Ministerio de Educación – Provincia de Chubut.

INSTITUTO SUPERIOR DE FORMACIÓN DOCENTE Nº 801 “JUANA MANSO”CARRERA: PROFESORADO DE INGLÉS PARA EL TERCER CICLO DE LA EDUCACIÓN GENERAL

BÁSICA Y LA EDUCACIÓN POLIMODALENGLISH LITERATURE II

Teacher:

Magdalena Anzor.

Seminar GULLIVER’S TRAVELS- JONATHAN SWIFT.

Student: Gutiérrez Leandro.

Year: Third

Group: 2010

Date: December 9th, 2014

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GULLIVER’S TRAVELS- JONATHAN SWIFTBIOGRAPHY.

Jonathan Swift, son of the English lawyer Jonathan Swift the elder, was born in Dublin, Ireland, on November 30, 1667. He grew up there in the care of his uncle before attending Trinity College at the age of fourteen, where he stayed for seven years, graduating in 1688. In that year, he became the secretary of Sir William Temple, an English politician and member of the Whig party. In 1694, he took religious orders in the Church of Ireland and then spent a year as a country parson. He then spent further time in the service of Temple before returning to Ireland to become the chaplain of the earl of Berkeley. Meanwhile, he had begun to write satires on the political and religious corruption surrounding him, working on A Tale of a Tub, which supported the position of the Anglican Church against its critics on the left and the right, and The Battle of the Books, which argued for the supremacy of the classics against modern thought and literature. He also wrote a number of political pamphlets in favour of the Whig party. In 1709 he went to London to campaign for the Irish church but was unsuccessful. After some conflicts with the Whig party, mostly because of Swift’s strong allegiance to the church, he became a member of the more conservative Tory party in 1710.Unfortunately for Swift, the Tory government fell out of power in 1714 and Swift, despite his fame for his writings, fell out of favour. Swift, who had been hoping to be assigned a position in the Church of England, instead returned to Dublin, where he became the dean of St. Patrick’s. During his brief time in England, Swift had become friends with writers such as Alexander Pope, and during a meeting of their literary club, the Martinus Scriblerus Club, they decided to write satires of modern learning. The third voyage of Gulliver’s Travels is assembled from the work Swift did during this time. However, the final work was not completed until 1726, and the narrative of the third voyage was actually the last one completed. After his return to Ireland, Swift became a staunch supporter of the Irish against English attempts to weaken their economy and political power, writing pamphlets such as the satirical A Modest Proposal, in which he suggests that the Irish problems of famine and overpopulation could be easily solved by having the babies of poor Irish subjects sold as delicacies to feed the rich.Gulliver’s Travels was a controversial work when it was first published in 1726. In fact, it was not until almost ten years after its first printing that the book appeared with the entire text that Swift had originally intended it to have. Ever since, editors have excised many of the passages, particularly the more caustic ones dealing with bodily functions. Even without those passages, however, Gulliver’s Travels serves as a biting satire, and Swift ensures that it is both humorous and critical, constantly attacking British and European society through its descriptions of imaginary countries.

Late in life, Swift seemed to many observers to become even more caustic and bitter than he had been. Three years before his death, he was declared unable to care for himself, and guardians were appointed. Based on these facts and on a comparison between Swift’s fate and

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that of his character Gulliver, some people have concluded that he gradually became insane and that his insanity was a natural outgrowth of his indignation and outrage against humankind. However, the truth seems to be that Swift was suddenly incapacitated by a paralytic stroke late in life, and that prior to this incident his mental capacities were unimpaired.

THEMESome of the themes dealt in the book were: might versus rights, the limits of human understanding, and the individual versus society.

The Limits of Human Understanding: It dealt with the idea that humans were not meant to know everything and that all understanding had a natural limit. His portrait of the disagreeable Laputans showed contempt for those who were not sunk in private theorizing. It was a clear satire against those who pride themselves on knowledge above all else. Practical knowledge was also satirized when it did not produce results, as in the academy of Balnibarbi. His depictions of rational societies, like Brobdingnag and Houyhnhnmland, emphasized not these people’s knowledge or understanding of abstract ideas but their ability to live their lives in a wise and steady way. The Houyhnhnms knew little about subjects like astronomy, though they knew how long a month was by observing the moon, since that knowledge had a practical effect on their well-being. Swift also emphasized the importance of self-understanding. Gulliver was initially lacking in self-reflection and self-awareness.

C HARACTER LIST. Gulliver: He was the narrator and main character of the story. Lilliputians and Blefuscudians: They were two races of miniature people whom Gulliver met on his first voyage.The Emperor: He was the ruler of LilliputFlimnap: He was the Lord High Treasurer of Lilliput, who conceived a jealous hatred for Gulliver when he started believing that his wife was having an affair with him. Reldresal: He was the Principal Secretary of Private Affairs in Lilliput, who explained to Gulliver the history of the political tensions between the two principal parties in the realm, the High-Heels and the Low-HeelsSkyresh Bolgolam: He was the High Admiral of Lilliput, who was the only member of the administration to oppose Gulliver’s liberation. Tramecksan: They were known as the High-Heels, a Lilliputian political group reminiscent of the British Tories. Lamecksan: They were known as the Low-Heels, a Lilliputian political group reminiscent of the British Whigs.Brobdingnagians: They were giants whom Gulliver met on his second voyage. The farmer: He was Gulliver’s first master in Brobdingnag. Glumdalclitch: She was the farmer’s nine-year-old daughter, who was forty feet tall. The queen: She was the queen of Brobdingnag, The king: He was the king of Brobdingnag, who, in contrast to the emperor of Lilliput, seemed to be a true intellectual, well versed in political science among other disciplines. Laputans: They were absentminded intellectuals who lived on the floating island of Laputa, met by Gulliver on his third voyage.

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Lord Munodi: He was a lord of Lagado, capital of the underdeveloped land beneath Laputa, who hosted Gulliver and gave him a tour of the country on Gulliver’s third voyage. The King of Laputa: He was a man of mathematical obsession who explained the laws of his land to Gulliver. He also decreed that the lands below Laputa should obey his laws. If they didn't, they will have to face the consequences.Yahoos: They were unkempt humanlike beasts who lived in servitude to the Houyhnhnms. Houyhnhnms: They were rational horses who maintain a simple, peaceful society governed by reason and truthfulness- they did not even have a word for “lie” in their language. Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master: He was the Houyhnhnm who first discovered Gulliver and took him into his own home. Don Pedro de Mendez: He was a Portuguese captain who took Gulliver back to Europe after he was forced to leave the land of the Houyhnhnms. Others: Mary Burton Gulliver (Gulliver’s wife); Richard Sympson (Gulliver’s cousin, editor and publisher of Gulliver’s Travel). James Bates (An eminent London surgeon and Gulliver’s master) Abraham Pannell (The commander of the ship Swallow) William Prichard (The master of the Antelope)

PLOT

Gulliver’s Travels told the story of Lemuel Gulliver, an Englishman trained as a surgeon who took to the seas when his business had failed. In a first-person narrative that rarely showed any signs of self-reflection or deep emotional response, Gulliver told the adventures that he lived on those travels.

