brobdingnag

shows the opposite. People are huge in size and Gulliver is in size of tiny. Gulliver is captured by

a farmer who displays him as a circus wonder at local fairs. Gulliver doesn’t know their culture

and doesn’t know how to behave with these people and faces troubles which are a matter of

identity crisis. The farmer's daughter teaches Gulliver to speak the language and the two become

good friends. The farmer sells the Gulliver to the queen of Brobdingnag. Because of Gulliver’s

size, he faces a series of troubles and physical misadventures. Once, he is taken into the country

and allowed to walk around a meadow on his own. Poor Gulliver has not yet learned the limits of

his size in Brobdingnag and is attacked by cow dung in the path and survives to save his life.

Here, Swift portrays the context of colonization and post-colonization in the concept of

placement and displacement in Swift’s time. The sense of displacement may have extracted from

migration, enslavement or meeting the different new cultures. When colonists like British

colonized many nations and structured their own value over other, colonized people faces the

problem of their own identity as they meets new different culture from their culture. For
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example, when British colonized Indian sub-continent they structured many values and norms to

the sub-continent and they tried to establish their culture and language. Indian sub-continent’s

people were in a crisis of individuality of their own culture and language and they had to fight

for it. This feature comes up with the broader concept which questions the post-colonial crisis of

identity. Here in Gulliver’s travel, we can find the same thing like enslavement when he is

displayed in the circus and going to different voyage and meeting different cultures also depicts.

People were not independent enough likewise Gulliver which also marks the question of identity

or individuality. So, this concept of Place and displacement is reflected in Gulliver’s Travel by

Jonathan Swift in the character of Lemuel Gulliver.

The representation of one nation in a stereotyped way that is regarded as embodying a

colonist attitude is called orientalism. Post-colonial theory demands a constant redefinition of

both “politics” and “culture” in a rapidly globalizing world; Said also questions how cultural

power and privilege determines modern identity. For uncivilized nation orientalism is made.

Mostly Asian nations, especially the Middle East is in the list. These countries behavior, values

and cultures are seeing as uncivilized and backward. The way of speaking, the way of

communicating with others and the norms and values of that society is seen as uncivilized

structure. Orientalism is itself a discourse that focused on the power, knowledge, representation

and the various Postcolonial issues. Orient is a set of imagination, values, ideas, geographical

locations which can be seen as the result of many attempts to explain self-identity in terms of

making an Orient or we can say that orient is a concept structured and established by colonists.

Jonathan Swift depicts the concept of orientalism in Gulliver’s travels Gulliver character. In

Gulliver’s travel, has four different voyages where he produces quite suitable name for him by

creating them as horses, giants, little people and savages. They are not quite simple not like the
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common man. Once he has made this distinction, he is ready to Orientalize their culture so that it

conforms to stereotypes suitable for western assimilation. Here, Gulliver offers an Orientalized

portrait of both the Lilliputians and Brobdingang. Orientalism, after all, "is nothing more than a

structure of lies and myths" (Said 6). As a colonialist and orientalist, Gulliver has no choice of

doing something else but to employ orientalism. As he does not have any idea about the values

and norms of Lilliputians and Brobdingang, he cannot make proper communication with them

and starts interpreting the foreigners he meets. In regard to the Lilliputians, Gulliver's first act of

Orientalism is to deny them their individuality. When he finds himself in the Lilliputians voyage,

he literally laughs to them. He thinks that this small species what are they doing with me as they

are tying Gulliver and sentence him to cell. Gulliver thinks Lilliputians as little people which

cause to deny their individuality and their own identity. So, Gulliver starts surviving there to

Orientalize Lilliputian’s culture. When Gulliver properly orientalizes their culture, he has been

independent to the land of Lilliputians. He roams around the land and gets the trust of king and

everyone in the land and Lilliputians start loving Gulliver. Edward W. Said describes orientalism

as a critique of the study of the orient and its ideology. Said examines the historical, cultural and

political views of the east that are held by the west and examines how they developed and where

they came from. He basically traces the various views and perception back to the colonial period

of British and European domination in the Middle East. The relationship and issues between the

Orient (East) and Occident (West) are the main points to discuss in Said‘s Orientalism. As

Gulliver himself is British, we see him impose his own culture to Lilliputians. When Lilliputians’

political problems start, we see Gulliver to make a deal with enemies for keeping peace. On the

other hand, in regard to Brobdingang, Gulliver is in the major trouble because he is simply a

little people to them likewise Lilliputians is in front of Gulliver. Brobdingang people laughs at
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him as he is tiny in size to them and the display him in circus. When he Orientalizes their norms,

values, ways of speaking and communicating and their culture, he is ready to change his thinking

as he need to be like Brobdingang people. Gulliver as colonized people has to Orientalize the

culture as he is the orient and is orientalized by Brobdingang people. Gulliver translates

Brobdingang people’s work from the oriental language into his own language to adopt. As said

focuses on language, translating works from the oriental languages into European languages.

