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GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
Jonathan Swift
Plot Overview
Gulliver’s Travels recounts the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a practical-minded
Englishman trained as a surgeon who takes to the seas when his business fails.
In a deadpan first-person narrative that rarely shows any signs of self-reflection
or deep emotional response, Gulliver narrates the adventures that befall him on
these travels.
Gulliver’s adventure in Lilliput begins when he wakes after his shipwreck to find
himself bound by innumerable tiny threads and addressed by tiny captors who
are in awe of him but fiercely protective of their kingdom. They are not afraid to
use violence against Gulliver, though their arrows are little more than pinpricks.
But overall, they are hospitable, risking famine in their land by feeding Gulliver,
who consumes more food than a thousand Lilliputians combined could. Gulliver
is taken into the capital city by a vast wagon the Lilliputians have specially built.
He is presented to the emperor, who is entertained by Gulliver, just as Gulliver is
flattered by the attention of royalty. Eventually Gulliver becomes 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 change when Gulliver is convicted of treason for putting out a
fire in the royal palace with his urine and is condemned to be shot in the eyes
and starved to death. Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he is able to repair a
boat he finds and set sail for England.
After staying in England with his wife and family for two months, Gulliver
undertakes his next sea voyage, which takes him to a land of giants called
Brobdingnag. Here, a field worker discovers him. The farmer initially treats him
as little more than an animal, keeping him for amusement. The farmer eventually
sells Gulliver to the queen, who makes him a courtly diversion and is entertained
by his musical talents. Social life is easy for Gulliver after his discovery by the
court, but not particularly enjoyable. Gulliver is often repulsed by the physicality
of the Brobdingnagians, whose ordinary flaws are many times magnified by their
huge size. Thus, when a couple of courtly ladies let him play on their naked
bodies, he is not attracted to them but rather disgusted by their enormous skin
pores and the sound of their torrential urination. He is generally startled by the
ignorance of the people here—even the king knows nothing about politics. More
unsettling findings in Brobdingnag come in the form of various animals of the
realm that endanger his life. Even Brobdingnagian insects leave slimy trails on
his food that make eating difficult. On a trip to the frontier, accompanying the
royal couple, Gulliver leaves Brobdingnag when his cage is plucked up by an
eagle and dropped into the sea.
Next, Gulliver sets sail again and, after an attack by pirates, ends up in Laputa,
where a floating island inhabited by theoreticians and academics oppresses the
land below, called Balnibarbi. The scientific research undertaken in Laputa and
in Balnibarbi seems totally inane and impractical, and its residents too appear
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wholly out of touch with reality. Taking a short side trip to Glubbdubdrib,
Gulliver is able to witness the conjuring up of figures from history, such as Julius
Caesar and other military leaders, whom he finds much less impressive than in
books. After visiting the Luggnaggians and the Struldbrugs, the latter of which
are senile immortals who prove that age does not bring wisdom, he is able to sail
to Japan and from there back to England.
Finally, on his fourth journey, Gulliver sets out as captain of a ship, but after the
mutiny of his crew and a long confinement in his cabin, he arrives in an
unknown land. This land is populated by Houyhnhnms, rational-thinking horses
who rule, and by Yahoos, brutish humanlike creatures who serve the
Houyhnhnms. Gulliver sets about learning their language, and when he can
speak he narrates his voyages to them and explains the constitution of England.
He is treated with great courtesy and kindness by the horses and is enlightened
by his many conversations with them and by his exposure to their noble culture.
He wants to stay with the Houyhnhnms, but his bared body reveals to the horses
that he is very much like a Yahoo, and he is banished. Gulliver is grief-stricken
but agrees to leave. He fashions a canoe and makes his way to a nearby island,
where he is picked up by a Portuguese ship captain who treats him well, though
Gulliver cannot help now seeing the captain—and all humans—as shamefully
Yahoolike. Gulliver then concludes his narrative with a claim that the lands he
has visited belong by rights to England, as her colonies, even though he
questions the whole idea of colonialism.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 1, CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY
"The author giveth some account of himself and family; his first inducements to
travel. He is shipwrecked and swims for his life; gets safe on shore in the country
of Lilliput; is made a prisoner, and carried up the country."
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Our hero, Lemuel Gulliver, starts out his adventures with a description of
his origins: he's from Nottinghamshire in England, and he has spent
several years at college at Cambridge.
Sadly, Gulliver's father runs out of money for young Gulliver's education,
so he sends Gulliver as an apprentice (read: someone who works for a
skilled tradesman in exchange for first-hand, practical training in said
trade) to Mr. James Bates, a London surgeon.
Gulliver also spends a lot of time studying math and navigation, because he
wants to travel.
Eventually, with the financial help of his uncle, his father, and some other
relatives, Gulliver travels to Leyden (now Leiden, a city in Holland), where
there is a famous university known for its teaching of medicine.
After studying at Leyden for a couple of years, Gulliver returns to England,
where Mr. Bates gives Gulliver a recommendation to join the crew of the
ship the Swallow as a surgeon.
Gulliver travels for three years on the Swallow and gets as far as the Levant
(a.k.a. the eastern portion of the Mediterranean and the areas that border
it, including parts of Egypt, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey.)
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He comes back to London and settles down to marry Mrs. Mary Burton,
who comes with a dowry (read: a certain amount of money settled on her by
her family once she marries) of 400 pounds – nice for Gulliver!
Gulliver's former boss and current patron, Mr. Bates dies a couple of years
later, and Gulliver's business starts to go bad.
Gulliver decides to go to sea again, traveling this time to the Far East and
the West Indies.
He spends a lot of time reading while he's at sea; when Gulliver is ashore,
he enjoys observing the customs of the people he meets.
But even the sea starts to lose its interest for Gulliver, and he decides to
head home to London to hang out with his wife.
Gulliver moves his business to various parts of London, but he continues to
fail at making a living, so he hits the sea once again three years later.
He sets sail with Captain William Prichard on the Antelope, heading to the
South Seas (in other words, the oceans south of the equator.)
As you might expect, things go wrong. All of the following happens in one
long paragraph:
A storm blows up.
The ship winds up in the Northwest of "Van Diemen's Land" – what we now call
Tasmania, an area in the southeast of Australia.
12 members of the ship's crew die and the rest are weakened by hard work and
lack of food.
High currents and rough seas make it hard for the crew to get from the ship's
anchorage point to shore.
So the Antelope sends six crew members, Gulliver included, in a small rowboat
to go to shore.
The boat capsizes and all of the six sailors except for Gulliver drown.
In the water, Gulliver totally loses track of where he is, but he still manages
eventually to find his way to a shore.
Gulliver's feeling a bit sleepy from all of this exercise and the half-pint of brandy
he drank onboard ship before getting into this rowboat, so he lies down to sleep.
He wakes up at dawn after a lovely nap in the grass.
Gulliver tries to stand up, but he can't move at all. He's stuck lying on his back.
Gulliver notices that his arms and legs and even his long hair all appear to be
tied down.
He can't look right or left, so he has no idea what is happening, but he does feel
something moving across his chest towards his chin.
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Gulliver turns his eyes down to look over his chin and he sees a tiny, tiny
human being, no bigger than the length of Gulliver's finger.
The tiny fellow is carrying a tiny, tiny bow with lots of tiny, tiny arrows – and
there are also around 40 other tiny guys following him. (Incidentally, these tiny
people are the Lilliputians – residents of Swift's made-up island of Lilliput.)
Gulliver yells in fright at the sight of all of these tiny people. At this roar, they
jump or fall back in fear.
Gulliver manages to break the strings tying down his left arm, but the strings
attached to his hair really hurt, so he can still barely turn his head.
The little people all run away a second time – and they shoot his left hand full of
about a hundred arrows. Some of them try to stick his sides with itsy bitsy
spears, but they can't get through his leather vest.
Gulliver decides to lie still until nighttime, when he might be able to use his left
hand to free himself.
But he can hear a huge number of people massing: more and more of the little
people arrive, and they start building something near him.
It appears to be a stage, from which an important little person recites a speech
to Gulliver. Gulliver can't understand the speech, but he does hear the words,
"Langro Dehul san" (1.1.5). Gulliver deliberately acts as submissive as he can
during this to indicate that he intends no harm.
Gulliver is hungry, thirsty, and really has to pee, so he gestures with his left
hand that he needs to eat and drink.
The important little person making speeches is called the "Hurgo" (1.1.5), and he
orders his people to bring Gulliver food.
All the tiny people are amazed at how much Gulliver can eat and drink.
The tiny people keep dancing around in joy as they watch him stuffing himself
and drinking their wine.
(By the way, Gulliver keeps talking about "hogsheads" of wine. A hogshead is a
large barrel that, in normal human terms, holds many gallons. For these people,
a hogshead holds less than half a pint.) They all shout, "Hekinah Degul."
Gulliver has to admit that he's impressed: these people seem totally fine with
climbing onto his body and walking around even though they know his left hand
is free – and even though he's a giant to them.
After Gulliver finishes eating, a representative of the Imperial House climbs the
scaffolding to talk to Gulliver.
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Through sign language, the representative of the Emperor manages to get across
that Gulliver must be carried as their prisoner to the capital city about half a
mile away. Gulliver wants to go free, but the Emperor won't allow it. Gulliver will
be well treated, though.
Gulliver thinks about fighting, but changes his mind when he sees the number
of little people has increased. He agrees.
The Hurgo and all of his people climb down and get out of the way.
The strings binding Gulliver's left side are loosened enough that Gulliver can roll
over and pee (or "make water," as he puts it).
The little people also treat Gulliver's tiny arrow wounds, which makes his
injuries stop stinging.
So all in all, what with the food, the peeing, and the medical treatment, Gulliver
stops freaking out and starts feeling sleepy again.
He crashes for about eight hours – thanks, he discovers later, to a sleeping
potion in his wine.
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And that's the end of this super-long paragraph!
Gulliver discovers later that the Emperor is the one who ordered that
Gulliver be tied up and fed in this way so that he could be brought to the
capital city.
Gulliver says, you may think this whole drugging thing seems like a
cowardly thing do, but really, it's smart. After all, if they had tried to kill
Gulliver as he slept, their tiny weapons would have woken him up. His rage
might have given him the strength to break the ropes they used to tie him.
These tiny people are great mechanics and already have lots of machines
designed for hauling trees and other heavy things.
Using a system of pullies, they hoist Gulliver onto one of these machines
and tie him to it.
1,500 of the Emperor's horses, all of which are about four and a half inches
high, drag Gulliver to the capital city.
Gulliver falls asleep yet again (what is up with this guy?), but he wakes up
about four hours into their trip. Gulliver awakens because one of his
guards climbs onto Gulliver's face and sticks his spear up Gulliver's left
nostril. Gulliver sneezes violently, and the guards sneak off.
Finally, Gulliver and all of his guards make it to the capital city, where they
are met by the Emperor and his Court.
Gulliver is tied to an old, huge (by these people's standards) temple, which
is no longer in use for religious purposes because a murder was once
committed there.
Gulliver is kept tied down to the ground as the tiny people build him a set
of chains, and many thousands of the city's inhabitants use the
opportunity to come climb all over him.
Finally, Gulliver's chains are done, and he is freed of his ropes. He can
finally stand up, for the first time since arriving in this land.
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Gulliver's chains allow him to move immediately around the gate to his
temple, so he can lie down inside the building or stand up outside of it.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 1, CHAPTER 2 SUMMARY
"The Emperor of Lilliput, attended by several of the nobility, comes to see the
author in his confinement. The Emperor's person and habit described. Learned
men appointed to teach the author their language. He gains favour by his mild
disposition. His pockets are searched, and his sword and pistols taken from him."
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When Gulliver stands up the next morning, he sees a beautiful landscape
laid out in front of him, like a garden. None of the trees are taller than
seven feet high, and all of the fields look like beds of flowers.
Gulliver's panicking a bit because it's now been about two days since he
last peed. Finally, he decides to sneak back into his temple and go in a
corner.
Gulliver assures us that this is the only time he does something as
unsanitary as peeing in his own house.
For the rest of his stay in this country, every morning two tiny people come
with wheelbarrows for him to relieve himself in, and then they take it away
– not a job we envy.
Anyway, after relieving himself in the corner of the temple, Gulliver heads
outside again. The Emperor comes to visit him and orders him to be given
food and water.
Gulliver then describes the Emperor: he's a tiny bit taller than anyone else
around him, with a strong, masculine face. He's around 28 and therefore
"past his prime" (1.2.3), but he has been Emperor for seven years and has
done a reasonably good job of it.
The Emperor wears simple clothing, but he also carries a gold, jewelencrusted helmet and sword.