Gulliver’s adventure in Lilliput began when he woke up after his ship was in the middle of a storm, to find himself bound by innumerable tiny threads and addressed by tiny captors who were in awe of him but fiercely protective of their kingdom. They were not afraid to use violence against Gulliver, though their arrows were little more than pinpricks. But overall, they were hospitable, risking famine in their land by feeding Gulliver, who consumed more food than a thousand Lilliputians combined could. Gulliver was taken into the capital city by a big wagon the Lilliputians had specially built. He was presented to the emperor, who was entertained by Gulliver, just as Gulliver was flattered by the attention of royalty. Eventually Gulliver became a national resource, used by the army in its war against the people of Blefuscu, whom the Lilliputians hate for doctrinal differences concerning the proper way to crack eggs. But things changed when Gulliver was convicted of treason for putting out a fire in the royal palace with his urine and was condemned to be shot in the eyes and starved to death. Gulliver went to Blefuscu, where he was able to repair a boat he found and set sail for England.

After staying in England with his wife and family for two months, Gulliver made his second voyage, which took him to a land of giants called Brobdingnag. A field worker discovered him. The farmer initially treated him as little more than an animal, keeping him for amusement. The farmer eventually sold Gulliver to the queen, who made him a courtly diversion and was entertained by his musical talents. Social life was easy for Gulliver after his discovery by the court, but not particularly enjoyable. Gulliver was often repulsed by the physicality of the Brobdingnagians, whose ordinary flaws were many times magnified by their huge size. Thus, when a couple of courtly ladies let him play on their naked bodies, he was not attracted to

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them but rather disgusted by their enormous skin pores and the sound of their torrential urination. More unsettling findings in Brobdingnag come in the form of various animals of the realm that endanger his life. Even Brobdingnagians insects left slimy trails on his food that make eating difficult. On a trip to the frontier, accompanying the royal couple, Gulliver left Brobdingnag when his cage was plucked up by an eagle and dropped into the sea.

Next, Gulliver set sail again and, after an attack by pirates, ended up in Laputa, where a floating island inhabited by theoreticians and academics oppressed the land below, called Balnibarbi. The scientific research undertook in Laputa and in Balnibarbi seemed totally inane and impractical, and its residents too appeared wholly out of touch with reality. Taking a short side trip to Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver was able to witness the conjuring up of figures from history, such as Julius Caesar and other military leaders, whom he found much less impressive than in books. After visiting the Luggnaggians and the Struldbrugs, the latter of which were senile immortals who prove that age did not bring wisdom, he was able to sail to Japan and from there back to England.

Finally, on his fourth journey, Gulliver set out as captain of a ship, but after the mutiny of his crew and a long confinement in his cabin, he arrived in an unknown land. This land was populated by Houyhnhnms, rational-thinking horses who ruled, and by Yahoos, brutish humanlike creatures who served the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver set about learning their language, and when he could speak he told his voyages to them and explained the constitution of England. He was treated with great courtesy and kindness by the horses and was enlightened by his many conversations with them and by his exposure to their noble culture. He wanted to stay with the Houyhnhnms, but his bared body reveals to the horses that he was very much like a Yahoo, and he was banished. Gulliver agreed to leave with grief. He made a canoe and made his way to an island, where he was picked up by a Portuguese ship captain who treated him well, though Gulliver saw the captain- and all humans- as Yahoolike. Gulliver then ended his narrative with a claim that the lands he had visited belong by rights to England, as her colonies, even though he questioned the whole idea of colonialism.

ANALYSIS OF CHARACTERSLemuel Gulliver: The book started with this paragraph: “My Father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons.. I was bound Apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent Surgeon in London… my Father now and then sending me small Sums of Money… When I left Mr. Bates, I went down to my Father; where, by the Assistance of him and my Uncle John… I got Forty Pounds, and a Promise of Thirty Pounds a Year”. (I.i)

This introduction was deeply significant because it revealed much about Gulliver’s character: Gulliver was bourgeois: he was primarily interested in money, acquisitions, and achievement, and his life story was filtered through these desires. The first sentence meant more than just a statement of his financial situation, since the third son of a possessor of only a “small Estate” would have no hopes of inheriting enough on which to support himself and would be expected to leave the estate and seek his own fortune. If Gulliver had been the first-born son, he might very well not had embarked on his travels. Besides, Gulliver provided no sentimental characterization of his father, Bates, or Uncle John. There was no mention of any youthful dreams or ambitions or of any romantic attachments.

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He was the narrator and protagonist of the story. He was married to Mary Burton with two children. He was intelligent and well educated, however, his perceptions were naïve and gullible. “I was ashore, in observing manners and dispositions of the people, as well as learning their language, wherein I had a great facility by the strength of my memory” (I.i)

Sometimes his obsession with the facts of navigation became unbearable, as his fictional editor, Richard Sympson, made clear when he explained having had to cut out nearly half of Gulliver’s narration. He spent sixteen years and seventeen months of his life travelling around the world and learning about different cultures. These four adventures changed Gulliver’s conception of life.

“It gave me melancholy reflections to observe how much the race of human kind was degenerating among us, within these hundred years past” (III.viii)

“When I thought of my family, my friends, my countrymen, or human race in general, I considered them as they really were, Yahoos in shape and disposition, perhaps a little more civilized, and qualified with the gift of speech, but asking no other use of reason than to improve and multiply those vices whereof their brethren in this country had only the share that nature allotted them” (IV.x)

“I was chiefly disgusted with modern history (..) I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war to cowards, the wisest counsel to fools, sincerity to fletterers (…) (III.viii)

He was an adventurer who visited a multitude of strange lands. He was curious:

“I abhorred such kind of spectacles (execution), yet my curiosity tempted me to see something that I thought must be extraordinary” (II.v)

He was not a hero but his attitudes for surviving were quite brave. He underwent the experiences of being eaten by a giant rat, taken captive by pirates, shipwrecked on faraway shores, sexually assaulted by an 11-year-old girl, and shot in the face with poison arrows. Despite the courage showed by Gulliver in his voyages, his character lacked basic greatness: He rarely showed his feelings, revealed his soul, or experienced great passions. He said that he needed to make some money after the failure of his business, but he rarely mentioned finances and indeed almost never even mentioned home. He had no awareness of any greatness in what he was doing or what he was working toward.

