Gulliver's Travels

Many of the critics who have critiqued Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels have used
the word extraneous more then once. Swift was viewed as an insane person who
was a failure in life. But this is far from the truth. Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, a
book that has been assigned to students for years, and it is written from
experience. Swift's experience with the Tories and their conflicts with the Whigs
caused him to write books that mock religious beliefs, government, or people with
views differing from his own. In one of these books, Gulliver's Travels, Swift
criticizes the corruption of the English government, society, science, religion, and
man in general.
In Gulliver's first travel, in which he visited Lilliput, Gulliver is faced with
the minute people, called Lilliputians. Now while this is the premise for a fantasy
story, Swift uses the events within to make severe criticisms of England between
reigns of Queen Anne and George the first. The people of Lilliput are about six
inches tall, and there size signifies that their motives, acts, and humanity are in the
same, dwarfish (Long 276). In this section, the royal palace is accidentally set on
fire, containing the empress inside. Instead of making his way across town, to the
ocean, squashing the people of Lilliput as he goes, Gulliver makes use of his urine to
save the palace. While this vulgar episode was a display of bravery, it infuriated the
emperor, causing revenge to be vowed on Gulliver. Rather then be happy that both
the emperor and the palace are not in ruin, the littleness of the government and the

people in general is displayed in this act. Another display of this is the fact that
Gulliver is used as the Emperor's absolute weapon, but the emperor only uses him
to conquer his world of two islands. This makes the emperor's ambition seem
extremely low (Bloom, Interpretations 84-5).
Swift also criticizes the religious beliefs of the Lilliputians and England in
the first story. In Lilliput, Ministers were chosen strictly on agility, or their ability to
walk a tightrope or stick jumping. They were able to maintain their rank of minister
as long as they could keep these defeating these tasks (Swift, Writings 89).
The political parties of the English government are represented by the
conservative High Heels who depict the Tories, and the progressive Low Heels, or
Whigs. As per their names, the distinguishing mark of the parties is the height of
their heels. Within these two parties, Swift criticizes the English political parties,
and the Prince of Wales (Brady 21). Swift also mocks the religion war that was
going on in England, through the use of the war between Lilliput, and its nearest
neighbor, Blefuscu. Swift's use of the terms High Heels and Low Heels to compare
the meaningless battles of the Whigs and Tories, such as the height of heels (Swift,

Writings 81).
With Gulliver's next travel, we find him in Brobdingnag. His voyage shows
us the filthy mental and physical characteristics of man. Here, Gulliver is
confronted with an adult nurse. The nurse's repulsive action of revealing her
breasts to Gulliver. This reminds him of how the Lilliputians found his skin full of
crater like pores, and stumps of hair growing from them. The odor of the immense
creatures is offending, and it caused Gulliver to recall the fact that the Lilliputians
were also offended of his body odor (Bloom, Interpretations 27-8).
In Laputa, Gulliver is confronted with the old age Struldbuggs, which look
utterly hideous resulting from old age, and the deterioration of their bodies. The
Yahoos from the land of Houyhnhnms are filthy, uncivilized creatures, who use their
own dung as a weapon. In these descriptions, Swift criticizes both the moral and
physical corruption of man (Bloom, Critical Views 87).
Gulliver's first owner in Brobdingnag represents the selfishness of man.
Gulliver is constantly displayed in public, abused for the profit of the owner. When
his owner finds out that Gulliver is weakening, he sells him immediately, at a high
price in order to milk every last penny out of Gulliver.
Gulliver's third voyage, to the floating island of Laputa is one of the most
satirical of the whole book. In this voyage Swift criticizes the Royal Society of
England, in which he says is composed of useless philosophers, inventors, and
scientists. The floating island signifies that the inhabitants are composed of the
same airy constitution as the environment (Long 276). Projects done by such
people are summed up by "the Universal Artist," who directs his followers to turn
useful things into the exact opposite, which results in useless achievements. Some
of the experiments held were to create tangible air, wool-less sheep, and horses
with stone hooves. The flying island itself expresses not only the desertion on the
common earth of reality but their conversion of the universe to a mechanism and of
living to a mechanical process (Bloom, Interpretations 53).
Finally, Gulliver travels to the land of the Houyhnhnms. After he reaches
land, Gulliver comes across a pack of Yahoos and is instantly appalled by them.
There he quotes, "Upon the whole, I never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable
and animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so strong an antipathy"
(Swift, Text 215). This statement is at best ironic, because Gulliver never saw the
resemblances between the Yahoos, and himself. Afterwards, he encounters the
rational Houyhnhnms and he immediately realizes the common characteristics he
has in common with the Yahoos. He states, "my horror and astonishment are not to
be described, when I observed, in this abdominal animal, a perfect human figure"
(Swift, Text 220).