The Emperor and Gulliver try to speak to each other for a couple of hours,
but even though Gulliver speaks a bit of German (what he called "High
Dutch"), Dutch (or "Low Dutch"), Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and
Lingua Franca, they still can't talk to each other.
The Emperor and his Court clear out.
Gulliver has to deal with a huge crowd that has gathered around him in
curiosity.
Six members of the crowd get rowdy and shoot at him with their arrows.
His guard catches the wrongdoers, ties them up, and gives them to Gulliver
for punishment.
He puts five of them in his pocket and the sixth, he pretends that he is
going to eat. But then he just takes out his pocketknife, cuts the guy's
ropes, sets him on the ground, and lets him go. Gulliver's mercy makes him
really popular with the little folk.
Gulliver spends about two weeks sleeping on the floor of his temple while
the Emperor orders a bed to be made for him.
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As the news spreads that Gulliver has arrived in the capital city, lots of
curious people pour into the city to see him.
The Emperor is concerned that all of this curiosity is going to lead people to
neglect their homes and businesses. He orders that anyone who has seen
Gulliver once has to go home, and that no one is allowed to come within
fifty yards of his house without a license. This turns into a great moneymaking industry for the court.
Throughout this time, the Emperor is discussing what to do with Gulliver
over the long term. A highly-ranked friend of Gulliver's who is in on the
discussion tells Gulliver that:
1. The Emperor is worried that Gulliver's eating habits will send the
country into famine.
2. They think of starving him or shooting him in the face and neck with
poisoned arrows to kill him off. But then they would have to deal with
his giant rotting corpse, which might bring a plague to the capital
city.
3. Everyone is so impressed with Gulliver's treatment of the six people
who shot him with arrows that the Imperial Commission sends out
an order to all the country's villages that they must send a certain
amount of food and drink to the city for Gulliver every day.
4. The Emperor orders six hundred people to wait on Gulliver, 300
tailors to make him a suit, and 6 scholars to teach Gulliver their
language.
5. After three weeks, Gulliver's got a good grasp of their speech, so he
chats with the Emperor. He asks him regularly for his own freedom,
but the Emperor always says: "Lumos Kelmin pesso desmar lon
Emposo" – "Swear a peace with him and his kingdom" (1.2.6).
6. The Emperor requests Gulliver's permission to have him searched,
and Gulliver agrees.
7. Gulliver helps the Emperor's guards into all of his pockets except one
secret one, where he keeps some objects that, he says, should only
matter to him. Gulliver also won't let them look at his two fobs (read:
small vest pockets usually used for holding a watch), which contain a
silver watch and a small amount of gold.
8. The two guards then give Gulliver a careful inventory of what they
have found on him, which they give to the Emperor.
And we have reached the end of another super-long paragraph!
Gulliver transcribes the guards' inventory into English.
Apparently, they call him "the Great Man Mountain" (1.2.7).
They describe all of these relatively common objects (at least, common in
the eighteenth century) – a handkerchief, snuff (a kind of powdered tobacco
for sniffing), comb, razor, knife, journal, and pocket watch – from the
perspective of people utterly unfamiliar with what they are looking at. For
example, a comb is described as "a sort of engine, from the back of which
were extended twenty long poles" (1.2.7).
It also turns out that, even though Gulliver does not offer to put them in
his watch pocket, they notice his watch chain coming out of said pocket, so
he has to show them the contents anyway.
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After searching Gulliver's pockets, the two guards see that Gulliver is
wearing a leather belt around his waist. Attached to this belt is a large
sword and a pouch for carrying gunpowder and shells.
The Emperor hears this inventory of Gulliver's possessions and then orders
Gulliver to show his sword and pocket pistols.
The Emperor also signals three thousand of his troops to stay on hand
during this display of Gulliver's weapons just in case.
So, when Gulliver takes his scimitar (a kind of curved sword) out of its
scabbard (a sheath for a sword), all of the Emperor's troops shout because
they think Gulliver's about to assassinate their Emperor.
But he doesn't, of course: Gulliver puts the scimitar back in its scabbard
and places it on the ground.
Gulliver also loads his pistols and shoots into the air to demonstrate how a
gun works to the Emperor.
The tiny people are so shocked by the sound that hundreds of them fall to
the ground; even the Emperor takes some time to collect himself.
Gulliver then places his pistols and his firearms on the ground next to his
sword.
Gulliver gives his watch, money, knife, razor, comb, snuffbox,
handkerchief, and journal to the Emperor to examine – but these things, he
gets back. The scimitar, pistols, and ammunition, on the other hand, get
carted off to the Emperor's storehouses.
Inside the super-secret pocket that Gulliver does not reveal to the Emperor,
he has: his glasses, a "pocket perspective" (1.2.11) (probably a magnifying
glass or telescope), and "several other little conveniences" (1.2.11) he won't
describe. These are all delicate objects that Gulliver is worried might get
lost or broken if he shows them to anyone.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 1, CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY
"The author diverts the Emperor and his nobility of both sexes, in a very
uncommon manner. The diversions of the court of Lilliput described. The author
hath his liberty granted him upon certain conditions."
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The Lilliputian court comes to like Gulliver thanks to his gentle behavior.
Because the Emperor admires Gulliver so much, the Emperor orders his
people to put on a couple of shows for Gulliver
The main show is a kind of rope dancing, which is performed only by
people who hold high office in Lilliput. In fact, in order to get a high office in
Lilliput, you have to beat all the other candidates in this rope dancing
competition. Skill at this dance is the main qualification for court positions.
Because the dance involves seeing who can jump the highest on a piece of
rope without falling, there are lots of accidents. People try to jump too high
or miss the rope and whatnot – and some of these falls are even fatal.
The Emperor also likes to make his court play a kind of limbo. Sometimes
his courtiers creep under a stick he's holding and sometimes they jump
over. Whoever jumps and crawls the best wins a prize from the emperor: a
colored belt, like a karate belt, proving the winner's skills.
Gulliver invents a game to entertain the emperor: he sets up a raised stage
using his handkerchief and a set of sticks.
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On this stage, he sets a troop of 24 of the Emperor's horsemen to perform
their maneuvers and drills.
This game goes on until one of the horses tears through the handkerchief
with its hoof and injures itself; after that, Gulliver decides the handkerchief
is too weak to support the Lilliputians.
As Gulliver gets busy entertaining the Emperor's court, he hears news that
something else has washed ashore: a giant black thing that doesn't seem
like a living creature.
It is, in fact, Gulliver's hat, which the Lilliputians drag to the capital.
Gulliver is happy to get it back again.
The Emperor (whose sense of humor, we have to admit, seems kind of
weak) decides that he wants Gulliver to pose standing with his legs as far
apart as they can go.
The Emperor orders his troops to march between Gulliver's legs in rows of
24 men.
Even though the Emperor also tells his armies not to make any comments
about Gulliver's body, a bunch of them can't help looking up and laughing.
Gulliver's pants are in such tatters at this point that he's flashing all of the
Emperor's armies. There are, he tells us, "opportunities for laughter and
admiration" (1.3.7) for the Lilliputians – after all, Gulliver implies, he's a
giant, and his penis has to be proportionally huge.
Gulliver lobbies hard to be set free, and finally the whole court agrees, with
one exception: Skyresh Bolgolam, who seems to feel he is Gulliver's enemy
(Gulliver says, without reason).
Bolgolam at last agrees that Gulliver should be released, but only if
Bolgolam can make the conditions for Gulliver's freedom.
The contract for Gulliver's freedom has the following rules:
1. Gulliver won't leave Lilliput without permission;
2. He won't come into the main city without the Emperor's permission
and two hours of notice (because up until now, he's been chained to
that temple just outside the city gates);
3. The "man-mountain," as they continue to call him, will only walk on
the kingdom's main roads, and will not lie down in any meadows or
fields;
4. He will be careful not to stomp on anyone or pick them up without
their consent;
5. Once a month, if there are particularly urgent messages the Emperor
wants to send, Gulliver will have to carry the messenger and his
horse to his destination and back again;
6. Gulliver will defend Lilliput against their enemy, the island of
Blefuscu;
7. He will help workmen pick up stones to build walls and royal
buildings;
8. In two months' time, Gulliver will give the Emperor his calculation of
how big the island of Lilliput is;
9. If Gulliver observes all of these rules, the Emperor will provide
Gulliver with food, drink, and "access to our royal person" (1.3.18) –
in other words, Gulliver will get to spend as much time as he wants
with the Emperor. Lucky guy!
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Gulliver agrees to all of these rules, even though some of them seem to
come from the pointless hatred of Skyresh Bolgolam.
The Emperor permits Gulliver to go free, and his chains are unlocked at
last.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 1, CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY
"Mildendo, the metropolis of Lilliput, described, together with the emperor's
palace. A conversation between the author and a principal secretary, concerning
the affairs of that empire. The author's offers to serve the emperor in his wars."
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After Gulliver gets his freedom, the first thing he does is to ask the Emperor
if he can go into Mildendo, the main city of Lilliput.
The Emperor agrees, and Gulliver steps into the town. He walks through
the main streets and visits the Emperor's palace.
At this point, Gulliver spends some time describing the state of Lilliput
itself, as told to him by Redresal, the country's principal secretary.
Apparently, there are two rival factions in the empire, the Tramecksans and
the Slamecksans.
The Tramecksans are also called the "high heels" because they wear highheeled shoes; the Slamecksans are the "low heels."
Even though the high heels are big fans of Lilliput's constitution, the
Emperor will only staff his government with representatives of the low
heels. (And of course, since Redresal, the principal secretary, has a high
post in the Emperor's cabinet, we can figure out that Redresal is also a low
heel.)
The two parties hate each other so much that they can't eat, drink, or talk
to each other.
While the Emperor's heels are definitely low, his son, the heir to the throne,
seems less decided: one of his heels is high, the other, low, which makes it
tough for him to walk around. (For more on what the heck Swift is talking
about, see our "Character Analysis" of the Lilliputians.)
Not only is Lilliput divided inside, but it's also threatened from the outside
by the island of Blefuscu, a second island empire "almost as large and
powerful as this of his majesty" (1.4.5).
Redresal admits that there may be countries outside the Lilliput/Blefuscu
binary, but Lilliput's philosophers think there probably aren't. They like to
believe that Gulliver is an alien who has dropped from the moon.
The war between Lilliput and Blefuscu has been going on for three years.
It all started with the grandfather of the current Emperor, who cut his
finger on an eggshell when he was a kid.
The Emperor's great-grandfather thinks that the reason his son cut his
finger was because he broke his egg on its rounded, big end rather than the
little, pointed end.
Even though, up until this moment, everyone had always cracked their
eggs on the big end, the current Emperor's great-grandfather decrees that,
from now on, everyone will have to crack their eggs on the little end – for
safety's sake!
Redresal calls people who crack their eggs at the larger end Big-Endians;
those who break their eggs at the smaller end are called Little-Endians.
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(All this stuff with the eggs may sound totally nuts, but Swift is making a
larger point about English politics and religion – check out our "Character
Analysis" of the Lilliputians for an explanation of this scene.)
The people are so against this new egg-cracking law that they keep
rebelling against the Emperor. These uprisings get funding from Blefuscu,
which is a country of Big-Endians.
In fact, Blefuscu is currently calling up its navy for a full-scale invasion of
Lilliput, because so many Big-Endian refugees from Lilliput's Little-Endian
government have found their way to Blefuscu.
The Emperor of Lilliput expects Gulliver to use his strength to defend the
island, which is why he has commanded Redresal to tell Gulliver about the
Big-End/Little-End conflict.
Gulliver promises Redresal that he will do everything he can to protect
Lilliput.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 1, CHAPTER 5 SUMMARY
"The author, by an extraordinary stratagem, prevents an invasion. A high title of
honour is conferred upon him. Ambassadors arrive from the emperor of Blefuscu,
and sue for peace. The empress's apartment on fire by an accident; the author
instrumental in saving the rest of the palace."
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Blefuscu is divided from Lilliput by a small channel about 800 yards wide –
not even half a mile.
Gulliver plans to capture the whole Blefuscu fleet of ships, of which there
are about 50.
He asks the Emperor for bars of iron and thick ropes. He twists the bars of
iron into 50 separate hooks, which he attaches to lengths of the rope.
He wades and then swims across to the Blefuscudian fleet, where it is
anchored in the shallows near the island of Blefuscu.
The Blefuscudians shoot arrows at Gulliver's face and neck, but he puts on
a pair of glasses to protect his eyes and keeps going about his business.
Gulliver attaches each of his hooks to one of Blefuscu's ships, cuts the
cables anchoring the ships in Blefuscu's harbor, and uses his hooks and
bits of rope to tow the entire fleet across the channel.