Gulliver also lacked of ingenuity. He seemed too dull for any battles of wit and too unimaginative to think up tricks, and thus he ended up being passive in most of the situations in which he found himself.

“I lamented my own folly and willfulness in attempting a second voyage against the advice of all my friends and relations” (II.i)

He was held captive several times, but he was never released through his own stratagems, relying instead on chance factors for his liberation. Once presented with a way out, he worked hard to escape, as when he repaired the boat he found that delivered him from Blefuscu, but

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he was never actively ingenious in attaining freedom. His intelligence was factual and practical rather than imaginative or introspective.

Gulliver was gullible: He missed the obvious ways in which the Lilliputians exploit him. While he was quite adept at navigational calculations and the details of seafaring, he was far less able to reflect on himself or his nation in any critical way. Once he said “I would never be a instrument of bringing a free and brave people into slavery”, “ I was so opposite the schemes and politics of his Imperial Majesty” (I.v)

Travelling to such different countries and returning to England in between each voyage, he seemed poised to make some great anthropological speculations about cultural differences around the world, about how societies were similar despite their variations or different despite their similarities. But Gulliver gave us nothing of the sort. He gave literal facts and narrative events. He was a self-hating, self-proclaimed Yahoo at the end, announcing his misanthropy quite loudly, but even this attitude was difficult to accept as the moral of the story.

Lilliputians and Blefuscudians: They were two races of miniature people whom Gulliver met on his 1st voyage. Lilliputians and Blefuscudians were prone to conspiracies and jealousies, and while they treat Gulliver well enough materially, they were quick to take advantage of him in political intrigues of various sorts. The two races had been in a long war with each over the interpretation of the proper way to eat eggs. Gulliver helped the Lilliputians defeat the Blefuscudian navy, but he left Lilliput and received a warm welcome in the court of Blefuscu, by which Swift satirized the arbitrariness of international relations. The Lilliputians represented much of what was petty and small-minded about the English and humankind in general. They were self-important, hypocritical, and surprisingly dangerous and cruel in spite of their small size. Even though, “These people are most excellent mathematicians, and arrived to a great perfection in mechanics by countenance and encouragement of the Emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning”. Initially Gulliver was very frightened about these little natives, who had taken him as a prisoner but, then with the help of the emperor and few others, Gulliver befriended these people by helping them at war with their enemy, Blefuscu. However, after using so many of their resources and performing rude acts in public, he was forced to abandon the country (I.vi).

The Emperor: He was the ruler of Lilliput. Like all Lilliputians, the emperor was fewer than six inches tall. He was described as: “He is taller by almost the breadth of my nail than any other of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders. His features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian lip and arched nose, his completion olive, his countenance erect, his body and limbs well proportioned, all his motions graceful and his deportment majestic. He was twenty eight years old and three quarters old”. (I.ii)

His power and majesty impressed Gulliver deeply, but at the same time, he appeared laughable and sinister. He was described by extravagant terms: “GOLBASTO MOMAREN EVLAME GURILDO SHEFIN MULLY ULLY GUE, most highly Emperor of Lilliput, delight and terror of the universe, whose dominions extend five thousands blustrugs to the extremities of the globe; monarch of all monarchs, taller than the sons of men, whose feet press down to the centre, and whose head strikes against the sun, pleasant the spring, comfortable as the summer, fruitful as autumn, dreadful as winter”. (I.iii)

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Because of his tiny size, his belief that he can control Gulliver seemed silly, but his willingness to execute his subjects for minor reasons of politics or honour gave him a frightening aspect. He was proud of possessing the tallest trees and biggest palace in the kingdom, but he was also quite hospitable, spending a fortune on his captive’s food. The emperor was a satire of the autocratic ruler and a strangely serious portrait of political power.

Flimnap: He was the Lord High Treasurer of Lilliput, who conceived a jealous hatred for Gulliver when he started believing that his wife was having an affair with him. He was clearly paranoid, since the possibility of a love affair between Gulliver and a Lilliputian was unlikely. He was a portrait of the weaknesses to which any human was prone but that become especially dangerous in those who had great power.

Reldresal: He was the Principal Secretary of Private Affairs in Lilliput, who explained to Gulliver the history of the political tensions between the two principal parties in the realm, the High-Heels and the Low-Heels. He was more a source of much-needed information for Gulliver, but he displayed personal courage and trust in allowing Gulliver to hold him in his palm while he talked politics. Within the context of Lilliput’s conspiracies, such friendliness showed that personal relations may still exist even in this overheated political climate.

Skyresh Bolgolam: He was the High Admiral of Lilliput and the only member of the administration to oppose Gulliver’s liberation. Gulliver imagined that Skyresh’s enmity was simply personal, as there was no apparent reason for such hostility. Arguably, Skyresh’s hostility may be merely a tool to divert Gulliver from the larger system of Lilliputian exploitation to which he was subjected.

Tramecksan: They were known as the High-Heels, a Lilliputian political group reminiscent of the British Tories. Tramecksan policies were said to be more agreeable to the ancient constitution of Lilliput, and while the High-Heels appeared greater in number than the Low-Heels, their power was lesser. Unlike the king, the crown prince was believed to sympathize with the Tramecksan, wearing one low heel and one high heel, causing him to limp slightly.

Slamecksan: They were the Low-Heels, a Lilliputian political group reminiscent of the British Whigs. The king had ordered that all governmental administrators must be selected from this party, much to the resentment of the High-Heels of the realm. Thus, while there were fewer Slamecksan than Tramecksan in Lilliput, their political power was greater. The king’s own sympathies with the Slamecksan were evident in the slightly lower heels he wore at court.

Brobdingnagians: They were Giants whom Gulliver met on his 2nd voyage. They were a reasonable and kindly people governed by a sense of justice. “The learning of this people is defective, consisting only in inmorality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful in life, to the improvement of ariculture, and all mechanical arts” (II.vii) They were physically and morally bigger than Gulliver and represented much of what was good in humankind. Even the farmer who abused Gulliver at the beginning was gentle with him, and took the trouble to say good-bye to him upon leaving him. The farmer’s daughter,

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Glumdalclitch, gave Gulliver the most kind-hearted treatment he received on any of his voyages. The Brobdingnagians did not exploit him for personal or political reasons, they treated him as a plaything, a sort of strange animal for exhibition. When he tried to speak seriously with the king of Brobdingnag about England, the king dismissed the English as odious vermin, showing that deep discussion was not possible for Gulliver there.

