Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
"Gulliver's Travels," written by Jonathan Swift, is a satirical novel that follows the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's doctor who finds himself in bizarre and fantastical lands after a series of maritime disasters. The narrative begins with Gulliver being shipwrecked and captured by the tiny inhabitants of Lilliput, where he learns their language and becomes involved in their political intrigues. His experiences highlight the absurdities of power and conflict, particularly through his efforts to broker peace with the neighboring empire of Blefuscu.
As Gulliver continues his journey, he encounters a land of giants called Brobdingnag, where he becomes the subject of curiosity and exploitation. His travels take him to a floating island inhabited by impractical intellectuals, a land of sorcerers, and eventually to the Houyhnhnms, a society of rational horses. In stark contrast to the brutish Yahoos, who represent humanity, the Houyhnhnms embody reason and virtue, leading Gulliver to a profound disillusionment with mankind.
Ultimately, Gulliver's experiences frame a critique of human nature and societal norms, prompting reflections on morality, politics, and personal identity. His return to England leaves him estranged from his own kind, as he struggles with the dissonance between the idealized values of the Houyhnhnms and the realities of human behavior. The novel ultimately invites readers to ponder the complexities of civilization and the often absurd nature of human existence.
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
First published: 1726, as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Satire
Time of plot: 1699–1713
Locale: England and other lands
Principal Character
Lemuel Gulliver , a physician, sea captain, and traveler
The Story
Lemuel Gulliver, a physician, takes the post of ship’s doctor on the Antelope, which sets sail from Bristol for the South Seas in May 1699. When the ship is wrecked in a storm somewhere near Tasmania, Gulliver has to swim for his life. Wind and tide help to carry him close to a low-lying shore, where he falls, exhausted, into a deep sleep. Upon awakening, he finds himself held to the ground by hundreds of small ropes. He soon discovers that he is the prisoner of humans six inches tall. Still tied, Gulliver is fed by his captors; then he is placed on a special wagon built for the purpose and drawn by fifteen hundred small horses. Carried in this manner to the capital city of the small humans, he is exhibited as a great curiosity to the people of Lilliput, as the land of the diminutive people is called. He is kept chained to a huge Lilliputian building into which he crawls at night to sleep.
Gulliver soon learns the Lilliputian language, and through his personal charm and natural curiosity, he comes into good graces at the royal court. At length, he is given his freedom, contingent upon his obeying many rules devised by the emperor prescribing his deportment in Lilliput. Now free, Gulliver tours Mildendo, the capital city, and finds it to be similar, except in size, to European cities of the time.
Learning that Lilliput is in danger of an invasion by the forces of the neighboring empire, Blefuscu, he offers his services to the emperor of Lilliput. While the enemy fleet awaits favorable winds to carry their ships the eight hundred yards between Blefuscu and Lilliput, Gulliver takes some Lilliputian cable, wades to Blefuscu, and brings back the entire fleet by means of hooks attached to the cables. He is greeted with great acclaim, and the emperor makes him a nobleman. Soon, however, the emperor and Gulliver quarrel over differences concerning the fate of the now helpless Blefuscu. The emperor wants to reduce the enemy to the status of slaves; Gulliver champions their liberty. The pro-Gulliver forces prevail in the Lilliputian parliament; the peace settlement is favorable to Blefuscu. Gulliver, however, is now in disfavor at court.
He visits Blefuscu, where he is received graciously by the emperor and the people. One day, while exploring, he finds a boat from a wreck washed ashore. With the help of thousands of Blefuscu artisans, he repairs the boat for his projected voyage back to his own civilization. Taking some cattle and sheep with him, he sails away and is eventually picked up by an English vessel.
Back in England, Gulliver spends a short time with his family before he boards the Adventure, bound for India. The ship is blown off course by fierce winds. Somewhere on the coast of Great Tartary a landing party goes ashore to forage for supplies. Gulliver, who wandered away from the party, is left behind when a gigantic human figure pursues the sailors back to the ship. Gulliver is caught in a field by giants threshing grain that grows forty feet high. Becoming the pet of a farmer and his family, he amuses them with his humanlike behavior. The farmer’s nine-year-old daughter, who is not yet over forty feet high, takes special charge of Gulliver.