As Gulliver approaches Lilliput, he's so deep in the water that the Emperor
and his court can't see him. All they can see is the Blefuscudian fleet
approaching Lilliput's shores.
Once Gulliver surfaces, they're all relieved to see that the fleet isn't
attacking.
At first, the Emperor wants to use his military advantage to conquer
Blefuscu and to destroy all Big-Endians forever.
Gulliver refuses to be a part of any plan that will make free people slaves.
The Emperor eventually gives in on this point, but he never forgives
Gulliver for refusing to help him enslave Blefuscu. The Emperor starts to
plot with some of his ministers to kill Gulliver.
About three weeks after Gulliver captures the Blefuscu fleet, a group of
representatives of Blefuscu's Emperor come asking for a peace treaty with
Lilliput.
They also invite Gulliver to come and visit Blefuscu.
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Gulliver asks the Emperor of Lilliput for permission to go to Blefuscu. The
Emperor agrees, but he's unhappy about it – Skyresh Bolgolam (Gulliver's
enemy at court) and Flimnap (the treasurer of the country) both use
Gulliver's desire to visit Blefuscu as evidence against his loyalty to Lilliput.
Even though the original terms of Gulliver's freedom include things like
carrying messages and so on, his adventure with the fleet of Blefuscu leads
him to become a nardac, a highly honored member of the kingdom.
Thanks to his new rank, everyone thinks that the rules of Gulliver's
freedom are kind of beneath him now, and the Emperor never mentions
Gulliver's supposed duties.
Even so, one night Gulliver does the Emperor a favor. He hears hundreds of
people calling Burglum – fire! – and runs out to see what's wrong.
The Empress's rooms at the palace are on fire.
Luckily, Gulliver had had a lot of wine the night before and had not yet
peed any of it, so he has plenty to use to put out the fire at the palace.
Thanks to his quick thinking and huge bladder, Gulliver saves the palace
from destruction.
Unfortunately, the Empress is not too pleased with Gulliver's method of
putting out the fire – i.e., by peeing on it – so she's horribly offended and
refuses to see that part of the palace repaired.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 1, CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY
"Of the inhabitants of Lilliput; their learning, laws, and customs; the manner of
educating their children. The author's way of living in that country. His
vindication of a great lady."
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Gulliver gives us some more details of Lilliput: first, all of the animals,
trees, and buildings are proportional to the six-inch Lilliputians. In other
words, everything on the island is equally tiny.
They do not read left to right (like in English), right to left (like in Arabic),
nor up and down (like in Chinese or Japanese). Instead, they write
diagonally across the page.
The Lilliputians bury their dead head down. They think that the Earth is
flat and that, at the end of the world, it will be flipped over and all of their
people will be brought back to life. Once this happens, head down will
actually be right side up.
If someone in Lilliput accuses someone else of crimes against the state,
these charges are taken very seriously.
On the other hand, if it turns out that the accused person is innocent, then
the accuser is executed and the accused person gets a money reward from
the emperor.
In fact, lying and fraud are considered worse crimes than theft in Lilliput,
and they nearly always result in execution for the criminal.
Gulliver points out that our criminal justice system is totally based on
punishment – you commit a crime, you get thrown in jail or whatever – but
in Lilliput, there is a balance of punishment and reward.
If you can prove that you have gone 73 months (just over 6 years) without
doing anything wrong, you get a special title (snilpall) and a cash reward
from the Emperor.
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The Lilliputians also believe that it is morally better for people in office to
make mistakes out of ignorance rather than out of deliberate wrongdoing.
They prefer to appoint guys who are good but dumb over those who are
smart but bad.
As a result, the Lilliputians generally don't appoint geniuses to the
government. Instead, they actively try to keep smart, gifted people out of
important offices, so that, if anything goes wrong, it will be because of
stupidity rather than corruption.
Also, men who do not believe in God's will ("Divine Providence" (1.6.8))
cannot serve in public office.
Since the Emperor believes himself to be king thanks to the will of God, he
doesn't want to employ anyone who does not believe in the source of the
Emperor's power (God) to serve under him.
People in Lilliput can be executed for ingratitude, because they think it's a
sign of a lack of respect for all of mankind.
The Lilliputians believe that men and women come together to have
children out of natural instinct, so kids don't owe their parents anything.
After all, their parents are having sex and conceiving kids because
they want to, not because they have any kind of self-sacrifice in mind.
Indeed, the Lilliputians think that, generally, life sucks, and that being
born is pretty miserable. So, parents who bring kids into the world are
the last people who should be responsible for raising and educating them.
They have big public nurseries for both boys and girls. These nurseries
teach kids the skills they will need for their particular place in life, as
decided by their parents' social position and their own interests.
Nurseries for boys of high social standing are staffed by solemn professors
who teach the kids to take care of themselves. They are never allowed to
hang out in groups without a professor present, and they are only allowed
to see their parents for an hour twice a year. They stay in these nurseries
until they are 15 (which is equivalent to 21 in our years).
Sons of middle and working class families get the same treatment, but they
leave their nurseries younger. At 11 years of age, they become apprentices
to learn the trades they'll practice as adults.
Girls receive about the same education as boys, only with less active
physical exercise and more learning about how to keep house. At 12, they
become eligible for marriage.
Poorer girls also receive instruction in how to do jobs appropriate for
women (Swift doesn't spell out what he means). They leave the nursery at 7
to become apprentices.
Parents have to pay an allowance for the support of their children by the
state.
The children of farmers and laborers stay at home, since they don't have to
learn a trade and are therefore not of much interest to the Empire.
Gulliver lives in Lilliput for 9 months and 13 days.
During this time, he makes his own table and chair.
200 seamstresses sew him a shirt out of tiny squares of fabric and 300
cooks prepare him 2 dishes apiece every day.
The Emperor invites himself over to Gulliver's home (remember, that giant
former temple just outside the city gates) for dinner, along with his wife,
children, and Flimnap the treasurer.
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Gulliver notices that Flimnap keeps looking at him with a frown on his face.
Flimnap (like Skyresh Bolgolam) is a "secret enemy" (1.6.21) of Gulliver's.
Flimnap uses this visit to Gulliver's house to point out to the Emperor that
Gulliver eats a huge amount, and that the Emperor's cash stores are
starting to get low as a result.
One reason that Flimnap hates Gulliver is that there are rumors going
around that Flimnap's wife is having an affair with Gulliver (which, not to
get dirty-minded or anything, but how would that even work? She's six
inches tall! Wait, let's pretend we didn't say that – it's probably best not to
think about the logistics too much).
Anyway, so Gulliver protests a lot that there is absolutely no truth to this
accusation.
Flimnap eventually makes up with his wife, but never forgives Gulliver.
Unfortunately, Flimnap has a lot of influence on the Emperor, and keeps
persuading him that the kingdom needs to get rid of Gulliver.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 1, CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY
"The author, being informed of a design to accuse him of high-treason, makes his
escape to Blefuscu. His reception there."
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For 2 months before Gulliver leaves Lilliput, there has been a plot building
against him.
The thing is, Gulliver has never had any personal experience of courts in
his own country, but he has read about them and all their backbiting and
infighting.
Still, Gulliver thought that the high morals of the Lilliputians would keep
him safe from plots against him.
He was wrong.
Just as Gulliver is planning to visit Blefuscu, one of his friends at court
comes by in the dead of night to warn him that several committees have
been formed to decide what should happen to Gulliver.
Skyresh Bolgolam the admiral, Flimnap the treasurer, Limtoc the general,
Lalcon the chamberlain, and Balmuff the chief justice have issued articles
of impeachment for treason against Gulliver.
(By the way, the specific use of this term "Articles of Impeachment" is
another historical reference. Once again, please allow us to direct you to
the Lilliputian "Character Analysis" for more information.)
The lord who has come to warn Gulliver has also brought a copy of the
articles of impeachment against Gulliver, as follows:
Article 1: According to a degree by an earlier Emperor, it is treason to pee
within the royal palace. When Gulliver put out the fire in the Empress's
rooms using his urine, he broke this law.
Article 2: When the Emperor ordered Gulliver to destroy the remainder of
Blefuscu's boats, conquer its lands, and execute all of the Lilliputian BigEndian exiles and all those who would not convert to Little-Endianism,
Gulliver refused.
Article 3: When ambassadors arrived from Blefuscu, Gulliver was nice to
them, even though Lilliput is at war with Blefuscu.
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Article 4: Gulliver is planning to go to Blefuscu, even though the Emperor
has only given verbal (and not, we assume, written) permission.
Gulliver's enemies at court want him to be put to death in various
miserable ways, but the Emperor feels bad about just killing Gulliver like
that.
The Emperor asks Gulliver's friend Redresal, the principal secretary, his
opinion.
Redresal tells the Emperor that, yes, maybe Gulliver has committed grave
crimes, but the Emperor could still be merciful. Instead of killing Gulliver,
why doesn't the Emperor just order Gulliver's eyes put out? That way,
Gulliver would still be able to help the Emperor with his great strength.
The whole council is outraged at this suggestion, because Gulliver's
strength is exactly the problem: Bolgolam warns that Gulliver might flood
the whole country with his urine or carry the Blefuscudian fleet back to
Blefuscu if he wanted to.
Flimnap the treasurer tells the Emperor that Gulliver has to die because
the cost of feeding him will bankrupt Lilliput.
The Emperor doesn't want to kill Gulliver, but he also thinks that
just blindingGulliver isn't enough. So Redresal suggests that they stop
feeding Gulliver. That way, they'd save money. What's more, Gulliver's
corpse would be relatively skinny, making it easier to get rid of.
Everyone agrees on this compromise: they plan to starve him and to blind
him.
The plan is that, in three days, Redresal will come to Gulliver with the
Articles of Impeachment.
The only punishment the Lilliputians are actually going to reveal to Gulliver
is the loss of his eyes; the starvation part, they don't plan to tell him about
directly.
The lord who is telling Gulliver all of this finishes his story and heads out
in secrecy, under cover of night.
Gulliver can't exactly see the mercy in this sentence: to be blinded and
thenstarved seems plenty bad to him.
Gulliver considers standing trial in the hopes of getting some kind of
reduced sentence, but, with so many powerful enemies, he figures that
won't work.
Gulliver also thinks about laying siege to the capital city by throwing stones
at it, but he rejects that idea because he took an oath to the Emperor to be
loyal.
Finally, Gulliver decides to run away. He walks across the channel to
Blefuscu, where the Blefuscudian Emperor has been expecting him.
The Blefuscudian Emperor comes to meet Gulliver, and Gulliver thanks
him for his hospitality.
Gulliver does not tell the Emperor of Blefuscu that he has fallen out of favor
in Lilliput.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 1, CHAPTER 8 SUMMARY
"The author, by a lucky accident, finds means to leave Blefuscu; and, after some
difficulties, returns safe to his native country."
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Three days after arriving in Blefuscu, Gulliver spots a real boat overturned
in the shallows off the coast of the island. Gulliver assumes that a storm
has pulled it free from the ship he arrived on, the Antelope.
He gets 2,000 Blefuscudians to help him turn the boat right side up. It
looks undamaged.
Gulliver asks the Blefuscudian Emperor for permission to go back home to
his own country, and the Emperor agrees.
Gulliver wonders why the Lilliputian Emperor hasn't sent for news of him
from the Blefuscudian Emperor.
Later, the Blefuscudian Emperor tells Gulliver that the Lilliputian Emperor
has sent a secret message to Blefuscu demanding the return of Gulliver in
two hours, bound, so that he can be punished as a traitor.
The Blefuscudian Emperor replies that he can't do that to Gulliver because
Gulliver has done Blefuscu a favor by making peace between Lilliput and
Blefuscu.
But, the Blefuscudian Emperor adds, it's all okay: Gulliver has found a
boat and is going to sail away on his own steam, which will rid both Lilliput
and Blefuscu of the burden of his presence.
The Blefuscudian Emperor then offers Gulliver his protection in exchange
for Gulliver's service. Gulliver thanks him, but insists on going home,
which is actually a great relief to the Emperor of Blefuscu.
After about a month, Gulliver has stocked his boat with provisions and
livestock (although he's not allowed to bring any Blefuscudians along,
which he had wanted to do).
He sets out for Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania, in Australia) on
September 24, 1701.
Two days later, Gulliver meets up by accident with a ship sailing back to
England from Japan.
On the ship, there happens to be an old friend of Gulliver's, Peter Williams,
who tells the captain (Mr. John Biddell) that Gulliver is a good guy. On this
recommendation, Biddell lets Gulliver sail back to England with them.
They arrive back home and Gulliver makes some cash showing his tiny
cattle to a paying audience.