The farmer: He was Gulliver’s first master in Brobdingnag. He spoke to Gulliver, showing that he was willing to believe that the tiny Gulliver may be as rational as he himself was, and treated him with gentleness. However, the farmer put Gulliver on display around Brobdingnag, which clearly showed that he would rather profit from his discovery than chat with him as an equal. The farmer represented the average Brobdingnagians of no great gifts or intelligence, exploiting an extraordinary power over Gulliver simply by virtue of his immense size.

Glumdalclitch: He was the farmer’s 9-year-old daughter, who was forty feet tall. She became Gulliver’s friend and nursemaid, hanging him to sleep safely in her closet at night and teaching him the Brobdingnagians language. She was skilled at sewing and made Gulliver sets of new clothes, taking delight in dressing him. When the queen discovered that no one at court was suited to care for Gulliver, she invited Glumdalclitch to live at court as his babysitter, a function she performed with great seriousness and attentiveness.“My mistress had a daughter of nine years old (…) she was able to dress me and undress me. She was likewise my school mistress to teach me the language. She was very good nature (…) I called her my Glumdalclitch or little nurse: and I should be guilty if I omitted this honourable mention of her care and affection towards me” (II.ii)“She carried a little book in her pocket, not much larger than a Sanson’s Atlas; it was a common treatise for the use of young girls, giving a short account of their religion: out of this she taught me my letters, and interpreted the words” (II.ii)

To Glumdalclitch, Gulliver was a living doll, symbolizing the general status Gulliver had in Brobdingnag. “She loved me to excess, yet was arch enough to inform the Queen, whenever I commited any folly that she thought would be diverting to her Majesty” (II.v)

The Queen: She was the queen of Brobdingnag. She was so delighted by Gulliver’s beauty that she agreed to buy him from the farmer for 1,000 pieces of gold. Gulliver liked her kindness after the hardships he suffered at the farmer’s and showed his usual love for royalty by kissing the tip of her little finger when presented before her. She possessed, in Gulliver’s words, “infinite” wit and humour. She seemed earnest in her concern about Gulliver’s welfare. When her court dwarf insulted him, she gave the dwarf away to another household as punishment. The queen seemed genuinely considerate, asking Gulliver whether he would consent to live at court instead of simply taking him in as a pet and inquiring into the reasons for his cold good-byes with the farmer. She was a simply a pleasant, powerful person. The interaction between Gulliver hinted that Gulliver was capable of emotional connections.“The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-vogayes, and took all occasions to divert me when I was melancholy” (II.v)

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“The King, Queen, and all the court, sent every day to enquire after my health, and her majesty made me several visits during my sickness” (II.v)

The king: He was the king of Brobdingnag, who, in contrast to the emperor of Lilliput, seemed to be a true intellectual, well versed in political science among other disciplines.“his apprehension was so clear, and his judgement so exact, that he made very wise reflections and observations upon all I said”. (II.iii)“the king was delighted in music (…) and a prince of excellent understanding” (II.vi)

While his wife had an intimate, friendly relationship with Gulliver, the king’s relation to him was limited to serious discussions about the history and institutions of Gulliver’s native land. He was thus a figure of rational thought who somewhat prefigured the Houyhnhnms.“The conversation was not ended under five audiences, each of several hours, and the king heard the whole with great attention, frequently taking notes of what I spoke, as well as memorandums of several questions he intended to ask me” (II.vi)“he was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century” (II.vi) “the king, although he be as learned a person as any in his dominions, and had been educated in the study of philosophy and particularly mathematics” (II.iii) “He confined the knowledge of governing within very narrow bounds, to common sense and reason, to justice and lenity, to the speedy determination of civil and criminal causes” (II.vi)

Laputans: They were absentminded intellectuals who lived on the floating island of Laputa, met by Gulliver on his 3rd voyage. They were parodies of theoreticians, who had scant regard for any practical results of their own research. “They are bad reasoners, and vehemently given to opposition unless when they happen to b of the right opinion, which is seldom their case” (III.i)“They were indeed excellent in two sciences (mathematics and music) for which I had great steem, and wherein I am not unversed” (III.iv) They were so absorbed in their own thoughts that they must be shaken out of their meditations by special servants called flappers, who shake rattles in their ears. Their garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons and starts. During Gulliver’s stay among them, they did not mistreat him, but dismissed him as intellectually deficient. They worried about abstract matters like comets and the course of the sun. “These people are under continual disquietudes, never enjoying a minutes’ peace of mind; and their disturbances proceed from causes which very little affect the rest of mortals. Their apprehensions arise from several changes they dread in the celestial bodies” (III.ii) “they can neither sleep quietly in their beds, nor have any relish for the common pleasures or amusements of life” (III.ii)They were dependent in their own material needs on the land below them, Lagado, above which they hover by virtue of a magnetic field, and from which they raise up food supplies. The Laputans were a parody of the excesses of theoretical pursuits and the uselessness of abstract knowledge. They represented the dangers and limitations of abstract and theoretical knowledge (III.ii).

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Lord Munodi: He was a lord of Lagado, capital of the land beneath Laputa, who hosted Gulliver and gave him a tour of the country on the 3rd voyage. Munodi was a rare example of practical-minded intelligence in Lagado, where the applied sciences were impractical, and in Laputa, where no one even considered practicality a virtue. He served as an objective-minded contrast to the theoretical delusions of the other inhabitants of Laputa and Lagado. He played the role of showing the possibility of individual dissent within a brainwashed community. While the inhabitants of Lagado pursued their attempts to extract sunbeams from cucumbers and to eliminate all verbs and adjectives from their language, Munodi was a rare example of practical intelligence. Having tried unsuccessfully to convince his fellows of their misguided public policies, he had given up and was content to practice what he preached on his own estates. Munodi was also a counterexample to the contemptuous treatment that the other Laputians and Lagadans showed Gulliver. He took his guest on a tour of the kingdom, explained the advantages of his own estates without boasting, and was, in general, a figure of great common sense and humanity amid theoretical delusions and impractical fantasizing. He was similar to Gulliver, though Gulliver was unaware of his alienation while Munodi suffered from his.