The farmer displays Gulliver first at a local market town. Then he takes his little pet to the metropolis, where Gulliver is put on show repeatedly, to the great detriment of his health. The farmer, seeing that Gulliver is near death from overwork, sells him to the queen, who takes a great fancy to the little curiosity. The court doctors and philosophers study Gulliver as a quaint trick of nature. He subsequently has adventures with giant rats the size of lions, with a dwarf thirty feet high, with wasps as large as partridges, with apples the size of Bristol barrels, and with hailstones the size of tennis balls.
He and the king discuss the institutions of their respective countries, the king asking Gulliver many questions about Great Britain that Gulliver finds impossible to answer truthfully without embarrassment. After two years in Brobdingnag, the land of the giants, Gulliver miraculously escapes when a large bird carries his portable quarters out over the sea. The bird drops the box containing Gulliver, and he is rescued by a ship that is on its way to England. Back home, it takes Gulliver some time to accustom himself once more to a world of normal size.
Soon afterward, Gulliver goes to sea again. Pirates from a Chinese port attack the ship. Set adrift in a small sailboat, Gulliver is cast away upon a rocky island. One day, he sees a large floating mass descending from the sky. Taken aboard the flying island of Laputa, he soon finds it to be inhabited by intellectuals who think only in the realm of the abstract and the exceedingly impractical. The people of the island, including the king, are so absentminded that they have to have servants following them to remind them even of their trends of conversation. When the floating island arrives above the continent of Balnibari, Gulliver receives permission to visit that realm. There he inspects the Grand Academy, where hundreds of highly impractical projects for the improvement of agriculture and building are under way.
Next, Gulliver journeys by boat to Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers. By means of magic, the governor of the island shows Gulliver such great historical figures as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Thomas More. Gulliver talks to the apparitions and learns from them that history books are inaccurate.
From Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver ventures to Luggnagg. There he is welcomed by the king, who shows him the Luggnaggian immortals, or Struldbrugs—beings who will never die. Gulliver travels on to Japan, where he takes a ship back to England. He has been away for more than three years.
Gulliver becomes restless after a brief stay at his home, and he signs as captain of a ship that sails from Portsmouth in August 1710, destined for the South Seas. The crew mutinies, keeping Captain Gulliver prisoner in his cabin for months. At length, he is cast adrift in a longboat off a strange coast. Ashore, he comes upon and is nearly overwhelmed by disgusting half-human, half-ape creatures who flee in terror at the approach of a horse. Gulliver soon discovers, to his amazement, that he is in a land where rational horses, the Houyhnhnms, are masters of irrational human creatures, the Yahoos. He stays in the stable house of a Houyhnhnm family and learns to subsist on oaten cake and milk. The Houyhnhnms are horrified to learn from Gulliver that horses in England are used by Yahoolike creatures as beasts of burden. Gulliver describes England to his host, much to the candid and straightforward Houyhnhnm’s mystification. Such things as wars and courts of law are unknown to this race of intelligent horses. As he did in the other lands he visited, Gulliver attempts to explain the institutions of his native land, but the friendly and benevolent Houyhnhnms are appalled by many of the things Gulliver tells them.
Gulliver lives in almost perfect contentment among the horses, until one day his host tells him that the Houyhnhnm Grand Assembly has decreed Gulliver either be treated as an ordinary Yahoo or be released to swim back to the land from which he had come. Gulliver builds a canoe and sails away. At length, he is picked up by a Portuguese vessel. Remembering the Yahoos, he becomes a recluse on the ship and begins to hate all humankind. Landing at Lisbon, he sails from there to England; on his arrival, however, the sight of his own family repulses him. He faints when his wife kisses him. His horses become his only friends on earth.
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