Gulliver is amazed to see rational figures acting in such brutal figures, but
he later realizes that they regarded him as the brutal beast. The Houyhnhnms
compare Gulliver and the Yahoos and find many similarities between the two. The
only difference was that Gulliver, and mankind, had learned the benefits of clothing,
and he, at times could be a rational creature.
Swift portrays the Yahoos as savage animals with human characteristics,
which is the biggest mockery of mankind in the whole book. The Yahoos were so
greedy, that they would fight over enough food to feed an entire army of fifty
soldiers, just to keep it to themselves. They would poison their own bodies, by
sucking a root, similar to alcohol, to reach a high. The female population of the
Yahoos are also given characteristics of the ladies of the royal stature. Their
gestures of hiding behind bushes and trees, looking at the passing by males, gives
the impression of a woman hiding her face behind a fan, while looking flirtatiously
over her shoulder. The smell associated with the female Yahoos, is similar to the
perfume ladies wear to attract men (Brady 108). By the time Gulliver is returned to
England, he becomes a complete antisocial, who is disgusted by the sight of his own
wife and children. Gulliver's desire to become a Houyhnhnm gives the reader the
impression that he is a pathetic man, who strives to become someone he can never
be.
Through Gulliver, Jonathan Swift travels to four different foreign countries,
each representing a corrupt part of England. Swift criticizes the corruption of these
parts, and focuses on the government, society, science, religion, and man. Not only
does swift criticize the customs of each country, he mocks the naive man who has
the inability to figure out the double meaning of things. Gulliver, being gullible
himself, believes everything he is told, which symbolizes the irony of the English
system.

INTRODUCTION
Swift's greatest satire, Gulliver's Travels, is considered one of the most important
works in the history of world literature. Published as Travels into Several Remote
Nations of the World, in Four Parts; by Lemuel Gulliver in 1726, Gulliver's Travels
depicts one man's journeys to several strange and unusual lands. The general
theme of Gulliver's Travels is a satirical examination of human nature, man's
potential for depravity, and the dangers of the misuse of reason. Throughout the
volume Swift attacked the baseness of humankind even as he suggested the
greatest virtues of the human race; he also attacked the folly of human learning and
political systems even as he implied the proper functions of art, science, and
government. Gulliver's Travels, some scholars believe, had its origins during Swift's
years as a Tory polemicist, when he was part of a group of prominent Tory writers