Yahoos: They were unkempt humanlike beasts who lived in servitude to the Houyhnhnms. They were detestable species that infected the Houyhnhnms countryside and metropolis. They seemed to belong to various ethnic groups, since there were blond Yahoos as well as dark-haired and redheaded ones. The men were characterized by their hairy bodies and the women by their low-hanging breasts. They were naked, filthy, and very primitive in their eating habits. They were not capable of government, and thus they were kept as servants to the Houyhnhnms, pulling their carriages and performing manual tasks. They repelled Gulliver with their sexual appetites, especially when an 11-year-old Yahoo girl attempted to rape Gulliver as he was bathing naked. Despite Gulliver’s revulsion for these disgusting creatures, he ended his writings referring to himself as a Yahoo, just as the Houyhnhnms did as they evicted him from their realm. The Yahoos represented all that was bestial and low in human behavior. They were brutish, dirty, foul, immoral, and repulsive not only for the Houyhnhnms, but also for Gulliver, who was constantly struggling for differentiate from them (I.iv). Despite the fact that European Yahoos looked better than Houyhnhnms Land Yahoos, with their shaved faces, clipped hair, filed nails, and clothing, in essential nature they were the same. In fact, both the Master Horse and Gulliver decide that the Houyhnhnms Land Yahoos were better than European Yahoos because they didn't try to hide their vicious natures under a mask of cleanliness and civilization.

Houyhnhnms: They were rational horses who maintained a simple, peaceful society governed by reason and truthfulness- they did not even have a word for “lie” in their language. They represented reason and virtue. “I was amazed to see much actions and behaviour in brute beasts, and concluded with myself, that if the inhabitants of this country were endued with a proportional degree of reason, they must needs be the wisest people upon earth” (IV.i)

They were like ordinary horses, but highly intelligent and deeply wise. They lived in a sort of socialist republic, with the needs of the community put before individual desires. They governed their society according to these principles and as result they had no crimes,

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shortages, diseases or other problems. They were the masters of the Yahoos. In all, the Houyhnhnms had the greatest impact on Gulliver. He was sad for leaving them, not relieved as he was in leaving the other three lands, and back in England he related better with his horses than with his human family. The Houyhnhnms thus were a measure of the extent to which Gulliver had became a “human-hater”; he was certainly, at the end, a horse lover. He even began to act like them, and when he was forced to leave the land, he was broken-hearted.

Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master: He was the Houyhnhnm who first discovered Gulliver and took him into his own home. Apart from Gulliver’s Yahoo like appearance at first, the master was hesitant to make contact with him, but Gulliver’s ability to mimic the Houyhnhnm’s own words persuaded the master to protect Gulliver. The master’s domestic cleanliness, propriety, and tranquil reasonableness of speech had an extraordinary impact on Gulliver. It was through this horse that Gulliver was led to re-evaluate the differences between humans and beasts and to question humanity’s claims to rationality.“The curiosity and impatience of my master were so great, that he spent many hours of his leisure to instruct me” (IV.iii)“He could not understand why nature should teach us to conceal what nature had given. That neither himself nor family were ashamed of any parts of their bodies” (IV.i)“as my discourse had increased his abhorrence of the whole species, so he found it gave him a disturbance in his mind to which he was wholly a stranger before” (IV.v)“here, my master interposing, said it was a pity that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind as these lawyers, (…) were not rather encouranged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge” (IV.v)

Don Pedro de Mendez: He was the Portuguese captain who took Gulliver back to Europe after he was forced to leave the land of the Houyhnhnms. Don Pedro was benevolent and generous, offering Gulliver his own best suit of clothes to replace the tatters he was wearing. But Gulliver met his generosity with repulsion, as he could not bear the company of Yahoos. By the end, Don Pedro had won over Gulliver to the extent that he was able to have a conversation with him, but the captain’s overall Yahoo like nature in Gulliver’s eyes alienated him from Gulliver to the very end. He treated Gulliver with great patience, tenderness and he never judged Gulliver, despite Gulliver’s abominably antisocial behaviour. Don Pedro showed the same generosity and understanding that Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master earlier showed him, but ironically Gulliver still considered Don Pedro a repulsive Yahoo. Don Pedro was thus the touchstone through which we see that Gulliver was no longer a reliable and objective observer on the reality he saw but, rather, an observer of a reality coloured by private delusions.

Mary Burton Gulliver: She was Gulliver’s wife, who was mentioned in the first paragraphs. That showed how unsentimental and unemotional Gulliver was. He made no reference to any affection for his wife and never thought about Mary on his travels and never felt guilty about his lack of attention to her. When he returned to England, she was merely one part of his existence, and he recorded no emotion even as she hugged him wildly. The most important facts about her in Gulliver’s mind were her social origin and the income she generated. It suggested that despite Gulliver’s curiosity about new lands and exotic races, he was indifferent to people closest to him. His lack of interest in his wife spoke about his underdeveloped inner

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life. Gulliver was a man of skill and knowledge in certain practical matters, but he was disadvantaged in self-reflection, personal interactions, and perhaps overall wisdom.

Richard Sympson: He was Gulliver’s cousin, self-proclaimed intimate friend, and the editor and publisher of Gulliver’s Travels. He was the fictional author of the first note entitled “The Publisher to the Readers”, where he justified his elimination of nearly half of the original manuscript material that was irrelevant, a statement that Swift included to doubt Gulliver’s overall wisdom and ability to distinguish between important facts and trivial details.

James Bates: He was an eminent London surgeon under whom Gulliver served as an apprentice after graduating from Cambridge. Bates helped get Gulliver his first job as a ship’s surgeon and then offered to set up a practice with him. After Bates’s death, Gulliver had trouble maintaining the business, a failure that casted doubt on his competence, though he himself has other explanations for the business’s failure.

Abraham Pannell: He was the commander of the ship on which Gulliver first sailed, the Swallow. Travelling to the Levant, or the eastern Mediterranean, and beyond, Gulliver spent three and a half years on Pannell’s ship. Virtually nothing was mentioned about Pannell, which heightens our sense that Gulliver’s fascination with exotic types was not matched by any interest in his fellow countrymen.

William Prichard: He was the master of the Antelope, the ship on which Gulliver embarked for the South Seas at the outset of his first journey, in 1699. When the Antelope sunk, Gulliver was washed ashore on Lilliput. No details were given about the personality of Prichard, and he was not important in Gulliver’s life. That Gulliver took pains to name him accurately reinforced our impression that he was obsessive about facts but not always reliable in assessing overall significance.