He only stays back in England for two months before he gets the urge to
travel again. He leaves behind his wife, son, and daughter, and boards
the Adventurebound for Surat, India.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 2, CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY
"A great storm described; the long boat sent to fetch water; the author goes with it
to discover the country. He is left on shore, is seized by one of the natives, and
carried to a farmer's house. His reception, with several accidents that happened
there. A description of the inhabitants."
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Gulliver heads out to sea again on June 20, 1702. His ship is called
theAdventure, with Captain John Nicholas.
About a year passes as they jump around the world, but finally (as you
might expect) the Adventure hits a storm that leaves them totally confused
about where they are.
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On June 17, 1703, the sailors of the Adventure spot land and row ashore
with Gulliver.
The landing party spots a monster in the distance, a giant man about 60
feet high. All the sailors dash to their rowboat and start rowing hell for
leather back to the Adventure – accidentally leaving our friend Gulliver
behind on the island (which, by the way, is the island of Brobdingnag).
Gulliver finds a road through a field of corn that stands at least 40 feet
high. As he walks along, he finds that the corn is being harvested by guys
carrying extremely large scythes.
Gulliver runs through the corn, but he's having trouble making any
progress because everything is so huge that he can't make his way past the
leaves and branches of the corn plants.
Finally, Gulliver gives up and lies down in the furrows between the corn
rows, thinking of his wife and children. He thinks he's going to be eaten by
these giants.
Still, when one of the reapers comes close to Gulliver, he realizes that the
guy might step on him and squash him by accident, so Gulliver screams as
loud as he can.
The reaper sees him and picks him up. Gulliver clasps his hands in a
praying gesture, which the guy seems to understand.
The giant puts Gulliver in his jacket pocket and goes to his employer, a
farmer.
The farmer (whom Gulliver starts to call his Master) examines Gulliver
closely, and realizes that he seems to be a thinking creature and not just
an animal.
They try to speak to each other, but neither can follow the other's language.
Gulliver's new master takes Gulliver home and shows him to his wife, who
screams as though Gulliver is a mouse or a snake or something. Soon she
gets used to him, though, and comes to like him.
Gulliver's master has a kid around 10 years old.
Gulliver worries that the kid is going to tear him apart, since kids can be
rough with animals. So, he sucks up to the boy by kissing his hands.
Gulliver's mistress (his new master's wife) has a cat, but Gulliver figures
that, if he shows it no fear, the cat will not attack him. This proves to be
true: it totally ignores him.
After dinner, a nurse brings in the mistress's baby. She gives Gulliver to
the baby as a plaything and the child almost bites Gulliver's head off. It's
only through Gulliver's quick thinking that he gets the child to drop him.
The child starts to wail and, to quiet him, Gulliver's mistress starts to
breast feed the child.
Gulliver goes into a pretty lengthy description of how revolting her breasts
look at this size – 6 feet tall and 16 feet around, with a nipple as big as his
breast.
Gulliver decides that even the loveliest women only look good because we
don't see them magnified – if you look too close, everyone's skin looks
rough.
After all this excitement, Gulliver's mistress puts Gulliver to bed on her
handkerchief.
After two hours, Gulliver wakes up.
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He sees two rats crawling towards him up the curtains and freaks out –
they're both as big as a large dog to Gulliver.
Gulliver gets a lucky shot and manages to kill one with his sword; the
second rat runs away in fear.
The mistress comes in and sees Gulliver covered with blood and the dead
rat.
She picks Gulliver up and washes him off.
Finally, he manages to indicate to her that he needs to take care of a call of
nature, so she takes him out into the garden to do his business.
Gulliver apologizes to the reader for dwelling on his peeing habits, but he
claims that they will be helpful to the philosopher seeking to apply lessons
from his experience to public and private life. (We're pretty sure this is a
joke.)
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 2, CHAPTER 2 SUMMARY
"A description of the farmer's daughter. The author carried to a market-town, and
then to the metropolis. The particulars of his journey."
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Gulliver's mistress has a 9-year old daughter who sews well and is
generally really smart. She makes Gulliver some clothes and also starts
teaching him the Brobdingnagian language.
Gulliver calls this girl Glumdalclitch, his little nurse, and she names him
Grildrig.
Rumors are spreading through the whole area that the farmer, Gulliver's
master, has found a strange little creature that seems to imitate human
beings perfectly.
One of the master's neighbors comes by and suggests that he would make
a huge profit by showing Gulliver at the local market for a fee.
The next market day, Gulliver's master follows this guy's advice and starts
advertising for people to come and see his tiny human.
Gulliver does tricks and repeats what phrases he knows of the
Brobdingnagian language for the entertainment of local audiences.
After a long day of these performances, Gulliver's master promises to bring
him back the next market day.
Gulliver is so profitable that his master decides to take him on a tour of the
cities of the kingdom.
Gulliver travels under the care of Glumdalclitch. She knows how much it
tires Gulliver to be displayed at markets like this, so Glumdalclitch often
complains to her father of her own exhaustion to get him to travel slowly.
After ten weeks of travel and eighteen different large towns, Gulliver's
master, Glumdalclitch, and Gulliver himself all arrive at the central city,
Lorbrulgrud.
Gulliver's master rents a large room and sets up a stage for Gulliver's
performances.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 2, CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY
"The author sent for to court. The queen buys him of his master the farmer, and
presents him to the king. He disputes with his majesty's great scholars. An
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apartment at court provided for the author. He is in high favour with the queen.
He stands up for the honour of his own country. His quarrels with the queen's
dwarf."
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All of this performing is having a terrible effect on Gulliver's health, and his
master can see that he's getting sick.
Gulliver's master resolves to make as much money as he can off Gulliver
before Gulliver dies.
One day, the Queen of Brobdingnag arrives at his apartment and offers to
buy Gulliver for a huge sum of gold.
Gulliver agrees with the Queen's wishes as long as he can ask one tiny
favor: he wants the Queen to employ Glumdalclitch as Gulliver's nurse.
The Queen agrees to his master's price and Gulliver's request, and his
master leaves Gulliver to the Queen.
The Queen notices how cold Gulliver's farewell to his (now former) master
is, and asks for an explanation.
Gulliver tells her that his former master exploited him, and suggests that,
under Her Majesty's august protection, he might still be able to recover his
former strength after all of this bad treatment.
The Queen brings Gulliver to the King of Brobdingnag and asks Gulliver to
explain again how his former master treated him.
The King of Brobdingnag thinks that Gulliver is a mechanical toy, and that
he is parroting a story to the royal couple that is not true.
He orders three scholars to come by his court and examine Gulliver to see
what they can make of him.
The scholars decide that Gulliver is a lusus naturae – a freak of nature.
Gulliver interrupts to tell them that he comes from a country with millions
of people like him and of his size.
The scholars dismiss him, but the Brobdingagian King slowly starts to
think that Gulliver is telling the truth.
The King tells the Queen to keep watching over Gulliver, which she does
with great pleasure – she really likes him.
The Queen outfits Gulliver with his own tiny pieces of furniture and itsybitsy dishes and silverware, so that he can sleep and eat comfortably.
Gulliver comes to dine with the royal family every Wednesday, where he
gives descriptions of European manners, customs, religion, and philosophy
to the Brobdingnagian King.
The Brobdingnagian King laughs as he asks Gulliver if he is a Whig or a
Tory?
(The Whigs and the Tories were Britain's eighteenth-century equivalent of
the Democrats and the Republicans. The Whigs supported restrictions on
royal power, while the Tories wanted the conservation of the king's
authority. Check out this article for more on these two political parties.
Also, see our "Character Analysis" of the Lilliputians for a specific look at
Swift, the Whigs, and the Tories).
Gulliver gets all offended because the Brobdingnagian King uses Gulliver's
account of English customs as proof of human vanity: we all think our own
politics and religion are so important, but from a wider perspective, they
really aren't.
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But with time, Gulliver starts to see himself more and more from the
Brobdingnagian perspective: tiny and funny-looking.
What does still really tick Gulliver off is that there is a small person (only
30 feet tall!) in the Queen's service who totally rags on Gulliver because he
has finally found someone smaller than he is. This person plays a number
of practical jokes on Gulliver.
The Queen is surprised at Gulliver's fearfulness, and asks if all the people
of his home country are such cowards?
Gulliver really can't help his fears: even the Brobdingnagian insects are as
large as fat birds compared to him.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 2, CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY
"The country described. A proposal for correcting modern maps. The king's
palace; and some account of the metropolis. The author's way of travelling. The
chief temple described."
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The island is 6,000 miles long and between 3,000 and 5,000 miles wide. It's
a whole continent right smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
between California and Japan.
The kingdom of Brobdingnag sits at the southern end of the island,
surrounded on three sides by ocean and on one side by impassable
mountains.
The country has 51 cities, the largest of which is Lorbrulgrud.
The king's palace in Lorbrulgrud is a mass of buildings about 7 miles
around.
Glumdalclitch takes Gulliver on frequent outings into the city, accompanied
by her governess (a woman who acts as both caretaker and private tutor for
young kids).
When Gulliver goes on these outings, he is placed in a special box for
travel, with windows on three sides to allow him to look out.
Whenever they travel through the city, passersby always stop to look at
Gulliver – he has become very famous.
Gulliver and Glumdalclitch go out to see the primary temple of the city,
which is both beautiful and 3,000 feet in height – about three-fifths of a
mile.
(To give you a sense of scale, this makes the steeple of this temple almost
three times the height of the Empire State Building.)
Believe it or not, Gulliver is disappointed – he expected the temple to be
taller.
Gulliver tells us that the king's kitchen is also amazing: it's 600 feet high
(just under half the height of the Empire State Building).
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Gulliver is also most impressed by the sight of the Brobdingnagian King's
military guard on parade, in detachments of 500. The horses are, of course,
enormous – around 60 feet high.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 2, CHAPTER 5 SUMMARY
"Several adventures that happened to the author. The execution of a criminal.
The author shows his skills in navigation."
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Gulliver's life in Brobdingnag is pretty happy except that his tiny size
makes him so vulnerable to danger.
1. When Gulliver is walking under an apple tree, the Queen's dwarf
shakes the tree, causing about 12 apples to drop. These apples
almost brain Gulliver.
2. Gulliver is sitting on a plot of grass when a sudden hail shower
nearly crushes him to death with balls of ice about 1,800 times the
size of European hail.
3. The worst danger of all comes when Glumdalclitch leaves Gulliver in
the palace gardens while she is talking to her governess. A small
white dog gets loose in the garden and carries Gulliver (fortunately,
very carefully) to the feet of her master, the head gardener. The
gardener returns Gulliver to Glumdalclitch.
Glumdalclitch gets really terrified for Gulliver's safety after this, and
decides not to let him out of her sight.
Gulliver is kind of bummed, because he likes being able to go on walks by
himself – even though he is a bit accident prone.
On these walks alone, Gulliver observes that even the birds of Brobdingnag
are not afraid of him; they come very close to him looking for worms.
He catches one but it pecks him almost to death – he's saved at the last
minute by a servant, who kills the bird.
(A historical side note: here, Gulliver starts to tell us about Glumdalclitch
and the Queen's maids of honor. The meaning of the phrase "maid of
honor" has definitely changed over time; after all, the Queen is not about to
get married. In eighteenth century England, maids of honor were junior
attendants to the Queen – like fancy servants, only of higher rank than
actual servants.)
These maids of honor like to have Gulliver come and play with them.
They frequently press his whole, tiny body against their bosoms – where
Gulliver has a chance to observe that they smell really bad to him, because
there's just so much of them.
The worst thing about being near these maids of honor is that none of them
think of Gulliver as a real human being, so they regularly take off their
clothes and even pee in front of him.
He is disgusted by their huge moles, big pores, hairy skins – he can see all
of their imperfections totally magnified, and it is nasty.
Gulliver witnesses an execution in Brobdingnag: a criminal is beheaded,
and the fountain of blood is huge.
The Queen knows that Gulliver is familiar with boats, so she has both a
boat and a trough of water three hundred feet long made for him. He often
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goes to this trough to row or sail, to the amusement of the Queen and her
ladies.
Once, one of the servants who is supposed to fill Gulliver's trough with
water accidentally lets a frog loose. The frog nearly tips over Gulliver's boat.
But the worst danger Gulliver finds in Brobdingnag is from a monkey.
Glumdalclitch leaves Gulliver in her closet while she's out on some
business, but the day is warm and the closet window is open.
This monkey swings in from outside and finds Gulliver.
It mistakes Gulliver for a baby monkey, grabs him, carries him out of
Glumdalclitch's rooms, climbs to a roof nearby, and starts stuffing Gulliver
with treats from a bag the monkey is carrying.
A small crowd gathers to try and get the monkey to free Gulliver, but
they're also laughing hysterically at the sight of Gulliver being force-fed by
his adoptive monkey parent.
