Gulliver's Travels: Analysis of Major Characters
"Gulliver's Travels: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the key figures within Jonathan Swift's satirical narrative, primarily focusing on Lemuel Gulliver, the protagonist. Gulliver serves as the vessel for Swift's critique of human nature and societal norms, as he embarks on a series of fantastical voyages that expose the absurdities of civilization. His travels take him to Lilliput, where he encounters diminutive beings, and to Brobdingnag, where he confronts the grotesque realities of human existence through the lens of giants. Each journey reveals a different facet of humanity, from the pretentiousness of Lilliput to the impracticality of Laputa's inhabitants, and ultimately, the stark contrast between the rationality of the Houyhnhnms and the baseness of the Yahoos.
Through these characters and their societies, Swift explores themes of power, knowledge, and morality, prompting readers to reflect on their own customs and values. Gulliver's transformation—from an ordinary man to one who despairs at the sight of humanity—serves as a poignant commentary on the disillusionment that can arise from profound understanding. This analysis invites readers to consider the depth and complexity of the characters as embodiments of broader societal critiques, making it a compelling study for those interested in literary satire and human psychology.
Gulliver's Travels: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Jonathan Swift
First published: 1726
Genre: Novel
Locale: England and various fictional lands
Plot: Social satire
Time: 1699–1713
Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon, sea captain, traveler, and the narrator of these travel accounts, the purpose of which is to satirize the pretentions and follies of humans. Gulliver is an ordinary man, capable of close observation; his deceptively matter-of-fact reportage and a great accumulation of detail make believable and readable a scathing political and social satire. On his first voyage, he is shipwrecked at Lilliput, a country inhabited by people no more than six inches tall, where pretentiousness, individual as well as political, is ridiculed. The second voyage ends in Brobdingnag, a land of giants. Human grossness is a target here. Moreover, Gulliver does not find it easy to make sense of English customs and politics in explaining them to a king sixty feet high. On Gulliver's third voyage, pirates attack the ship and set him adrift in a small boat. One day he sees and goes aboard Laputa, a flying island inhabited by incredibly abstract and absent-minded people. From Laputa he visits Balnibari, where wildly impractical experiments in construction and agriculture are in progress. Then he goes to Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers, where he is shown apparitions of such historical figures as Alexander and Caesar, who decry the inaccuracies of history books. Visiting Luggnagg, Gulliver, after describing an imaginary immortality of constant learning and growing wisdom, is shown a group of immortals called Struldbrugs, who are grotesque, pitiable creatures, senile for centuries, but destined never to die. Gulliver's last journey is to the land of the Houyhnhnms, horse-like creatures in appearance, possessed of great intelligence, rationality, restraint, and courtesy. Dreadful human-like creatures, called Yahoos, impart to Gulliver such a loathing of the human form that, forced to return at last to England, he cannot bear the sight of even his own family and feels at home only in the stables.