SETTING:a. Time setting : The four voyages were set in early eighteen century, from may 4th, 1966

aproximately to december 5th, 1715. Every voyage took different times. In the case of Llilliput, time was considered by the pass of the moons.

b. Place setting : Gulliver made four voyages to different places: the first one was set in Lilliput, a place were lived tiny people. In the second voyage, he sailed to Brobdingnag, a place inhabited by giants. On his third voyage he sailed to a flouting island named Laputa, where he also visited Balbibarni, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg, Japan. Finally, his last voyage was to Houyhnhnm Land, a place inhabited by horses that possessed reason and humanlike beasts well-known as Yahoos. England was named at the end of each voyage, considered as the initial and ending point.

c. Theological setting : In the case of the lilliput, they believed in doctrines. One of them talked about the correct manner of breaking eggs. Regarding the different perspectives, there was a conflict with Blescufu. “Blescufu accused us of making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine of our great prophet Lustrog, in the 54th chapter of the Brundrecal (which is their alcoran) (I.iv). In lilliput, “they buried their dead with their heads direclty downwars because hey hold an

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opinion, thatn in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again, in which period the earth (which they considered to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready standing their feet” (I.vi)In Brognadingan, one of the custom of the queen and king was to dine on Wednesday, when was their Sabbath)

d. Sociological setting : Every place visited by Gulliver had different societies:In Lilliput, the emperor was the head. With him, there was a court, and some ambassadors. Gulliver here was named a Nardac, which was the highest title of honour among them. In Blescufu, there was en Emperor also. In the case of Brodganginan, Gulliver met the King and Queen. He used to dine with the Queen but the two princesses royal, the elder sixteen years old, and the younger at that time thirteen and a month. In the case of the floating island Laputa, Gulliver ended up in the cloud over the society, in which the king lived. There, he found many island, one of them called Lagado where spirits lived, in another island there was people known as Strulgburns (people who are immortal), flappers (people who talked in another people’s ear). At the end, in the last voyage he met horses with reason, who were governed by a Master.

STYLEa. STYLISTIC VARIATIONS :

The Use of METAPHORS:The different people that Gulliver visited represented different aspects of humanity.Gulliver represented a middle-class Englishman who was decent and well-intentioned. Due to his travels, he became less tolerant and more judgmental of the nations he visited and of his fellow human beings.The Lilliputians, a tiny race of people, were physically and morally smaller than Gulliver. They were self-important, self-serving, hypocritical, dangerous and cruel in spite of their small size. Lilliput partly represented England. Swift made the Lilliputians tiny in order to puncture the self-importance of the English nation and of humankind. For example, though the Lilliputians were proud of their military, Swift had them parade their army beneath Gulliver's legs in full view of his nether regions. This was a ridiculous image which undermines the Lilliputian pretensions to greatness.The Brobdingnagians, the race of giants, were physically and morally bigger than Gulliver. The Brobdingnagian king was shocked at Gulliver's account of English politics and society, and refused his offer of gunpowder as he could not conceive of any good coming from it. However, the great size of the Brobingnagians meant that Gulliver could never feel safe or equal in their society; they treated him kindly while they also treated him as a plaything. This aspect represented the importance of physical size and power and draw attention to the relative nature of power: while Gulliver was large and potentially powerful in Lilliput, he was powerless in Brobdingnag. This was a warning to nations (England) that the arrival of a larger or more powerful force can easily put an end to their dominance on the world stage.The Laputans represented the dangers and limitations of abstract and theoretical knowledge. This field was growing in dominance in Swift's time, under the influence of the Enlightenment. At Swift’s time, most of the experiments and theories showed at Laputa's Lagado Academy, as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, had been proposed by the scientists of the Royal

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Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge, (a society founded in 1660, then, at 2006 named the Royal Society). The Laputan people's addiction to abstract knowledge made them oblivious to each other and to all human concerns. That made them require the custom of "flappers" to alert them to listen or speak, and meant that their unimpressed wives had adulterous relationships under their noses. The fact that the King of Laputa inhabited an island that floated above his domain was symbolic of his ungrounded thinking and his separation from his people and their practical concerns.The Houyhnhnms represented reason and virtue and as a result, they had no crime, shortages, disease, or other problems. They subjugate their own individual lives and concerns to the good of their society as a whole. They had no distinguishing characteristics or names, and they did not seem to possess an emotional life. While they represented the rational faculty that man possesses, they did not seem fully human. This suggested that Swift did not intend their nation to be seen as a complete and self-contained model for an ideal human society. Rather, their way of life exemplified much that was admirable and that may be emulated by human beings.The humanoid Yahoos represented all that was bestial, low, and despicable in human behaviour. Gulliver was ashamed to recognize the similarities between them and human beings, including himself. They were greedy, violent, dirty, avaricious, and destructive of themselves and others. An important distinction was drawn: human beings had reason while Yahoos were not. The conclusion was that humans were worse than Yahoos, since humans (unlike Yahoos) had the ability to choose good or evil, and frequently choose evil. The Yahoos were therefore not identical to humans, but symbolized humans at their worst.

Don Pedro de Mendez represented the ideal human being, possessing the best qualities of the Houyhnhnms but also being emotionally warmer and more of an individual than they. He helped Gulliver re-adapt to human society. It was significant that Swift made him a member of a Catholic nation at a time when England defined its friends and enemies by whether they shared the Protestant religion. Swift showed that such positive human qualities as kindness and charity transcend politics.

ALLUSION:

--Aristotle (2.3.6): “(…) a determination exactly agregable to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdainig the old evasión of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endevour in vain to disguise their ignirance”.--Demosthenes and Cicero (2.6.6): “ Imagine with thyself, courteous reader, how often I then wished fot the tongue of Demosthenes or Cicero”.--Lucius Junius Brutus, Socrates, Epanimodas, Cato the younger, Sir Tomas More (3.7.10): “I had the honour to have much conversation with Brutus, and was told that his ancestor Juniusm Socrates, Epanimodas, Caro the younger, Sit Tomas More, and himself were perpetually together (…)”.--Homer, Didymus, Eustathius, John Duns Scouts, Ramus (a.k.a. Pierre de la Ramée) (3.8.1)--René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, Epicurus (3.8.2)--Polydore Virgil (3.8.4): “once it came what Polydore Virgil says of a certain new house (…)--Plato and Socrates (4.8.9) “Wherein he agreed entirely with the sentiments of Socrates, as Plato delivers them (…)”--Alexander the Great (3.7.7): “I desired to see Alexander the Great (…)”--Hannibal (3.7.8) “Next I see Hannibal passing the Alps (…)”

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--Pompey the Great (3.7.9) “I saw Caesar and Pompey at the end of their tropos, just ready to engage.”--The Spartans, Heliogabalus, Agesilaus (3.8.3): “I prevailed on the Governor to call up Eliogabalus’s cooks (…). A helot of Agesialaus made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able to get down a second spoonful”.--The Battle of Actium, Mark Anthony, Augustus, Publicola, Aggripa (3.8.9)--Charles V of France (4.3.2) “The emperor Charles V made almost the same observation, when he said that if he were to speak to his horse it should be in High Dutch”--The Glorious Revolution that began the reign of William and Mary in 1689 ("Revolution under the Prince of Orange") and The War of Spanish Succession ("the long war with France") (4.5.2)--Hernán (Ferdinando) Cortéz (4.12.6): “But I doubt whether our conquests in the countries I treat of, would be easy as those of Ferdinando Cortez over the naked Americans”.