Finally, the monkey drops Gulliver and runs away.
Glumdalclitch nurses him back to health.
Gulliver goes to visit the King to thank him for his kind thoughts during
Gulliver's recovery.
The King asks Gulliver how he felt while being held by the monkey.
Gulliver claims that, if he hadn't been so frightened at seeing the monkey,
he would have scared the beast away with his sword as soon as he saw it.
All of the King's courtiers start laughing at how ridiculous Gulliver is: he
could never have stabbed that monkey with his sword, because he's way
too cowardly.
In fact, Gulliver is always appearing like an idiot in front of the court.
He has an adventure with a cow pat that Glumdalclitch immediately tells
the Queen to make her laugh.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 2, CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY
"Several contrivances of the author to please the king and queen. He shows his
skill in music. The king inquires into the state of England, which the author
relates to him. The king's observations thereon."
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Once or twice a week, Gulliver attends the King's levee, a kind of reception
held every morning when a King gets out of bed.
He collects the hairs that drop from the King's twice-weekly shave to make
himself a comb.
Gulliver also uses some of the Queen's hair from her brush to make a set of
chairs (like cane chairs) that the Queen keeps as curiosities.
Glumdalclitch plays the spinet, which is like a miniature piano – miniature
to Glumdalclitch, but huge to Gulliver.
Gulliver knows that the King is fond of music, so he makes himself some
clubs to use to shove the keys of the instrument down, but it's such hard
work that he can't play properly.
The Brobdingnagian King asks Gulliver to give him an exact account of
English government, because the King wants to know if there is anything
worth imitating there.
Gulliver starts off by explaining that his home is an empire uniting
England, Ireland, Scotland, and plantations in America under one king.
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This kingdom is governed by a Parliament made up of two Houses (much as
the American Congress includes both the Senate and the House of
Representatives). (Check out this link for more on the history of the English
Parliament.)
The first is the House of Peers, now called the House of Lords, an assembly
of members of the landed aristocracy.
The second house is the House of Commons, elected freely by the people.
Gulliver adds some information about England's law courts, treasury,
armed forces, religion, and recent history.
After listening to all that Gulliver has to say, the Brobdingnagian King asks
him several tough questions, including: how lords are educated to suit
them for government? How do lords make laws without taking into account
personal interest or greed? How does the government make sure that its
elected officials are in it for the good of the state and not for their own glory
or profit?
The King goes on to ask about the court system: does religion or politics
ever factor into legal decisions? How can judges presume to interpret laws
that they don't make?
As for taxes, the King finds it very strange that a state can run out of
money and borrow money like a private person.
And how about differences in political and religious feeling – why should
these private opinions be a matter of public knowledge or concern at all?
Furthermore, what's all this about gambling? Doesn't this give people a
method of making (or losing) lots of money with no work of their own?
As for Gulliver's accounts of recent English history, it all just sounds like a
pile of murders, massacres, and revolutions to the King of Brobdingnag.
In fact, even though Gulliver has tried really hard to convince the King of
the greatness of his home country, the King concludes that England is
governed by a pack of corrupt, unqualified, greedy thieves.
The King of Brobdingnag believes that most Englishmen must be "the most
pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl
upon the surface of the earth" (2.6.18) – in other words, a disgusting, evil
bunch of little creeps.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 2, CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY
"The author's love of his country. He makes a proposal of much advantage to the
king, which is rejected. The king's great ignorance in politics. The learning of that
country very imperfect and confined. The laws, and military affairs, and parties in
the state."
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Gulliver sits and listens to the King's intense criticism of England. He keeps
quiet (he says) because it would be ungrateful of him to contradict the King,
his benefactor.
He also reassures us that we should forgive the Brobdingnagian King for
his criticism of England – how could the King know better, when his own
country is so remote from all other nations of the world?
To prove how ignorant and foolish the King is, Gulliver tells us, the readers,
that he offered to show the King how to make gunpowder to subdue his
enemies.
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The Brobdingnagian King listens to Gulliver's description of guns and is
totally horrified. He makes Gulliver promise never even to mention these
weapons to him again.
Gulliver exclaims to the reader about the foolishness of the Brobdingnagian
King, who has let this great opportunity for power slip through his fingers.
Gulliver also criticizes Brobdingnagian education, which focuses on
practical applications of knowledge rather than on abstract mysteries.
No law in Brobdingnag can be longer than 20 words.
They also don't have very many books.
He comments on the clarity of their writing style: they never use too many
words, and everything appears in simple language.
The King's army is well-disciplined because all of its soldiers are farmers
and tradesmen who serve under their own landlords and chief citizens.
Gulliver wonders why the King bothers to have armies at all if there are no
other countries nearby.
It turns out that Brobdingnag has had a number of civil wars between
nobles, who want power, the people, who want freedom, and the king, who
wants total authority.
In the aftermath of these civil wars, all three of these – the nobles, the
people, and the king – have agreed that they need a militia to keep the
peace.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 2, CHAPTER 8 SUMMARY
"The king and queen make a progress to the frontiers. The author attends them.
The manner in which he leaves the country very particularly related. He returns
to England."
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Gulliver really wants to go home.
He has now spent two years in Brobdingnag, and though his life has been
comfortable, he wants to return to a place where he doesn't have to worry
about being stomped to death by a puppy.
He and Glumdalclitch are going on a tour of the south coast of the kingdom
with the Brobdingnagian King and Queen.
Both Gulliver and Glumdalclitch have colds, but Gulliver's is mild.
He manages to persuade Glumdalclitch to let him go down to the beach
with a servant.
This servant carries Gulliver's traveling box down to the beach. Once they
get to the beach, Gulliver decides to take a nap, so he shuts the entrance to
his box and climbs into his hammock.
He wakes up when he feels a sudden jolt.
It would seem that the servant left Gulliver's box on the beach while going
off for whatever reason, and that the box has now been snagged by an
eagle.
The eagle flies high and then drops Gulliver's box; Gulliver feels by the
bobbing of his box that he is at sea.
Gulliver feels really bad for Glumdalclitch, who is doubtless going to be
blamed for his loss by the Queen.
He notices that water is slowly leaking into his box, so he's getting pretty
worried for himself, too.
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He hears something scraping at the two staples attached to the side of his
box that has no windows, and wonders what it is.
Gulliver calls out, and a voice answers that his box has been lashed to the
side of a ship.
A sailor saws a hole in the side of his box and Gulliver emerges, very weak.
Gulliver has been so long in Brobdingnag that he has lost perspective on
regular humans – he's surprised to be surrounded by such small people,
even though they are his own height.
The sailors salvage some of the contents of Gulliver's box.
The captain of the ship, Thomas Wilcox, asks Gulliver to tell him where he
has been.
The captain thinks that Gulliver is (a) crazy, and/or (b) a convict who has
been sent to sea in a giant box as punishment.
To prove the truth of his story, Gulliver shows the captain his comb, made
from the beard stubble of the King of Brobdingnag, as well as his pants,
which are made of mouse skin.
The captain agrees that Gulliver is telling the truth,
He asks Gulliver if the King or Queen of Brobdingnag were hard of hearing,
because Gulliver keeps shouting. After all, Gulliver has spent the last two
years yelling to make himself heard by Brobdingnagian giants.
The ship arrives back in England on June 3, 1706, 9 months after Gulliver
leaves Brobdingnag.
He keeps acting as though he expects to see 60-foot people around him, so
Gulliver's whole family thinks he has gone nuts.
Gulliver's wife tells him never again to go to sea, but there are two more
parts left to Gulliver's Travels, so we think he's not going to listen to her.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY
"The author sets out on his third voyage. Is taken by pirates. The malice of a
Dutchman. His arrival at an island. He is received into Laputa."
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After 10 days back home, Gulliver gets a visit from a former captain of his,
William Robinson, who offers him a position on Robinson's ship as a
surgeon.
Gulliver agrees.
After a year of travel, the ship heads to Tonquin, part of modern-day
Vietnam.
The captain has to stay ashore in Tonquin for several months, but he
wants to make some profit.
The captain buys a small boat and appoints Gulliver the leader of it, with
14 sailors under him, so that they can continue doing business while the
captain hangs out on land.
This small boat is captured by two ships of Japanese pirates (who were,
incidentally, a serious threat to sailors in the seas around China and
Southeast Asia, particularly in the seventeenth century.)
The Japanese pirates are accompanied by a Dutchman, who tells the
English that he wants them to be tied up and thrown into the sea.
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Gulliver begs him to let them go, but his requests seem only to make the
Dutchman angrier – especially Gulliver's references to the Dutchman as a
"brother Christian" (3.1.7).
(For an explanation of this oddness, check out "Why Swift Seems to Hate
the Dutch So Much," under the "Japan" section of "Character Analysis.")
The pirate captains finally decide to split Gulliver's crew between their two
ships and to set Gulliver adrift in a small canoe with a little bit of food.
Gulliver uses his canoe to row to some tiny local islands nearby, but he
can't find much food or shelter on any of them.
While he's standing on the fifth and last island, Gulliver sees a shadow blot
out the sun.
He takes out his telescope, looks up, and sees that it is a floating
islandcovered with people. (This is the island of Laputa.)
Gulliver manages to signal to these people that he needs help, and they
eventually steer overhead and let down a chain for Gulliver to climb up.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 2 SUMMARY
"The humours and dispositions of the Laputians described. An account of their
learning. Of the king and his court. The author's reception there. The inhabitants
subject to fear and disquietudes. An account of the women."
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The people surrounding Gulliver when he gets up to the island look totally
bizarre: all of their heads lean either to the right or the left, one of their
eyes points in and the other up, and they are all dressed in clothes
decorated with stars, moons, and musical instruments.
Gulliver sees a lot of servants standing around holding these things he calls
flappers, little rattles on the end of a long stick.
The people of Laputa are so caught up in their own thoughts that they need
someone else to remind them to speak or listen.
So whenever a group of them gets together, the job of their servants is to
touch the mouth of the person who should be speaking and the ears of
those who should be listening.
And when they go walking, their servants have to tap their eyes with the
flapper to be sure that they watch where they're going.
The Laputians bring Gulliver to the King.
The King's room is full of mathematical instruments and globes, and he is
so deep in thought that it takes him an hour to become conscious enough
of his surroundings to notice Gulliver.
The King provides Gulliver with a tutor to teach him their language; most of
the words he learns are for different signs of the zodiac, mathematical
figures – really abstract stuff, in other words.
What helps Gulliver to learn Laputian language is his knowledge of math
and music, which dominate Laputian culture.
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At the same time, the Laputians don't seem able to make anything right:
Gulliver's suit doesn't fit and all of their houses have weird angles because
no one knows how to apply their equations to real life.
Gulliver also discovers that Laputa controls the continent under it,
Balnibarbi, and that there are frequent visitors and deliveries from sea level
up to Laputa by means of rope. In fact, Laputa is the King's personal home,
but Balnibarbi is where the capital city sits.
What surprises Gulliver is that, even though all the Laputians know only
math and music, they still like to talk endlessly about politics – proof, to
Gulliver, that all humans most enjoy discussing what they know least.
He also finds it weird that the Laputians live in such constant fear of the
end of the world that they can hardly sleep at night or enjoy life. Their
science has actually become a terror to them.
The women of Laputa despise their husbands and love strangers.
In fact, whenever guys come up to the island from the lands below, the
women have affairs with them pretty freely. Their husbands never notice
because they are so busy with science.
Gulliver becomes pretty fluent in Laputian after a month.
The Laputian King doesn't bother asking him about the countries he has
seen; all of his questions revolve around math.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY
"A phenomenon solved by modern philosophy and astronomy. The Laputians'
great improvements in the latter. The king's method of suppressing
insurrections."
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Gulliver then launches into a long description of how exactly Laputa
functions: first of all, the island has a crater in the center of it that collects
rain water, which is why rain doesn't just fall off it.
At the center of the island is a deep canyon with a giant lodestone, a
naturally occurring magnet, in the middle of it.
The King uses this lodestone to raise and drop the island and to keep it
moving in relation to the Earth's own magnetic poles.
The movement of Laputa has limits: it can't go beyond the king's own
dominions, in other words, the islands that he controls at sea level. It also
can't rise higher than four miles above the Earth.
It is the job of the King's astronomers to do the actual manipulation of the
lodestone at his orders.
They also spend a lot of time discovering things about the solar system and
the stars.
The only thing that limits the King's control of the Earth below him is that
all of his cabinet members have estates on the islands below Laputa, so
they find the idea of dominating the islands under them to be pretty risky
for their own families.