They thought translating various works from the native languages into their own. They believed

themselves to be superior to others. The orient existed to be ruled and dominated what happens

in the voyage of Brobdingang. Mohanty in his book, states that

Orientalism as a body of knowledge had its specific methodological rigidity. The

Orientalist discourses become a political tool for educating and directing its practitioners

to adopt its limited methodologies and follows a well-defined set of objectifies.

Orientalism as a structurally coherent and effective discourse can be analyzed on the

basis of its methodological economy. The ideological, epistemological and cultural

complexities of Orientalism can be simplified at the level of its methodology (Mohabty

62).

Here, he explains that how orientalism is related to the political and cultural contexts and asking

for adopting methodologies of other to restructure and establish an object. When British came to

Indian sub-continent, they were pretty much unaware of their culture. They adopt their culture,

Orientalize it and start their domination over the people. The colonized observes two somewhat

distinct views of the worlds: that of the colonizer (conqueror) and that of himself/herself, the

colonized; to what culture does this person belong? It refers to double consciousness. At first,

Gulliver did not fit in with the Lilliputians, but then they became very hospitable, even risking
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famine from their land to provide for him. So, Gulliver properly orientalized Lilliputians. They

impose their own values and norms to the colonized country as we know that orientalism also

means restructuring the uncivilized nation and establishing or constructing that culture. In Indian

sub-continent, people were much uncivilized. They did not have any idea of dress up sense,

communication sense with others and many things as mentioned before. British people

restructured this and they started using the English language. From that time, English is spoken

as western language, civilized people use this language. We have recorded this thought in our

mind. Said points out the errors in the ways of these early colonialist. Said wants the study to

focus on the human experience of cultures and societies which is shown in Swift’s Gulliver’s

Travel that Gulliver is having the experience of different cultures and societies by travelling four

different voyages.

In my discussion of Gulliver’s travel, Swift cannot be eliminated from the discussion of

post-colonial theory. Gulliver's colonialist crisis was merely a manifestation of Swift's own crisis

in regards to England and Ireland. Gulliver’s Travel cannot be understood if Swift himself does

not have any idea of crisis in colonial and post-colonial time. Swift himself is colonized by

British. He knows better, how colonization comes to a matter of identity crisis. Perhaps the

closing remarks of Zach's essay will shed light on Swift's colonial crisis:

Swift's wish to be buried at Holyhead, the bleak port in the middle of nowhere, midway

between Dublin and London, is like the hyphen in Anglo-Irish, indicating Swift's

alienation from both worlds, his painful oscillation between his English and his Irish

identities, between allegiance to the colonialists and the colonized. (Zach 99)
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Here, Zach said that Swift was colonists and colonized likewise Gulliver’s character in

Gulliver’s Travel and a victim of discourse that made the British Empire. Swift beautifies

Gulliver’s Travel by depicting the context of post-colonialism. Swift himself is orientalized as he

is Irish and that was colonized by British. He successfully portrays this because he has the

experience of the context.

To summing up, the discussion about the Orientalism and placement and displacement

theory of identity crisis in the reference to Swift’s Gulliver’s travel is clearly shown the post-

colonial context. Swift portrays this in context of his time when Irish is colonized by British

people. How they orientalized and how they face the problem of identity crisis because of

migration, enslavement is referring to Gulliver’s Travel. Throughout this essay, I have looked

upon Gulliver’s Travels using the theory of displacement and orientalism to show how Swift was

aware of identity crisis and orientalism in his time and he illustrates this through the character of

Lemeul Gulliver.
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Work Cited:

1. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

2. Zach, Wolfgang. "Jonathon Swift and Colonialism." Reading Swift: Papers from The
Second Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift. Eds. Richard H. Rodino and Hermann J.
Real. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1993. 91-99.

3. Mohanty, B. B. Orientalism: A Critique. Manchester, U.K: Manchester University Press,

2005.

4. Ashcroft, Bill and Pal Ahuwalia. Routledge critical thinkers: Edward said. New York:
Routledge Publication, 2007.

5. McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester, U.K: Manchester University

Press, 2000.

6. Swift, Jonathan, and Robert DeMaria. Gulliver's Travel. London: Penguin, 2003.