SIMILES:

“That at last I descended to treat him like an animal which had some little portion of reason”.

“(…) one of them, an officer in the Guards, put the sharp end of his half-pike a good way up into my left nostril, which tickled my nose like a straw, and make me sneeze violently”. (I.i)

“The king’s smiths conveyed fourcore and eleven chains like those that hang to a lady’s watch in Europe (…)”. (I.i)

“The country appeared like a continued garden, and the inclosed fields resembled so many beds of flowers”.(I.i)

“I viewed the town on my left hand, which looked like the painted scene of a city in the theatre”. (I.i)

“Every letter was almost half as large as the palm of our hands” (I.ii)

“He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple” (talking about one inhabitant of Brobdignan) (II.i)

Also an Hyperbole: “but the noise was so high in the air that at first I certainly thought it was thunder” (II.i)

“He spoke often to me, but the sound of his voice pierced my ears like that of water-mill, yet his words were articulate enough” (II.i)

“I heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen stocking-weavers at work; and turning at my head, I found it proceeded from the purring of this animal” (II.i)

“I could not forbear laughing very heartily, for his eyes appeared like the full moon shining into a chamber at two windows” (II.ii)

“For it was almost as large as a small pumpion” (II.ii) talking about an school boy.

“She put a bit of bread into her mouth as big as two twelve-penny loaves” (II.iii)

“These insects were as large as partridges” (II.iii) talking about flies.

“The monkey was seen by hundreds in the court, sitting upon the ridge of a building, holding me like a baby in one of his fore-paws” (II.v)

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“And as for that mostruous animal with whom I was so lately engaged (it was indeed as large as an elephant) (II.v) relating to the monkey.

“I delivered in a firm tone, like a person who was jealous lest his courage should be called in question (II.v)

“The razor was almost twice as long as an ordinary scythe” (II.vi)

“I wanted to walk about the streets and fields without fear of being trod to death like a frog or a young puppy” (II.viii)

“With an intent to let it fall on a rock like a tortoise in a shell (II.viii)

“When I spoke in that country, it was like a man talking in the street to another looking out from the top of the steeple, unless when I was placed on a table, or held in a person’s hand” (II.viii)

“I bent down to go in (like a goose under a gate) for fear of striking my head” (II.viii)

“They have beards like goats (IV.i) talking about yahoos.

“They climbed high trees as nimbly as a squirrel (IV.i) talking about yahoos

Writing Style: Parodic, Absurd

The book included lots of parodic language at the level of the paragraph. For example, when Gulliver discusses Laputa's loadstone (3.3): “By means of this loadstone, the island is made to rise and fall, and move from one place to another. For, with respect to that part of the earth over which the monarch presides, the stone is endued at one of its sides with an attractive power, and at the other with a repulsive. Upon placing the magnet erect, with its attracting end towards the earth, the island descends; but when the repelling extremity points downwards, the island mounts directly upwards. When the position of the stone is oblique, the motion of the island is so too: for in this magnet, the forces always act in lines parallel to its direction”. (3.3.5)

Clearly, Gulliver was using the formal mathematical and scientific language of his day with all of this stuff about parallelism, attraction, and repulsion. But it's clearly an imitation- Swift imitated different kinds of jargon and technical writing to show that the weakness of mankind isn't just limited to politics and morals; we write pretty badly, too.

The style of Gulliver's Travels was also absurd. Consider the Lilliputian soldiers' curiosity about Gulliver's penis size or the bizarre Luggnaggian assassination method of licking the poisoned floor in front of their King. Gulliver spent a lot of time dwelling on apparently minor digressions, such as how he arranged to pee when he was kept inside a giant's home during his first night in Brobdingnag.

b. TONE: Swift used language and style for the purpose of satire. Scattered among the standard narrative style of most of Gulliver’s travels were legal documents and reports, such as the inventory of Gulliver’s possessions and the list of obligations presented to him by the

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Lilliputians. There were also brief passages in which Swift, by his style alone, ridicules the linguistic excesses of various specialists: An example was at the beginning of Part II.i, where Gulliver used complicated nautical jargon. The effect was that, instead of coming off as a demonstration of Gulliver’s deep knowledge of sailing, the passage worked as a satire of sailing language and of any kind of specialist jargon. A similar passage occured in Part III.iii, where Gulliver’s description of the geometry of Laputa served as a satire of philosophical jargon.Gulliver’s tone was gullible and naïve during the first three voyages; in the fourth, it turned cynical and bitter. The intention of the author was satirical and biting throughout. He was an active narrator: He talked directly to the readers.

But, there were several changes in Swift’s style. In the first two voyages, the style was constant: it was a relatively lighthearted but still biting satire of European culture and politics, framed as an adventure among dwarves and giants. In the third voyage, the tone changed. Gulliver became less of a personality and more of an abstract observer. His judgments of the societies he encountered became more direct and unmediated, and the overall narrative became less of an adventure and more of a scattered satire on abstract thought. In the fourth voyage, the tone became, for the most part, much more serious than in the first three adventures. Gulliver too was more serious, and his change in personality was reflected in a style that was darker and more cynical.

c.STRUCTURE: The story was presented chronologically. the story was divided into 4 parts, each one having among 7 and 12 chapters. Each part represented one journey including the set off and return to England.

d.USE OF SYMBOLS:Lilliputians: They symbolized humankind’s wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence. Swift represented the tiniest race as the most vainglorious and smug, both collectively and individually. There was more backbiting and conspiracy in Lilliput than anywhere else, and more of the pettiness of small minds who imagined themselves to be grand. Gulliver was a naïve consumer of the Lilliputians’ grandiose imaginings: he was flattered by the attention of their royal family and cowed by their threats of punishment, forgetting that they had no real physical power over him. The Lilliputians showed off not only to Gulliver but to themselves as well. There was no mention of armies proudly marching in any of the other societies Gulliver visited- only in Lilliput and neighbouring Blefuscu were the six-inch inhabitants possessed of the need to show off their patriotic glories with such displays. When the Lilliputian emperor requested that Gulliver served as a kind of makeshift Arch of Triumph for the troops to pass under, it was a pathetic reminder that their grand parade was supremely silly, a basically absurd way to boost the collective ego of the nation. Indeed, the war with Blefuscu was itself an absurdity springing from wounded vanity, since the cause was not a material concern like disputed territory but, rather, the proper interpretation of scripture by the emperor’s forebears which led to a disagreement. All in all, the Lilliputians symbolized human pride, and pointed out Gulliver’s inability to diagnose it correctly.