At the same time, the King still has two methods for keeping his authority
over the lower islands without absolutely enslaving them:
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(1) if any of them refuse to pay tribute, he can make his island float directly
overhead, blocking their sunlight and rain, until they give in;
and (2) if they continue to refuse to obey him, the King can drop his island
directly on their heads.
The King has rarely ordered this kind of total destruction because (a) his
ministers have their homes down below, and (b) his own people would
revolt against him.
Well, and there's one more reason why the King doesn't do this: secretly, he
worries that the power of his magnet might not be strong enough to lift the
island again if it comes crashing to earth.
Laputa also has a law that neither the King nor his two eldest sons, nor the
queen (while she can still have children) are allowed to leave the island.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY
"The author leaves Laputa; is conveyed to Balnibarbi; arrives at the metropolis. A
description of the metropolis, and the country adjoining. The author hospitably
received by a great lord. His conversation with that lord."
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Gulliver feels disrespected, because no one wants to talk about anything
but math or music, and he can't compete with the Laputians in either field.
Also, he has become totally sick of the Laputians themselves and their dull
conversation.
There is a lord in Laputa who has done many great things for the state, but
he gets no respect, because he has no ear for music and no talent for math.
He and Gulliver bond, because they can talk sensibly to each other.
Gulliver asks this lord (Lord Munodi) to request to the King that Gulliver be
let down in Lagado, the capital city.
The King agrees, and sends him down to the continent of Balnibarbi with
Lord Munodi and some money.
Gulliver is relieved to be on firm ground again.
He is disappointed at the sight of Lagado, though: all of the people working
there look hungry and unhappy.
Gulliver expresses his opinions of the poverty of Lagado to Lord Munodi,
who suggests that they keep this conversation for a later time, when they
are safely at Lord Munodi's own estates.
Lord Munodi's estates are beautiful, well-cultivated, and seem prosperous –
totally the opposite of the other Balnibarbi lands.
Lord Munodi tells Gulliver that his estates (which look so great to Gulliver)
bring frequent criticisms from other Laputians for mismanagement – he
has left his orchards, fields, and home in the old model of his forefathers,
while the rest of Balnibarbi has gone over to new ideas of farming.
The problem is, about 40 years before, some people from Balnibarbi went
up to Laputa and came back filled with ideas for reform of everything –
arts, science, all of it.
These guys found an academy in Lagado, filled with professors who
promise all kinds of miracles – auto-ripening fruit, reduction of working
hours, etc., etc.
Their plans have become total fads in all of the cities in the kingdom, but
the problem is – all their calculations don't actually work.
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So, these impractical men (Swift calls them "Projectors" (3.4.15)) have
completely ruined the buildings and farmland of Balnibarbi with their
farfetched ideas and equations.
Lord Munodi promises to get Gulliver an invitation to Lagado's Royal
Academy if he wants it, which Gulliver does.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 5 SUMMARY
"The author permitted to see the grand academy of Lagado. The academy largely
described. The arts wherein the professors employ themselves."
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Gulliver spends many days at the Royal Academy in Lagado, where there
are at least 500 Projectors (impractical students of science) hanging out
and thinking.
Their projects include:
1. To take sunbeams out of cucumbers;
2. To turn human poo back into food (ugh);
3. To melt ice into gunpowder;
4. To build houses from the roof down;
5. To paint without sight, but according to the texture and smell of the
colors;
6. To use pigs to plough fields;
7. To use spider webs to replace silk threads;
8. To change the course of the moon and sun so that we can combine
weathervanes and sundials.
Gulliver gets a bit sick, so he goes to a physician at the academy who is
famous for treating gas. This doctor's treatment is really, really surprising:
he wants to stick a bellows up the butt of his patient to physically draw
wind out of his body.
After pumping the wind out, the physician fills his bellows with air from the
outside, replaces the bellows in the anus of his patient, and fills the poor
guy with air.
The idea is that the patient is then supposed to expel both the outside air
and the bad air inside of him, thus curing him.
But Gulliver sees this doctor testing his bellows on a dog, and what
actually happens is that the dog essentially dies of explosive diarrhea.
Gulliver's last visit in the experimental part of the Academy is to "the
universal artist," a man who is supposed to be working to benefit mankind
with lots of projects.
Gulliver sees the guy's 50 apprentices working busily.
Currently, the artist has two plans: (1) to plant fields with chaff (the shells
of plant seeds), because he believes that's what causes seeds to grow (not
true!).
And (2), he wants to breed a herd of naked sheep. Not exactly helpful.
Following this meeting, Gulliver heads over to the part of the Academy
that'sless practical, and deals with abstract sciences.
His first meeting is with a professor who has a giant square strung with
wires, on which are written all the words of the Laputian language.
This giant square has handles on all sides for the professor's students to
use to turn the frame.
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By turning the frame, the professor's students shake up the words hanging
inside the square.
Whenever three or four of the words together seem to make sense, the
students write down these phrases.
Out of this random word frame, the professor hopes to create a complete set
of all the world's arts and sciences. Ambitious!
Another set of professors is trying to think of how to avoid
miscommunication between people. One person suggests cutting all long
words down to one syllable and leaving out verbs.
Another has an even more amazing idea: stop speaking altogether, and
justcarry around the objects that will give your listeners an idea of what
you mean.
(As Gulliver points out, this might mean you'll have to carry around a lot of
stuff if your ideas are at all complex.)
At the math school at the Academy, Gulliver sees a professor trying to get
his students literally to absorb the material he's teaching, by feeding them
a cracker with equations written on it. It doesn't work, sadly.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY
"A further account of the academy. The author proposes some improvements,
which are honorably received."
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Gulliver finds the political school less funny, because all the professors
seem nuts. The political projectors want to come up with ways to
reward merit andability in public service – poppycock!
(Sorry, it's just that we've been reading so much Swift that we're getting
pretty sarcastic ourselves.)
Anyway, Gulliver tells us that this kind of madness is so far-fetched that it
goes past funny into sad.
But actually, some of the political projectors are less crazy and therefore
amusing, Gulliver reassures: there's one guy who suggests that, if a
political assembly is like a body, then it stands to reason that cures for the
body might also cure problems in the assembly itself.
So, he offers that all senators should receive regular medical treatment to
make sure that they don't fall into greed, corruption, or bribery.
The same guy also suggests various "cures" for the weak memories and
poor decision-making of senators.
Possibly our favorite suggestion from this particular fellow is that, if
political party division becomes too bad, we should take 100 guys from
each political party and split their brains. In this way, each skull will now
have half a conservative and half a liberal brain in it. Then they can literally
argue it out among themselves.
To raise money, there's a proposal to tax everything bad in a man, as
decided by his neighbors; a second fellow suggests that they tax everything
good about a man, again, as assessed by his neighbors. The problem is,
how can we be sure that jealous neighbors will admit the virtues of their
friends?
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To choose who will serve in high office, a professor proposes a raffle, which
will keep hope alive among senators who might otherwise turn against the
crown.
And another professor (this suggestion is also kind of awesome) advises
that you can tell if a man is plotting against the government if you measure
and analyze his poo. This professor uses his own poo as an example: it was
kind of green when he wanted to kill the King, but totally different when he
was only planning rebellion.
Gulliver offers to tell this professor about a land he's seen, "Tribnia" (a.k.a.
Britain), which its residents call "Langden" (England).
Gulliver says that the plots in "Tribnia" are generally on the part of
informers who want to raise their own reputations by making up stuff.
Usually, the accusers decide who to target in advance so they can raid the
homes of the accused.
There, they steal all the letters belonging to the accused so they can find
"proof" of treason by assigning special meanings and fake codes to the
words of the accused.
The political professor thanks Gulliver for his information, and Gulliver
starts thinking of going back to England.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY
"The author leaves Lagado: arrives at Maldonada. No ship ready. He takes a short
voyage to Glubbdubdrib. His reception by the governor."
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Gulliver claims that Balnibarbi is situated in the Pacific, west of California,
which has not yet been charted (much like Brobdingnag).
To the north of Lagado is the island of Luggnagg, which is not far southeast
of Japan.
These two countries have trade relations, so Gulliver plans to go to
Luggnagg, sail for Japan, and then head for Europe.
Gulliver has to wait for a month before a boat will arrive at the port city of
Maldonada to take him to Luggnagg.
Since he has nothing to do for a month, a local guy suggests that he try
visiting the small island of Glubbdubdrib, an island of sorcerers.
These sorcerers are very private and only marry among each other.
The Governor of Glubbdubdrib can raise the dead, but only for one day,
and he can't call them back again until three months have gone by.
Gulliver goes to meet this Governor, who asks Gulliver about his
adventures.
All of the servants in the Governor's household are ghosts.
After 10 days on Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver stops worrying about the ghosts
so much, which leads the Governor to make him an offer: Gulliver can
speak to any ghosts he chooses and as many as he wants.
The one thing he has to promise is that he will only ask them questions
about their own time.
Gulliver agrees, and gets to speak to:
1. Alexander the Great (who died from drinking too much);
2. Hannibal (who is supposed to have broken a rock blocking him from
crossing the Alps using vinegar, but who tells Gulliver that really, he
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had no vinegar in his camp (source: Robert Greenberg,
Editor, Gulliver's Travels: An Annotated Text With Critical Essays. New
York: Norton, 1961, 167).);
3. Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great in the midst of their greatest
battles;
4. Brutus, Julius Caesar's assassin, whom Gulliver admires for his
bravery and commitment to the end of dictatorship.
Gulliver doesn't want to bore the reader with a complete list of who he
spoke to, but most of his conversations were with great men of history who
killed tyrants and fought for liberty.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 8 SUMMARY
"A further account of Glubbdubdrib. Ancient and modern history corrected"
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Gulliver sets aside a day to talk to learned men. He gets to meet Homer and
Aristotle, both of whom are really smart and neither of whom know any of
the guys who have commented on their works.
(By the way, for more on who all of these people are, please see our
"Character Analysis" of the Ancients.)
Gulliver also talks to a number of thinkers dealing with the nature of the
universe, including René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi.
These men all agree that each new age of humanity comes up with a new
system to explain nature, but they never last long.
Gulliver also meets most of the Emperors of Rome.
Then he moves on to the more recently deceased.
This gets a little depressing: he asks to see the family lines of the royal
houses of Europe, and finds a lot of commoners mixed in there: a barber,
an abbot, two fiddlers – those queens have been getting busy, Swift is
saying.
He makes similar discoveries with the lines of the aristocracy, in which he
sees plenty of evidence of family degeneration into stupidity and lying.
Speaking to the ghosts of the recent past shows Gulliver exactly how much
lying goes around today, and how much history has been airbrushed to
look better (or worse) than it really is.
Gulliver wants to find out how people have gotten their official and court
positions and finds that it's through horrible means: bribery, lying, sucking
up, oppression, prostitution of wives and daughters, treason, poisoning,
and incest all come up.
Gulliver discovers that the only really great services done to the state have
been by people who history calls traitors and criminals.
In fact, he also realizes that this kind of hypocrisy was present even in
Rome, once the Empire started to grow rich and luxurious.
The introduction of similar wealth to England has made English people
progressively, visibly less healthy, complains Gulliver.
Total corruption has caused England to grow repulsive over the previous
100 years.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 9 SUMMARY
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"The author returns to Maldonada. Sails to the kingdom of Luggnagg. The author
confined. He is sent for to court. The manner of his admittance. The king's great
lenity to his subjects."
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Gulliver finally leaves Glubbdubdrib and heads for Luggnagg. He arrives in
Luggnagg on April 21, 1708.
Gulliver starts speaking to a customs officer in Luggnagg, where he
pretends to be Dutch.
Since Gulliver's eventual destination is Japan, and the Japanese will only
allow Dutch traders access to their harbors, he figures this is a good plan.
(By the way, kudos to Swift for being absolutely correct on this historical
point – after 1637, Japan refused to allow non-Dutch European traders
onto its islands until the 1850s.)
Gulliver gets held up in Luggnagg by red tape, so he hires an interpreter
who speaks both Luggnagg and Balnibarbi and answers frequent questions
about his travels and the countries he has seen.
Eventually, Gulliver is granted an audience with the King of Luggnagg.
The King orders Gulliver to follow the local custom of crawling to the King's
feet and licking the dust in front of his footstool. Seriously.
If the King wants one of his court dead, he has poison sprinkled on the
floor in front of him where they have to eat it.
Gulliver exchanges ritual greetings with the King and then speaks to him
through his interpreter.
Apparently, the King really likes Gulliver: he gives him some money and
lets him stay at the palace.
Gulliver lives in Luggnagg for three months, but decides that, overall, it will
be safer to go home to his wife and kids.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 10 SUMMARY
"The Luggnaggians commended. A particular description of the Struldbrugs, with
many conversations between the author and some eminent persons upon that
subject."