known as the Scriblerus Club. The group, which also included Alexander Pope, John
Gay, and John Arbuthnot, among others, collaborated on several satires, including
The Scriblerus Papers. They also planned a satire called The Memoirs of a Martinus
Scriblerus, which was to include several imaginary voyages. An immediate success,
Gulliver's Travels was inspired by this work. Swift finished Gulliver's Travels was
published anonymously, but Swift's authorship was widely suspected. Alternately
considered an attack on humanity or a clear-eyed assessment of human strengths
and weaknesses, the novel is a complex study of human nature and of the moral,
philosophical, and scientific thought of Swift's time which has resisted any single
definition of meaning for nearly three centuries.
Plot and Major Characters
Written in the form of a travel journal, Gulliver's Travels is the fictional account of
four extraordinary voyages made by Lemuel Gulliver, a physician who signs on to
serve as a ship's surgeon when he is unable to provide his family with a sufficient
income
in London. After being shipwrecked Gulliver first arrives at Lilliput, an island whose
inhabitants are just six inches tall and where the pettiness of the political system is
mirrored in the diminutive size of its citizens.
Gulliver is referred to as the "Man-Mountain" by the Lilliputians and is eventually
pressed into service by the King in a nonsensical war with the neighboring island of
Blefuscu. Gulliver finally escapes Lilliput and returns briefly to England before a
second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag. There he finds himself dwarfed by
inhabitants who are sixty feet tall. Gulliver's comparatively tiny size now makes him
wholly dependent on the protection and solicitude of others, and he is imperiled by
dangerous encounters with huge rats and a curious toddler. Gulliver, however,
incurs the disdain of the kindly and virtuous Brobdingnagian rulers when his
gunpowder display, intended to impress his hosts as an exemplary product of
European civilization, proves disastrous. An address Gulliver delivers to the
Brobdingnagians describing English political practices of the day is also met with
much scorn. Housed in a miniature box, Gulliver abruptly departs Brobdingnag when
a giant eagle flies off with him and drops him in the ocean. He soon embarks on his
third voyage to the flying island of Laputa, a mysterious land inhabited by scientists,
magicians, and sorcerers who engage in abstract theorizing and conduct ill-advised
experiments based on flawed calculations. Here Gulliver also visits Glubbdubdrib
where it is possible to summon the dead and to converse with such figures as
Aristotle and Julius Caesar. He also travels to Luggnagg, where he encounters the
Struldbrugs, a group of people who are given immortality, yet are condemned to
live out their eternal existence trapped in feeble and decrepit bodies. Once again
Gulliver returns to England before a final journey, to the land of the Houyhnhnms,
who are a superior race of intelligent horses. But the region is also home to the
Yahoos, a vile and depraved race of ape-like creatures. Gulliver is eventually exiled

from Houyhnhnm society when the horses gently insist that Gulliver must return to
live among his own kind. After this fourth and final voyage, he returns to England,
where he has great difficulty adjusting to everyday life. All people everywhere
remind him of the Yahoos.
Major Themes
Each of the four voyages in Gulliver's Travels serves as a vehicle for Swift to expose
and excoriate some aspect of human folly. The first voyage has been interpreted as
an allegorical satire of the political events of the early eighteenth century, a
commentary on the moral state of England, a general satire on the pettiness of
human desires for wealth and power, and a depiction of the effects of unwarranted
pride and self-promotion. The war with the tiny neighboring island of Blefuscu
represents England's rivalry with France. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver's diminutive
status serves as a reminder of how perspective and viewpoint alter one's condition
and claims to power in society. The imperfect, yet highly moral Brobdingnagians
represent, according to many critics, Swift's conception of ethical rulers. The voyage
to Laputa, the flying island, is a scathing attack upon science in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and reveals Swift's thorough acquaintance with the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the leading publication of the
scientific community of his day. The third voyage unequivocally manifests Swift's
contempt and disdain for abstract theory and ideology that is not of practical
service to humans. But it is the voyage to the land of the Houyhnhnms that reveals
Swift's ultimate satiric objectman's inability to come to terms with his true nature.
In particular, the Houyhnhnms are interpreted as symbols and examples of a human
order that, although unattainable, deserves to remain an ideal, while the Yahoos are
found to be the representatives of the depths of humanity's potential fall if that
ideal is abandoned.
Critical Reception
Gulliver's Travels has always been Swift's most discussed work. Critics have
provided a wide variety of interpretations of each of the four voyages, of Swift's
satiric targets, and of the narrative voice. But scholars agree that most crucial to an
understanding of Gulliver's Travels is an understanding of the fourth voyage, to the
land of the Houyhnhnms. Merrel D. Clubb has noted that "the longer that one
studies Swift, the more obvious it becomes that the interpretations and verdict to be
placed on the 'Voyage to the Houyhnhnms' is, after all, the central problem of Swift
criticism." Much of the controversy surrounds three possible interpretations of the
Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. One school of thought has traditionally viewed the
Yahoos as a satiric representation of debased humanity, while taking the
Houyhnhnms as representatives of Swift's ideals of rationality and order. The two
races are thus interpreted as symbols of the dual nature of humanity, with Gulliver's
misanthropy based on his perception of the flaws of human nature and the failure of
humanity to develop its potential for reason, harmony, and order. Another critical

