Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels: A
Satire on Human Nature
Arindam Ghosh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Krishna Chandra College
Hetampur, Bibhum
Gulliver's Travels, or Travels
into Several Remote Nations of
the World. In Four Parts. By
Lemuel Gulliver, First a
Surgeon, and then a Captain of
Several Ships (which is the full
title),
is a prose satire by Irish writer and
clergyman Jonathan Swift, that is
both a satire on human nature and
the “travellers’ tales” literary
subgenre.
It is Swift's best known full-
length work, and a classic
of English literature. He himself
claimed that he wrote Gulliver's
First edition of Gulliver's Travels “to vex the world rather
Travels than divert it”.
Jonathan Swift was born of English parents
in Dublin in 1667. Unfortunately his father died
before his birth and they had to depend on the
financial aid they received from relatives. After
his schooling and college, he worked as private
secretary to Sir William Templeton for several
years. By 1699, Swift composed some of his
most famous satires like A Tale of the Tub and
The Battle of the Books, which were published
only in 1704. His Gulliver's Travels (written
between 1721-1725) was published in 1726, and
was a satire on the current politics between
the Whigs and the Tories.
Swift's age was an age in which there was an
abundance of political controversies and
ideological clashes, particularly within the
Church. Swift and his contemporaries, like
Jonathan Swift Pope, Steele and Addison, satirised prominent
institutions as well as political figures in their
1667-1745 writings.
Early in his life Swift was a member of the Whig party.
The Whig government's flirtation with the Dissenters,
however, helped to drive him, at the time when it seemed, in
any case, to be a change which might advance his career, into
the Tory camp. When Queen Anne died, however, and
the Tory Government fell, he lost forever the chance of
religious preferment in England which he had coveted for
so long.
By August 1725 the book was complete; and as Gulliver's
Travels was a transparently anti-Whig satire, it is likely
that Swift had the manuscript copied so that his handwriting
could not be used as evidence if a prosecution should arise, as
had happened in the case of some of his
Irish pamphlets (the Drapier's Letters).
Swift and Political Atmosphere of England
Politics seems to have been of interest to Swift early in his career chiefly to
the extent that it affected the strength and stability of the Anglican Church
(Protestant) of which he was a member. The restoration of the Catholic
monarchy, which was a real threat during his lifetime, would, he feared,
result in "Papist" absolutism; in the loss of the liberties, privileges, and
freedoms which the English Constitution granted to Protestants, if not to
Catholics or Dissenters. Between the Restoration and James II's final flight to
France, it had appeared not at all unlikely, to members of Swift's social class in
England as in Ireland, that the English monarchy might relapse into a religious
and political despotism.
When James II succeeded his brother Charles II in 1685, and began
gradually to reintroduce Catholics into key positions in the government and the
army — and when, in 1688, he produced a male heir, thereby raising the
possibility of an English Catholic Dynasty, the result was the
bloodless Glorious Revolution. The Glorious Revolution (1688) made
English constitutionalism much more secure: the powers of the monarchy
were severely limited, while those of parliament were strengthened.
Supreme legislative power derived from a complex alliance between the King,
the House of Lords, and the House of Commons.
Different Denominations of Christianity
Introduction
It is unusual when a masterpiece develops out of an assignment, but
that is, more or less, what happened in the case of Gulliver’s Travels. The
Martinus Scriblerus Club, made up of such notables as Pope, Arbuthnot,
and Gay, proposed to satirize the follies and vices of learned, scientific,
and modern men. Each of the members was given a topic, and Swift’s
was to satirize the numerous and popular volumes describing voyages to
faraway lands. Ten years passed between the Scriblerus project and the
publication of the Travels, but when Swift finished, he had completed
what was to become a children’s classic (in its abridged form) and a
satiric masterpiece.
Swift kept the form of the voyage book but expanded his target.
Instead of simply parodying voyage literature, he decided to attack what
he considered were people’s most conspicuous vices. He makes the
abstract become concrete. Ideas are metamorphosed into grotesque,
foreign creatures; absurd customs are represented by absurd objects; and
the familiar becomes new and surprising.