Brobdingnagians: They symbolized the private, personal, and physical side of humans when examined up close and in great detail. They overlooked the routines of everyday life and the tedious little facts of existence, sometimes as matters of life and death. Gulliver was forced to pay great attention to little things as the fly buzzing around his head. He was forced to take the

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domestic sphere seriously as well. In other lands it was difficult for Gulliver to get glimpses of family relations or private affairs, but in Brobdingnag he was treated as a doll or a plaything, and thus was made privy to the urination of housemaids and the sexual lives of women. The Brobdingnagians did not symbolize a solely negative human characteristic, as the Laputans do. They were not merely ridiculous- some aspects of them were disgusting, like their gigantic stench and the excrement left by their insects, but others were noble, like the queen’s goodwill toward Gulliver and the king’s views of politics. The Brobdingnagians symbolized a dimension of human existence visible at close range, under close scrutiny.

Laputans: They represented the theoretical knowledge that had no relation to human life and no use in the actual world. Laputa symbolized the absurdity of knowledge that had never been tested or applied, the ludicrous side of Enlightenment intellectualism. Even down below in Balnibarbi, where the local academy was more inclined to practical application, knowledge was not made socially useful. Indeed, theoretical knowledge there had proven positively disastrous, resulting in the ruin of agriculture and architecture and the impoverishment of the population. Even up above, the pursuit of theoretical understanding had not improved the lot of the Laputans. They had few material worries, dependent as they were upon the Balnibarbians below. But they were tormented by worries about the trajectories of comets and other astronomical speculations: their theories had not made them wise, but neurotic and disagreeable. The Laputans did not symbolize reason itself but rather the pursuit of a form of knowledge that was not directly related to the improvement of human life.

Houyhnhnms: They represented an ideal of rational existence, a life governed by sense and moderation. They rejected light entertainment and vain displays of luxury, and appealed to reason rather than any holy writings as the criterion for proper action, and their communal approach to family planning. As in Plato’s ideal community, the Houyhnhnms had no need to lie nor any word for lying. They did not use force but only strong exhortation. Their subjugation of the Yahoos appeared more necessary than cruel and perhaps the best way to deal with an unfortunate blot on their otherwise ideal society. The Houyhnhnms seemed like model citizens, and Gulliver’s intense grief when he was forced to leave them suggested that they had made an impact on him greater than that of any other society he had visited. His meeting with Don Pedro, implied that he strongly identifies with the Houyhnhnms. They had no names in the narrative nor any need for names, since they were virtually interchangeable, with little individual identity. Their lives seemed harmonious and happy, although quite lacking in vigour, challenge, and excitement. Swift may be hinting that the Houyhnhnms should not be considered human ideals at all. In any case, they symbolized a standard of rational existence.

England: It seemed to symbolize deficiency or insufficiency, at least in the financial sense that matters most to Gulliver. England was named at the beginning as the starting point to be left quickly behind. Gulliver seemed to have very few nationalistic or patriotic feelings about England, and he rarely mentioned his homeland on his travels. England was where Gulliver’s wife and family live, but they were hardly mentioned. Gulliver returned home after each of his four journeys, so that England was kept constantly in the picture and given a steady, unspoken importance. By the end of the fourth journey, England was brought more explicitly when Gulliver, in his neurotic state, started confusing Houyhnhnmland with his homeland, referring to Englishmen as Yahoos. The possibility thus arose that all the races Gulliver met could be

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versions of the English and that his travels merely allow him to see various aspects of human nature more clearly.

e.POINT OF VIEWGulliver spoke in the first person. He described other characters and actions as they appeared to him.

FINAL EVALUATIONJonathan Swift was a critical poet, but also a citizen concerned about his own condition as a human being. His constant comparisons between the different lands Gulliver visited and some European countries gave a frame of Swift’s tenets. By minimizing the importance of Gulliver as a specific person, Swift put the focus on the social satire itself. At the same time, Gulliver himself became more and more a subject of satire. At the beginning, he was a standard issue European adventurer; by the end, he had become a misanthrope who rejected human society. It was in the 4th voyage that Gulliver became more than simply a pair of eyes through which we saw a series of unusual societies. He was, instead, an adventurer who had seen human follies- particularly that of pride- at their most extreme, and as a result had descended into what looked like, and probably was, a kind of madness.

Gulliver changed as the story progressed: He was more calm and less restless at the end of the story than he was at the beginning. In desiring first to stay with the Houyhnhnms, then to find an island on which he could live in exile, Gulliver showed that his adventures had taught him that a simple life, one without the complexities and weaknesses of human society, may be best. His calm was superficial- lying not far below the surface was a deep distaste for humanity that was aroused as soon as the crew of Don Pedro de Mendez captured him. Gulliver underwent several interesting transformations: from the naïve Englishman to the experienced but still open-minded world traveller of the first two voyages; then to the island-hopper of the 3rd voyage; and finally to the cynical, disillusioned, and insane man of the 4th voyage.

The satire Swift employed to point the flaws of human being could be considered as a master piece. Every Country Gulliver visited, were just like the opposite of the previous one: Lilliput and Blefuscu symbolized the smallness and insignificance between England and France. This was why Swift pictured its inhabitant as small creatures of five or six inches. The fact that they were at war for arguing on how one should break an egg, shows a way in which the author was simbolizing how men can go to war for such an insignificant matter. On the other hand, Brobdingnagians were giants, noble and pacific beings governed by a sense of justice. In the third part made fun at airy and abstract thinking. The Laputans in the larger context of Gulliver’s journeys, a parody of the excesses of theoretical pursuits and the uselessness of purely abstract knowledge. And the 4th and final part, set in Houyhnhnm Land, which showed us the contrast between Houyhnhnms and Yahoos. Gulliver learnt to hate humanity for its weakness and sinfulness. This was especially clearer in the last part. Gulliver informed us that he had just began to permit his wife to eat dinner with him. He has been home for five years, and he had just overcome his hatred of people enough to let his wife sit at the dinner table with him – as long as she stays at the far end.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sources used:

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- www.sparknotes.com/gullivertravels

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