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Gulliver finds the Luggnaggians pretty nice overall.
One day, he's chatting with some locals, and one of them asks him if he
has seen "any of their struldbrugs, or immortals" (3.10.2).
Every now and again, a child will be born with a mark on its forehead, over
its left eyebrow, which shows that it will never die. These are
the struldbrugs.
Gulliver is really excited to find a country where every child has a chance of
being born immortal.
The person Gulliver is speaking to asks Gulliver what he would do, if he
had been born immortal.
Gulliver jumps in: he would make lots of money, invest it and save it,
become the wealthiest man in the kingdom, learn everything there is to
know about everything, and write down all the events and fashions that he
sees to provide future knowledge for the nation.
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Gulliver would also take care to instruct young people, but most of his
friends would be fellow immortals, since what would be the point of
hanging out with lots of people without the benefit of his experience?
Gulliver goes on to exclaim about all the discoveries he and
his struldbrugfriends would make – it would be amazing.
The person Gulliver's talking to tells him he's being an idiot: in fact, the
terrible thing about being a struldbrug is that you are immortal but you are
noteternally young.
The struldbrugs age at the same rate as other humans, the difference being,
that at 80 years old, they're much more miserable than other old people
because they have the prospect of living on and on beyond their 80 years.
As soon as a struldbrug turns 80, he is dead in terms of the law, so all of
his money goes to his heirs – he's totally poor.
Struldbrug marriages are also dissolved at 80, since they would make the
couple so much more unhappy.
At 90, they start losing their teeth, so they don't enjoy eating anymore.
Their memories get bad enough that they can't read without forgetting, at
the end of a sentence, how it began.
Because language evolves with time, older struldbrugs can't understand
younger people at all.
They have to beg for money, since otherwise, they must get by on a tiny
state allowance.
Gulliver feels ashamed of wishing to be a struldbrug, since being one is so
completely awful.
At the same time, the Luggnaggian King does remind him that the sight of
astruldbrug cures everyone of fear of death.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 3, CHAPTER 11 SUMMARY
"The author leaves Luggnagg, and sails to Japan. From thence he returns in a
Dutch ship to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to England"
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The Luggnaggian King offers Gulliver a job at court, but Gulliver wants to
go home.
The King sends him off with a generous gift of gold.
Gulliver heads to Japan, where he uses a letter of recommendation from
the Luggnaggian King to get an audience with the Emperor of Japan.
The two talk to each other using Dutch.
Gulliver tells the Emperor that he is a Dutch merchant looking for passage
to "Nangasac" (3.10.4) – presumably Nagasaki, home to a large Dutch
settlement in the eighteenth century.
Gulliver also asks the Emperor if he could please be excused from the
Dutch custom of trampling on the cross, as a favor to his patron, the King
of Luggnagg.
The Emperor agrees, but warns Gulliver not to let any of the Dutch know or
he'll have his throat cut on the trip home.
Gulliver, of course, has lived in Holland – you may remember, way back in
Part 1, Chapter 1, Gulliver mentions studying medicine at the University of
Leiden.
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His Dutch is great, and he manages to convince some Dutch sailors to let
him sail with them.
They all ask if he's had a chance to stomp on the crucifix yet, and he
dodges the question by saying he has "satisfied the Emperor [...] in all
particulars" (3.11.5).
Gulliver's trip home is uneventful, and he finally gets to see his family after
5 and a half years away.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY
"The author sets out as captain of a ship. His men conspire against him, confine
him a long time to his cabin, and set him on shore in an unknown land. He
travels up into the country. The Yahoos, a strange sort of animal, described. The
author meets two Houyhnhnms."
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Gulliver spends 5 months at home with his family before he heads out yet
again, leaving his wife pregnant.
This time, he gets to be captain of his ship, the Adventurer. Their job is to
trade goods with residents of the South Seas.
They set sail on September 7, 1710.
Several of Gulliver's sailors die of "calentures," a fever of the Tropics, so he
has to hire some new guys.
These new guys form a conspiracy to mutiny against Gulliver. They keep
Gulliver a prisoner in his own cabin as they sail around trading with the
locals.
In May, 1711, one of the sailors comes down to Gulliver's cabin to tell him
that they have decided to maroon Gulliver ashore.
Gulliver starts exploring his new island, where he sees some of its
inhabitants from a distance: they look like naked, hairy monsters with
claws for climbing trees. Gulliver finds them disgusting.
One of these beasts approaches Gulliver, and he hits it with the flat of his
sword – he doesn't want to damage the animal, for fear that the inhabitants
of the island will be angry that he's damaging their livestock.
The hairy thing roars, and about 40 other hairy things come running over.
Gulliver takes refuge in a tree, shaking his sword to keep the animals back,
but they start throwing their excrement at him in rage. Gulliver is worried
he's going to be smothered under all of this feces.
Suddenly, all the animals turn around and run away.
Gulliver looks over his shoulder and sees a horse coming his way. He looks
rather surprised at the sight of Gulliver, and when Gulliver reaches to
touch him, he shies away.
The horse neighs several times in a way that seems to have meaning.
A second horse arrives, and the two seem to be talking to each other.
Gulliver tries to sneak away, but one of the horses neighs at him and he
returns as though he has been ordered.
What really seems to surprise the horses is Gulliver's clothes, which they
keep indicating and talking over.
Gulliver finally addresses them, asking for their help in exchange for a knife
and a bracelet he happens to be carrying. He thinks the horses are
probably magicians in disguise.
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The horses keep saying the word "Yahoo," which Gulliver repeats back to
them.
They correct his pronunciation, and then teach him another word:
"Houyhnhnm" (generally pronounced "whinnim," obviously coming from
"whinny," the sound a horse makes).
The two horses part, and one of them (who is gray) indicates that Gulliver
should follow him.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 2 SUMMARY
"The author conducted by a Houyhnhnm to his house. The house described. The
author's reception. The food of the Houyhnhnms. The author in distress for want
of meat. Is at last relieved. His manner of feeding in this country."
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Gulliver and the gray horse go about three miles, to a long, low building.
Gulliver sees several horses doing housework and thinks that the people
who tamed these animals to such a degree must be the smartest people
who ever were.
Gulliver starts to think he's hallucinating, because he can't figure out (a)
where the people are, and (b) what kind of man needs to be served by
horses.
Finally, Gulliver arrives at a building far from the main house, which has
three of those gross, hairy animals from the previous chapter chained to
the wall.
They are eating roots and meat from animals that have died by accident –
donkeys, dogs, and cows.
The horse leader orders "the sorrel nag" ("sorrel" meaning a kind of
chestnut or reddish color, "nag" meaning horse) to unchain one of the
beasts and bring him to Gulliver.
When Gulliver sees this beast close up, he realizes that what the horses
have been calling Yahoos are actually men: their hands have uncut nails,
and they are a bit hairier and more calloused than Gulliver, but still, they
are unmistakably human beings.
What is clearly confusing the horses is that Gulliver has the head of a
Yahoo, but his body is pretty different: they don't understand that his
clothes are not part of his skin.
The horses see that Gulliver truly loathes the Yahoos, and that he also
can't eat the raw meat they eat.
Gulliver sees a cow passing and indicates that he will milk her, which is
how he finally feeds himself.
Around noon, an elderly horse appears in a carriage drawn by 4 Yahoos.
He settles down with the gray horse to a lunch of hay, mashed oats, and
milk.
They all appear extremely well-mannered, modest, and decent.
After lunch, the gray horse (whom Gulliver has started calling the Master
Horse) indicates that he's worried that Gulliver has eaten so little.
Finally, Gulliver figures out a way to make a kind of bread out of oats,
which he eats with milk. And even though it's not the most delicious food in
the world, a steady diet of this stuff makes him really healthy.
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Gulliver spends his first night lying in straw between the house and the
Yahoo stable.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY
"The author studies to learn the language, the Houyhnhnm, his master, assists in
teaching him. The language described. Several Houyhnhnms of quality come out
of curiosity to see the author. He gives his master a short account of his voyage."
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Gulliver spends most of his early days in Houyhnhnm Land learning the
language with the help of the sorrel nag, the reddish servant to the Master
Horse.
Houyhnhnm language sounds a lot like German, but is more "graceful"
(4.3.2).
The Master Horse is really interested in Gulliver because he is clearly a
Yahoo, but he is so clean and teachable.
The Master Horse asks where Gulliver can possibly come from, to be so
smart, but he also refuses to believe that Yahoos could ever build a boat or
that there are countries across the sea.
Gulliver discovers that, in their language, "Houyhnhnm" means both horse
and "perfection of nature" (4.3.5).
Many Houynhnhnms come to see Gulliver, staring in wonder at a Yahoo
who seems to possess reason.
As we've said before, they don't really get clothes, but one night, as Gulliver
is getting ready for bed, he accidentally exposes himself to the sorrel nag of
the Master Horse. The servant thinks that Gulliver changes skins as he
sleeps.
Gulliver has been trying to cover up the fact that underneath his clothes,
he really is like the other Yahoos, but now his secret's out.
So Gulliver explains clothes to the Master Horse.
Even without his clothes, the Master Horse is impressed by how different
Gulliver is from the other Yahoos, because his skin is so pale, soft, and
relatively hairless.
Gulliver asks the Master Horse to stop calling him a Yahoo and to keep the
secret of his clothes. The Master Horse agrees.
The Master Horse tells Gulliver to learn the Houyhnhnm language ASAP so
that he can ask Gulliver more questions.
Gulliver is finally able to tell the Master Horse that he arrived at his island
in a ship made by men and sailed by men, that he was set ashore thanks to
an argument between men.
The Master Horse asks how the Houyhnhnms of Gulliver's country allowed
a ship to be sailed by brutes.
Gulliver makes the Master Horse promise not to get mad, and then he
explains that, in his country, the Houyhnhnms are the brutes and the men
are the reasonable beings.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY
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"The Houyhnhnm's notion of truth and falsehood. The author's discourse
disapproved by his master. The author gives a more particular account of himself,
and the accidents of his voyage."
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The Master Horse is confused because he feels doubt, but he is also
completely unfamiliar with the idea of lying.
Gulliver tells the Master Horse about the poor treatment horses often
receive as work animals in his home country.
The
Master
Horse
is
utterly
disgusted
to
hear
that
Yahoos ride Houyhnhnms where Gulliver comes from. How dare they, when
Houynhnhnms are so much stronger than Yahoos?
Gulliver talks about the process of breaking horses.
The Master Horse continues to be outraged. He admits that, if horses in
Gulliver's country are stupid, then it make sense that the Yahoos win out,
because reason beats strength every time.
The Master Horse wants to know if the Yahoos in Gulliver's country are
more like Gulliver or like the Yahoos of Houyhnhnm Land?
Gulliver answers that they are more like him, which the Master Horse
actually thinks is something of a disadvantage. Sure, they're better-looking,
but they're also physically even weaker and less suited to survival.
It takes Gulliver ages to explain to the Master Horse about his own origins,
because there are no words in Houyhnhnm language for things like
deception, power, wealth, lust, or envy.
The Master Horse finally grasps what Gulliver is getting at when he
describes human nature, and wants to hear more about European culture.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 5 SUMMARY
"The author at his master's command, informs him of the state of England. The
causes of war among the princes of Europe. The author begins to explain the
English constitution.
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Gulliver tells the Master Horse about some recent English history: the
Glorious Revolution in 1689 and the War of the Spanish Succession from
1701 to 1714.
(The Glorious Revolution took place when the Protestant English
Parliament decided that it did not want a hereditary monarchy of Catholics
to rule the country – then-king James II and VII was a Catholic. So,
Parliament decided that it had the power to appoint kings, and invited
Dutch Protestant leader William of Orange to become William III of
England. James II and VII fled to France and became the center of the
Jacobite movement. The Glorious Revolution ushered in the reign of
William and Mary, from 1689 to 1702 (source).
(The War of the Spanish Succession – oh God, this is complicated. Okay, so
basically, there are four major European powers in competition at this
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point, the Spanish, the English, the French, and the Austrians. They are
competing not only in Europe, but also for control of their colonial
properties in the Americas.
King Charles II of Spain is growing old and has no children, so everyone's
just waiting to see who's going to control the lands Spain has conquered.
England and France form an alliance against Leopold I of the Austrian
Empire, but then France strikes out on its own and everything gets even
less stable.
Finally, after plenty of expensive warfare, the upshot for England is that
France signs over several of its territories in Eastern Canada, Britain gets
commercial privileges in Spanish colonies in America, and the French
promise not to support any of the exiled members of deposed king James II
and VII's family (source).
The Master Horse wants to know why humans go to war. Gulliver answers:
(1) ambition to conquer, (2) corruption of the government, (3) differences of
opinion. Wars over opinions are the worst kind.
