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Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift | Summary & Analysis

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Lilliputian
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/lilliputian?q=Lilliputian
Brobdingnag
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/brobdingnag
Houyhnhnms
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/houyhnhnm?q=Houyhnhnm

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The Body

Throughout Gulliver's Travels, the narrator spends a great deal of time discussing the human body-going so far as to detail his own urination and defecation. In each of the various lands to which Gulliver travels, he comes face to face with excrement. By looking closely at the body as a material thing and paying attention to what humans do on a daily basis, Swift makes it impossible to look at humans as exclusively spiritual or intellectual beings.

Literature and Language

Gulliver is a reader: He reads whenever he has the time. on each of the islands he visits, he makes a point of noticing whether the inhabitants write or do not write.

Gulliver is also a master linguist. On each of the islands he visits, he learns the language quickly. His ability to communicate suggests the value of communication across cultures.

Enlightenment

Gulliver comes into contact with several different races of people, all of which are narrow-minded in some way. Much of Swift's satirical focus is on people who cannot see past their own ways, their own power, or their own beliefs.

Relativity

In Gulliver's Travels, the reader comes to realize that much in the world really is relative. Gulliver's first journey lands him in Lilliput where he is called the Mountain Man because the people there are only five to six inches tall. On the other hand, in Brobdingnag, Gulliver is tiny compared to the enormous creatures who find him and keep him as a pet.

Travel

Many other classic works use the theme of the travel, such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Homer's Odyssey. Travel in the case of Gulliver's Travels gives Swift the opportunity to compare the ways of humanity, more specifically those of the English, with several other ways of living.

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Gulliver's Travels | Trailer | Fox Family Entertainment

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Gulliver's Travels | Children's Stories | FunKiddzTV

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Swift’s masterpiece can be read on different levels: it has been simply read as a tale for children.

But the most common interpretation among Swift’s contemporaries was that Swift’s main satiric point was to ridicule the Europeans’ pretensions to rationality; many who saw this in the satire simply dismissed it as mistaken vision since they believed that the promises of the new science were being realized and that Swift was simply pessimistic.

However, this reaction acknowledged that Swift had a serious purpose and that Gulliver was his spokesman.

A second interpretation claimed that Swift was mad, mentally unbalanced, and therefore the reader doesn’t need to consider the ending of the book seriously.

In the 20th century, criticism held that we aren’t supposed to see Gulliver’s actions as the natural rational result of his experiences, because Gulliver himself has finally become the target of the author’s satire.

Gulliver no longer speaks for the author, but his dislike of the Yahoos and his conduct are a sort of warning for us.

This approach maintains the claim that Swift was a clever writer, in control of his literary medium.

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One of the main ingredients of satire is distortion or exaggeration; the reader is invited to see something very familiar, in such a way that it becomes ridiculous.

Swift’s main technique for achieving this is the basic plot of science fiction: the voyage by an average civilized human being into an unknown land and his return home.

This opens up a lot of satiric possibilities because it enables the writer to play three different perspectives in order to give the reader a comic sense of what is very familiar.

The key to this technique is generally the use of the traveller, the figure who is the reader’s contemporary and fellow countryman.

The hero’s reactions to the New World of utopian perfection can be a constant source of amusement and satiric comment.

The genius of Swift’s satire in “Gulliver’s Travel” realizes itself in a second feature, the way he organizes the New World by constantly changing the perspective on human conduct; with this altered perspective, Swift can now manipulate Gulliver’s reactions to the changing circumstances in order to underscore his satiric points in a very humorous way.

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Swift looked to the extensive literature of travel, real and imaginary.

Finally, there are recognizable elements of political allegory through allusions to people and events in the England of Queen Anne and George I.

The traveller usually discovered some happy society where men lived a simple, uncorrupted life, following natural instinct and the innate light of reason; and from these utopias, European man was seen as the victim of civilization.

Gulliver’s experiences are different because the people among whom he is cast are in no sense children of nature.

They all live in highly organized societies and are governed by institutions.

If in the end, he takes an aversion to everything at home, it’s because Europe is losing its civilization and falling into a state of corruption, expressed in the novel by the constant opposition between rationality and animality.

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Throughout Gulliver's Travels, the different people that Gulliver visits symbolically represent different aspects of humanity.