Gulliver’s Travels is an adventure story
(in reality, a misadventure story)
involving several voyages of Lemuel
Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon, who,
because of a series of mishaps en route
to recognized ports, ends up, instead, on
several unknown islands living with
people and animals of unusual sizes,
behaviors, and philosophies, but who,
after each adventure, is somehow able
to return to his home in England where
he recovers from these unusual
experiences and then sets out again
on a new voyage.
Life of Gulliver
According to Swift's novel, Gulliver was born
in Nottinghamshire c. 1661, where his father had a
small estate; the Gulliver family is said to have
originated in Oxfordshire, however. He
supposedly studied for three years (c. 1675-1678)
at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, leaving to
become an apprentice to an eminent London
surgeon; after four years (c. 1678-1682), he left to
study at the University of Leiden, a prominent
Dutch university and medical school. He also
educated himself in navigation and mathematics,
leaving the University around 1685.
Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput
4 May 1699 – 13 April 1702
The travel begins with a short
preamble in which Lemuel
Gulliver gives a brief outline of his life
and history before his voyages.During
his first voyage, Gulliver is washed
ashore after a shipwreck and finds
himself a prisoner of a race of tiny
people, less than 6 inches (15 cm) tall,
who are inhabitants of the island
country of Lilliput. After giving
assurances of his good behaviour, he is
given a residence in Lilliput and
becomes a favourite of the
Lilliput Royal Court. He is also given
permission by the King of Lilliput to
Locations visited by Gulliver,
go around the city on condition that he
according to Arthur Ellicott Case must not harm their subjects.
Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput
4 May 1699 – 13 April 1702
At first, the Lilliputians are hospitable to Gulliver, but they are also
wary of the threat that his size poses to them. The Lilliputians reveal
themselves to be a people who put great emphasis on trivial matters. For
example, which end of an egg a person cracks becomes the basis of a
deep political rift within that nation. They are a people who revel in
displays of authority and performances of power. Gulliver assists the
Lilliputians to subdue their neighbours the Blefuscudians by stealing
their fleet. However, he refuses to reduce the island nation of Blefuscu to
a province of Lilliput, displeasing the King and the royal court.
Gulliver is charged with treason for, among other crimes, urinating in
the capital though he was putting out a fire. He is convicted and
sentenced to be blinded. With the assistance of a kind friend, "a
considerable person at court", he escapes to Blefuscu. Here, he spots and
retrieves an abandoned boat and sails out to be rescued by a passing ship,
which safely takes him back home.
Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag
20 June 1702 – 3 June 1706
Gulliver soon sets out again. When the
sailing ship Adventure is blown off course
by storms and forced to sail for land in
search of fresh water, Gulliver is abandoned
by his companions and is left on a peninsula
on the western coast of the North
American continent.
The grass of that land is as tall as a tree.
He is then found by a farmer who was about
72 ft (22 m) tall, judging from Gulliver
estimating a man's step being 10 yards
(9 m). He brings Gulliver home and the
farmer's daughter Glumdalclitch cares for
Gulliver. The giant-sized farmer treats him
as a curiosity and exhibits him for money.
Gulliver exhibited to the After a while the constant shows make
Brobdingnag Farmer Gulliver sick, and the farmer sells him to
(painting by Richard Redgrave) the queen of the realm.
Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag
20 June 1702 – 3 June 1706
Glumdalclitch (who accompanied her father while exhibiting
Gulliver) is taken into the Queen of Brobdingnag's service to take care of
the tiny man. Since Gulliver is too small to use their huge chairs, beds,
knives and forks, the Queen of Brobdingnag commissions a small house
to be built for him so that he can be carried around in it; this is referred to
as his "travelling box".
Between small adventures such as fighting giant wasps and being
carried to the roof by a monkey, he discusses the state of Europe with the
King of Brobdingnag. The King is not happy with Gulliver's accounts of
Europe, especially upon learning of the use of guns and cannons. On a
trip to the seaside, his traveling box is seized by a giant eagle which
drops Gulliver and his box into the sea where he is picked up by some
sailors who return him to England.
Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg,
Glubbdubdrib and Japan
5 August 1706 – 16 April 1710
Setting out again, Gulliver's ship is
attacked by pirates and he is marooned close
to a desolate rocky island near India. He is
rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a
kingdom devoted to the arts of music,
mathematics, and astronomy but unable to
use them for practical ends. Rather than
use armies, Laputa has a custom of
throwing rocks down at rebellious cities on
the ground.
Gulliver tours Balnibarbi, the kingdom
ruled from Laputa, as the guest of a low-
ranking courtier and sees the ruin brought
about by the blind pursuit of science without
practical results, in a satire on bureaucracy
and on the Royal Society and its experiments.
At the Grand Academy of Lagado in Balnibarbi, great resources and manpower
are employed on researching completely preposterous schemes such as extracting
sunbeams from cucumbers, softening marble for use in pillows, learning how to
mix paint by smell, and uncovering political conspiracies by examining the
excrement of suspicious persons (see muckraking). Gulliver is then taken
to Maldonada, the main port of Balnibarbi, to await a trader who can take
him on to Japan.
While waiting for a passage, Gulliver takes a short side-trip to the island
of Glubbdubdrib which is southwest of Balnibarbi. On Glubbdubdrib, he visits a
magician's dwelling and discusses history with the ghosts of historical figures, the
most obvious restatement of the "ancients versus moderns" theme in the book.
The ghosts consist of Julius Caesar, Brutus, Homer, Aristotle, René Descartes,
and Pierre Gassendi.
On the island of Luggnagg, he encounters the struldbrugs, people who are
immortal. They do not have the gift of eternal youth, but suffer the infirmities of
old age and are considered legally dead at the age of eighty.
After reaching Japan, Gulliver asks the Emperor "to excuse my performing
the ceremony imposed upon my countrymen of trampling upon the crucifix",
which the Emperor does. Gulliver returns home, determined to stay there for the
rest of his days.
Part IV: A Voyage to the Land of the
Houyhnhnms
7 September 1710 – 5 December 1715
Despite his earlier intention of remaining at
home, Gulliver returns to sea as the captain of
a merchantman, as he is bored with his
employment as a surgeon. On this voyage, he
is forced to find new additions to his crew
whom he believes to have turned the rest of the
crew against him. His crew then commits
mutiny. After keeping him contained for some
time, they resolve to leave him on the first
piece of land they come across, and continue
as pirates. He is abandoned in a landing boat
and comes upon a race of hideous, deformed
and savage humanoid creatures to which he
conceives a violent antipathy. Shortly
Gulliver in discussion with afterwards, he meets the Houyhnhnms, a race
Houyhnhnms (1856 illustration of talking horses. They are the rulers while the
by J.J. Grandville). deformed creatures that resemble human
beings are called Yahoos.
Critical Comments
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Gulliver in the Land of Brobdingnagians
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Theory of Gaze
In critical theory, sociology, and
psychoanalysis, the gaze is the act of
seeing and, in the philosophical and
figurative sense, how an individual (or a
group) perceives other individuals, other
groups, or oneself. E. Ann Kaplan has
introduced the post-colonial concept of the
imperial gaze, in which the observed find
themselves defined in terms of the
privileged observer's own set of value-
preferences. From the perspective of the
colonised, the imperial gaze infantilizes and
trivializes what it falls upon, asserting its
command and ordering function as it does
so.
The Conjurer, by Hieronymus Bosch, shows the bending figure looking
forward, steadily, intently, and with fixed attention, while the other figures in
the painting look in various directions, some outside the painting.
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Gulliver in the Land of Brobdingnagians
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Observation On Lilliputians
Observation On Lilliputians
Observation On Brobdingnagians
Observation On Brobdingnagians
Peace of Utrecht The Peace of Utrecht is a series of peace
treaties signed by the belligerents in the War
of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city
of Utrecht between April 1713 and February
1715.
Before Charles II of Spain died childless
in 1700, he had named his grandnephew
Philip of France as his successor in his last
will. However, Philip was a French prince,
grandson of Louis XIV of France and also
in line for the French throne. The other
major powers in Europe were not willing
to tolerate the potential union of two such
powerful states. Essentially, the treaties
allowed Philip to take the Spanish throne
in return for permanently renouncing his
claim to the French throne, along with
other necessary guarantees that would
ensure that France and Spain should not
merge, thus preserving the balance of
power in Europe.