position considers both the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos to be the subject of satire, with
the Yahoos representing the physical baseness of humans and the Houyhnhnms
representing the fatuousness of the idea that humans will ever achieve a rationallyordered existence. The ultimate satiric intent of the work to critics who accept this
interpretation is that the only truly rational or enlightened beings in existence are
not humans, but another species altogether. Since the 1950s, however, a variety of
critics have tempered these readings by illuminating the complexity of purpose in
the fourth voyage. The Houyhnhnms and Yahoos are now most often discussed as
both satiric objects and representatives of the duality of human nature. The nature
of Gulliver is another much-debated element of the Travels. Early critics generally
viewed him as the mouthpiece of Swift. Modern critics, who recognize the subtlety
of Swift's creation of Gulliver, have discredited that position. The most significant
contemporary debate is concerned with Swift's intentions regarding the creation of
Gulliverwhether he is meant to be a consistently realized character, a reliable
narrator, or a satiric object whose opinions are the object of Swift's ridicule. This
debate over the nature of Gulliver is important because critics seek to determine
whether Gulliver is intended to be a man with definite character traits who
undergoes a transformation, or an allegorical representative of humanity. In general,
Gulliver is now considered a flexible persona manipulated by Swift to present a
diversity of views or satirical situations and to indicate the complexity, the ultimate
indefinability, of human nature. Many scholars have suggested that Gulliver's
Travels has no ultimate meaning but to demand that readers regard humanity
without the prejudices of pessimism or optimism, and accept human beings as a
mixture of good and evil. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century critics of Swift were
primarily interested in aspects of his character, although a few did actually discuss
the meaning and merits of his work at length. The eighteenth-century critics were
most concerned with depicting Swift's perceived immorality and misanthropy, and
they often argued their case with the help of misrepresentations, or deliberate
fabrications of facts. Swift's defenders, in attacking these critics, provided the first
real criticism of Swift, in particular pointing out the misrepresentations of his life.
Twentieth-century critics have been confronted with the task of sifting through the
misconceptions to reevaluate Swift's total achievement. There are many
psychological examinations of Swift's character; the psychoanalysts, however, have
often been criticized for neglecting the literary or intellectual traditions of Swift's
age when associating his works with supposed neurotic tendencies. Some
commentators believed that psychoanalytic critics also make an obvious mistake
when they identify Swift with his characters, assuming, for example, that Gulliver's
comments reflect the opinions of his creator. Close textual analysis has
demonstrated the complicated elements of Swift's works and proven that they do
not always reflect his personal opinions, but are carefully written to reflect the
opinions of Swift's created narrators. A master of simple yet vividly descriptive
prose and of a style so direct that if often masks the complexity of his irony, Swift is
praised for his ability to craft his satires entirely through the eyes of a created
persona. He is now regarded as a complex though not mysterious man who created

works of art which will permit no single interpretation. The massive amount of
criticism devoted to Swift each year reflects his continued literary importance: his
work is valuable not for any statement of ultimate meaning, but for its potential for
raising questions in the mind of the reader.