Gulliver represents a middle-class Englishman who is decent and well-intentioned. In the course of his travels, he becomes less tolerant and more judgmental of the nations he visits.
The Lilliputians, a tiny race of people, represent much of what is petty and small-minded about the English and humankind in general. They are physically and morally smaller than Gulliver. They are self-important, self-serving, hypocritical, and dangerous and cruel in spite of their small size.
The Brobdingnagian, the race of giants, are physically and morally bigger than Gulliver. They have not built vice into their government and institutions. Therefore, they represent much of what is good in humankind. However, the great size of the Brobingnagians means that Gulliver can never feel safe or equal in their society; while they treat him kindly, they also treat him as an exhibit.
The Laputans represent the dangers and limitations of abstract and theoretical knowledge.
Their addiction to abstract knowledge makes them oblivious to each other and to all human concerns.
The Houyhnhnms represent reason and virtue. They concerned about the good of their society as a whole. So deep-rooted is this tendency that they have no distinguishing characteristics or names, and they do not seem to possess an emotional life beyond treating everyone with respect and kindness.
The humanoid Yahoos represent all that is bestial, low, and despicable in human behaviour. Gulliver is ashamed to recognize the similarities between them and human beings, including himself. They are greedy, violent, dirty, and destructive of themselves and others.
In the end, humans are better than Yahoos, but they are also worse, since humans have the ability to choose between good or evil, and frequently choose evil.

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Gulliver's Travels is a prose satire. It is Swift's best known full-length work and a classic of English literature. He himself claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it". The prose is divided into four parts.
Gulliver's Travels is the story of Gulliver, a surgeon who takes to the seas. 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. The Lilliputians  [ lɪlɪˈpjuːʃn] keep Gulliver restrained with chains until he proves he can be trusted. But when he becomes too friendly with the ambassadors, and when he puts out a fire in the emperor's palace by urinating on it, he is charged with treason, and leaves 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 takes another journey that leaves him in a land known as Brobdingnag, [ 'brɒbdɪŋnæɡ] 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 him. She also takes the farmer's daughter, into her service. Gulliver lives for two years in the court, but on an outing to the beach, a bird picks up Gulliver's carrying-box and drops it into the sea. However, Gulliver accepts a voyage to the East Indies. When pirates take Gulliver's ship, he ends up on a deserted island. He is taken to the Lapùtans' city. There he finds a race of men concerned with theoretical matters and constantly absorbed in abstract thought. Although he is treated well, Gulliver grows bored. A few months after Gulliver returns home, he leaves again. Gulliver's crew leaves him on an island populated by intelligent horses called Houyhnhnms  [ˈhuːɪnəm]    and primitive humans called Yahoos. Gulliver lives comfortably with the master and his family for three years, learning the language and embracing their philosophy of living by principles of pure reason. He comes to hate his own Yahoo heritage, and 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.

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Jonathan Swift was born in Ireland in 1667 and studied at Trinity College in Dublin. He was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
The Swift family was English but had been in Ireland since the Civil Wars. In 1726 the publication of Gulliver's Travels gave Swift a lasting reputation.
He published another masterpiece in 1729, A modest proposal.
Swift spent the rest of his life in Ireland and he died there in 1745, buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.
A controversial author:
Swift is, without doubt, one of the most controversial among English great writer. He has been labelled alternatively as a misanthrope, a man with a morbid attitude, a monster or a lover of mankind. What clearly emerges from his works is that he was seriously concerned with politics and society and that his attitude was mainly conservative. In a letter to Pope, he defined himself as a hater of man, whom he described as “an animal capable of reason”. The reason is an instrument that must be used properly; too intensive a use of reason is an error of judgement and therefore unreasonable.
Swift found in irony and satire the means that suited his temperament and his interests. He usually achieved the effect of parody combining ironic intent with the simplicity of his style and his diction.

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This essay was written by Jonathan Swift with satirical intent. It suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. Swift’s aim is to condemn the situation in Ireland during the 18th century: the uncontrolled maxim of mercantilism doesn’t take in account that a person who does not produce in an economic or political way makes a country poorer, not richer. He also states that, according to the mercantilist philosophy, the wealth of a country is based on the poverty of most of its citizens.

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Swift uses Gulliver as an instrument of satire in his masterpiece and he can be considered as a great example of a round character. Indeed, we can find a strong changement in Gulliver during the story: at first, he represents the perfect and typical European, he respects all the characteristics of European values, such as the care of his family, the prudence in business and the support of culture; but slowly he starts to understand the limitations of the society in which he grew up. In his four voyages, he is forced to face different and extravagant species of creatures, for example, the Lilliputians or the Houyhnhnms, and in particular, in the fourth voyage, we can see the deep transformation in Gulliver’s personality. When Gulliver meets the Houyhnhnms he begins to perceive himself and the other humans as imperfect and when he returns to England he’s no longer capable of taking part in human society, not even with his friends and family. He is no longer able to see the good qualities that humans are capable of possessing. However, this misanthropic view of life and the draws between Yahoos and humans have to be interpreted more like an exaggeration for comic effect rather than for cynical effect. So we can say that Swift did not intend the readers to take on Gulliver’s point of view.