Philosophical and Theoretical Background
Philosophical and Theoretical Background
Philosophical and Theoretical Background
Philosophical and Theoretical Background
Gulliver’s Travels as a Political Satire
In chapter three of Book I, Swift describes some of the activities of
the Imperial Court. The activities including rope-dancing and leaping
over or creeping under sticks are obviously a satire on the way in
which political offices were distributed among the candidates by the
English king.
Gulliver’s Travels as a Political Satire
Gulliver’s Travels was unique in
its day; it was not written to woo
or entertain. It was an
indictment, and it was most
popular among those who were
indicted—that is, politicians,
scientists, philosophers, and
Englishmen in general. Swift
was roasting people, and they
were eager for the banquet. Swift
himself admitted to wanting to
“vex” the world with his satire,
and it is certainly in his tone, more
than anything else, that one most
feels his intentions.
Flimnap, the treasurer
of the Gout of Lilliput
is Sir Robert Walpole
who was the Prime
Minister of England
from 1715 to 1717 and
then again from 1721
to 1742. Dancing on a
tightrope symbolizes
Walpole’s skill in
parliamentary tactics
and political intrigue.
Similarly, Reldresal represents Lord
Carteret who was appointed by
Walpole to the office of Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland.
The phrase, “One of the king’s
cushions” refers to one of King
George’s mistresses who played a vital
role in bringing Walpole into the
king’s favor after his fall in 1717.
The building where Gulliver stayed
during his stay in Lilliput is perhaps
the Westminster Hall where Charles I
was executed.
Gulliver’s Travels as a Political Satire
The search of Gulliver’s body by the Lilliputians may be
the satiric representation of the committee set up by the
Whigs to investigate the conduct of the previous
government and especially of Oxford and Bolingbroke who
were suspected of the treasonable relationship with France and
the old pretender.
On the occasion of George I in 1714, the Whigs come to
power and a committee was formed, in 1715. Swift here
seems to be satirizing the activities of the Whig Committee.
In a similar way, Skyresh Bolgolam has been identified as
the Earl of Nottingham. Swift satirizes him because he
withdrew his support from the Harley Government.
Gulliver’s Travels as a Political Satire
The war that ensued following the question of breaking
eggs refers to the long-standing enmity between England
and France. Politically, Lilliput stands for England and
Blefuscu for France.
England was a country of Protestants and France was a
Catholic country. Naturally, the two countries were at
daggers drawn and the Lilliputians knew Blefuscu to be the
only country in the universe.
The reference to the grandfather of the present emperor, who
cut his finger breaking an egg, is to Henry VIII. Henry broke
with Rome over the question of Papal authority and also
over the matter of Anne Boleyn.
Gulliver’s Travels is an allegorical satire. In it, Swift presents the
picture of the current political situations in a most satirical way. In
the concluding book, he gives us a hopeless picture of mankind but
in the first two books, his satire is more genial and comic.
Important Topics for Gulliver’s Travels
10 Marks
1. As a Political Satire/ Satire
2. Children’s Fiction
3. Character of Lemuel Gulliver/ Unreliable
Narrator
4. As an imperialist/colonialist/postcolonial text.
5. Swift's Prose Style
6. Swift As a Misanthrope
7. lements of Utopia in 'Gulliver's Travels
5 Marks
1. What is the symbolic significance of Lilliput?
2. How do the Lilliputians treat Gulliver when they first encounter
him?
3. What is the great service performed by Gulliver to the Emperor
of Lilliput, and what is this reward?
4. Why is Gulliver so eager to assert his own country's importance
to Brobdingnagians?
5. Who is Skyresh Bolgolam?
6. Whor are Blefuscudians?
7. Why does Gulliver keep traveling despite his many
misfortunes?
8. What are the two empires fighting about in 'Gulliver's Travels'?
9. What is the significance of size in 'Gulliver's Travels'?
10. Who is Gulliver?
11. Who are Lilliput?
12. How did Gulliver help the king of Lilliput?
Thank you!!