Here, the Master Horse says something really quite tragic: he tells Gulliver
that, with all of this warlike nature, it's lucky that humans can't do too
much damage to each other because their mouths aren't designed for easy
biting.
Gulliver explains weapons and the damage that humans can do to each
other.
The Master Horse stops Gulliver here, and says that he can't hear any more
about war because it's too disturbing. Gulliver's tales have only made him
hate Yahoos more and more.
The Master Horse thinks we don't have reason or rationality at all – we have
some other thing that allows us to practice our bad qualities as much as
possible.
The Master Horse is confused about law: how can laws be bad? How can
laws ruin men, when they are designed to save them?
Gulliver explains about lawyers, who, he says, are trained from babyhood
to defend anything, especially lies, so they have no sense of justice.
What's more, judges often prefer to agree with what appears obviously
untrue, so people with right on their side may only win if they pretend that
right is wrong.
Gulliver talks about precedent: anything that has been done before may
legally be done again.
Lawyers like to split hairs and talk about irrelevant details to distract from
the simple facts of all their cases.
They have their own private way of speaking, which excludes ordinary
people from either understanding or making laws.
People in power can decide to convict others accused of crimes against the
state because they have influence over the judges.
The Master Horse comments that it's a shame that they spend so much
time training lawyers to be lawyers and not teaching them to be
knowledgeable and wise.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 6 SUMMARY
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"A continuation of the state of England under Queen Anne. The character of a
first minister of state in European courts."
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Next up, Gulliver tries to explain the concept of greed to the Master Horse.
He claims that England grows enough food to support its population
comfortably, but because they want luxury, they must export what they
grow in exchange for things that they don't need.
This luxury – wine, rich food, too much sex – all leads the English to
diseases, the likes of which the Houyhnhnms have never seen.
Another group of people have arisen to treat these diseases – to profit off
them – using fake potions to make people purge their insides.
This group of people (doctors, of course) make so much profit on disease
that they encourage people to think that they are sick even when they
aren't.
They also use their wisdom to poison people who have become
inconvenient: when husbands and wives have gotten tired of their partners
or sons have gotten fed up with their fathers, doctors can take care of the
problem.
The Master Horse wants to know what a "Minister of State" is (in American
terms, something like a Cabinet Member for the President).
Gulliver tells the Master Horse that the First Minister of State is someone
totally without any emotion besides ambition for money and power.
The chief qualifications for the First Minister of State are: (1) to know how
to get rid of an inconvenient wife, daughter, or sister; (2) to betray the
Minister who has come before you; (3) to shout endlessly against corruption
at court (though, of course, Ministers always lie).
Chief Ministers of State dedicate themselves to bribing and intimidating
others to follow their orders.
And Gulliver's tirade continues: he tells the Master Horse that the nobility
in his country are educated to be lazy and ignorant, and that there is
frequent mixing of classes that damages noble bloodlines.
Despite their total uselessness, they still have authority over all lower-born
people in the country.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY
"The author's great love of his native country. His master's observations upon the
constitution and administration of England, as described by the author, with
parallel cases and comparisons. His master's observations upon human nature."
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Gulliver starts to hate the Yahoos and love the Houyhnhnms.
In fact, he decides that he never wants to leave Houyhnhnm Land and
return to humankind.
The Master Horse gives Gulliver his conclusions: the European Yahoos
have only enough reason to make their natural corruption worse.
By clipping our nails, cutting our hair, and generally growing soft, we have
also deprived ourselves of the natural protection the Yahoos in Houyhnhnm
Land have.
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Even though there are outward differences between Gulliver and the
Houyhnhnm Land Yahoos, their essential natures are the same: they hate
each other more than other animals do, and will fight even without a
reason.
The Yahoos of Houyhnhnm Land also love shiny rocks, which none of the
Houyhnhnms understand, but which sees to be a trait of the whole human
species.
Yahoos are the only animals in Houyhnhnm land who get sick, and they
treat each other with medicine made from a mix of pee and poo (urgh).
The Master Horse does admit that European Yahoos have a lot more art
than their local Yahoos.
Still, their natures seem essentially identical: for example, Houyhnhnm
Land Yahoos also like to choose a leader, usually the weakest and ugliest of
the group.
As for women (what the Master Horse calls "she Yahoos" (4.7.15)), he
observes that Yahoos are the only ones among animal kind that still have
sex even when the woman is pregnant. (Swift's point here seems to be that
sex is for procreation, so once a woman's pregnant, she shouldn't need sex
– which, if we may editorialize, is kind of icky of him.)
He also notes that Yahoos are unique in having both males and females
fighting equally violently with one another.
The Master Horse continues: Yahoos love filth more than most animals.
Also, Yahoos sometimes fall into bad moods or think they are sick for no
reason; the only cure for this hypochondria is hard work.
Women Yahoos like to seduce men. Sometimes, if an unknown female
comes up to a group of three or four women, those women will clearly judge
and then reject her.
Gulliver hears these words and realizes that "lewdness, coquetry, censure,
and scandal" (4.7.19) all seem to be instinctive for human women. (For a
discussion of Gulliver's views on women, check out our theme on "Gender.")
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 8 SUMMARY
"The author relates several particulars of the Yahoos. The great virtues of the
Houyhnhnms. The education and exercise of their youth. Their general
assembly."
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Gulliver asks the Master Horse for permission to observe the Yahoos, which
the Master Horse gives as long as Gulliver is always accompanied by a
Houyhnhnm guard – the sorrel nag.
Yahoo children are agile, and they also smell bad.
Yahoos are strong but cowardly, stubborn, lying, and deceitful.
The Yahoos also swim well, which leads Gulliver to an adventure.
One day, the weather is so hot that he wants to go for a swim, so he asks
the sorrel nag if he may go for a dip in the river.
The sorrel nag agrees.
A young female Yahoo finds Gulliver so hot that she goes running into the
river to try and seduce him on the spot.
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Gulliver freaks out and yells.
At the sight of his Houyhnhnm guard, she runs away.
Gulliver is truly embarrassed, because this is the final proof he needs that
he is, in fact, a Yahoo.
Gulliver has spent three years in Houyhnhnm Land and is ready to tell the
reader a bit more about the Houyhnhnms.
The Houyhnhnms do not understand the word "opinion" truly, because
they are totally devoted to reason, and you can only have an opinion about
something you do not know absolutely.
It doesn't make sense to argue over something you can't know; the
Houyhnhnms believe that you should respect other people's ideas without
trying to dominate with your own.
The Houyhnhnms are equally good to their neighbors and strangers; they
value friendship above all else.
When a female Houyhnhnm has had a foal of each gender, a couple will
stop producing children. This is to keep Houyhnhnm Land from becoming
overpopulated.
The rule is slightly relaxed for servant-class Houyhnhnms , who can have
up to three kids of each gender.
The Houyhnhnms do not believe in mixing races, so a Houyhnhnm will only
marry another Houyhnhnm of the same color. (For a discussion of race
inGulliver's Travels, check out our "Character Analyses" of the
Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos.)
The Houyhnhnms apply their rules of reason even to marriage, which is
always arranged for a couple by their parents. Houyhnhnm couples are
always faithful.
The Houyhnhnms believe in equality of education for the sexes, since it's
not rational to leave half the species knowing nothing except how to bear
children.
Children are strictly disciplined, with a restricted grass diet and lots and
lots of exercise.
The Houyhnhnms have assemblies representing the whole nation every
four years, where they check in to make sure everyone has all the supplies
they need.
If one Houyhnhnm couple has two sons and another has two daughters,
they'll trade one to make sure that they have the set quantity of one boy
and one girl.
If one family has lost one or both children, another Houyhnhnm couple has
to have a child to supply their loss.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 9 SUMMARY
"A grand debate at the general assembly of the Houyhnhnms, and how it was
determined. The learning of the Houyhnhnms. Their buildings. Their manner of
burials. The defectiveness of their language."
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The Houyhnhnms hold one of their four-year grand assemblies while
Gulliver is there.
They go back to an old debate: whether Yahoos should be wiped off the face
of the Earth.
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On the side of "yes": they're disgusting and they have to be watched
constantly to keep them from doing bad things.
Also, Yahoos are not native to Houyhnhnm Land: a man and a woman
arrived one day, washed up on the shores of the island.
The Houyhnhnms caught and tamed their children.
The Master Horse speaks up to say, yes, it seems likely that these two
original Yahoos came from over the sea, because the Master Horse has
found one (Gulliver) who is a much better specimen of the Yahoo kind.
The Master Horse tells his fellows that, in Gulliver's land, Houyhnhnms are
the servants and Yahoos are the rational animals.
The Master Horse also informs them about the human practice of
castrating horses to make them less aggressive – why don't the
Houyhnhnms try this method on young Yahoos of their own country?
This way, the Houyhnhnms could make the Yahoos more docile, which
would mean they wouldn't need to kill them all.
The Houyhnhnms don't write anything down; they rely on oral records for
their history.
They also don't have much in the way of astronomy, except to measure
months and years.
They write beautiful poetry about friendship and in praise of their athletes.
Unless they have some kind of accident, they only die of old age, usually at
around 70 or 75.
All of their words for something bad are connected to Yahoos, so a poorly
built house is ynholmhmrohlnw Yahoo, and a stone that cuts their
feet,ynlhmndwihlma Yahoo.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 10 SUMMARY
"The author's economy, and happy life, among the Houyhnhnms. His great
improvement in virtue by conversing with them. Their conversations. The author
has notice given him by his master, that he must depart from the country. He
falls into a swoon for grief; but submits. He contrives and finishes a canoe by the
help of a fellow-servant, and puts to sea at a venture."
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Gulliver is absolutely content: he has all the shelter (thanks, in part, to the
building skills of the sorrel nag), clothing, and clothes he needs, and he
feels completely calm and at peace.
Gulliver has lots of nice friends among the Houyhnhnms; in fact, he's
proud that the Houyhnhnms sometimes say that he "trots like a horse"
(4.10.4).
Sadly, one morning the Master Horse comes to see Gulliver and to tell him
that the Houyhnhnms have voted that Gulliver must go away. They worry
that such a smart Yahoo might encourage the other Yahoos to rise up and
kill the Houyhnhnm's cattle.
The Master Horse tells Gulliver that he will be sorry to see him go – but he
will have to.
Gulliver is heartbroken at this news, so much so that he actual faints.
The Master Horse gives Gulliver two months to finish his boat, which he
builds with the help of the sorrel nag.
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Gulliver explores the coast with his telescope and finds a small island
about three and a half miles away that he can reach in his boat.
Finally, when the day comes for Gulliver to leave, the Master Horse and his
whole family come to see him off.
Gulliver cries and kisses the hoof of the Master Horse.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 11 SUMMARY
"The author's dangerous voyage. He arrives at New Holland, hoping to settle
there. Is wounded with an arrow by one of the natives. Is seized and carried by
force into a Portuguese ship. The great civilities of the captain. The author arrives
in England."
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It is February 15, 1714.
The Master Horse and his family keep watching Gulliver from the shore
until he floats out of sight.
The sorrel nag calls to Gulliver to take care of himself.
Gulliver hopes to find the island uninhabited, but still with enough
resources to support him.
He really doesn't want to return to the Yahoos.
On the fourth day, he sees people – they are naked and sitting around a
fire.
He jumps into a canoe and rows away, but not before the people shoot his
knee with a poisoned arrow, which leaves a scar.
As Gulliver is rowing away as fast as he can, he sees a sail in the distance,
from a European ship.
Gulliver finally decides to go back to where he saw the natives: he would
rather hang around with them than with the European Yahoos.
But, unfortunately, the ship's sailors land and stumble on Gulliver anyway.
They address Gulliver in Portuguese, and he answers that he is a "poor
Yahoo banished from the Houyhnhnms" (4.11.7).
Gulliver tells them that he is from England.
Since the English and the Portuguese are not at war, he hopes they will not
be mean to him.
The sailors bring Gulliver aboard their ship, which is heading for Lisbon in
Portugal.
Gulliver meets the captain, Don Pedro de Mendez, who wants to know
where Gulliver is from. He's so distressed to be back among the Yahoos
that he won't tell the captain – in fact, he tries to throw himself into the sea
to swim away, but he is caught before he can.
Don Pedro thinks Gulliver is lying at first, as he starts talking about
Houyhnhnm land.
Gulliver is confused at his doubt – it has been many years since Gulliver
has heard a lie.
Don Pedro makes Gulliver promise that he will not try to kill himself on the
way home.
Gulliver promises, and he also tries not to talk endlessly about how much
he hates people now (though he can't help himself).
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They arrive at Lisbon, and Don Pedro insists that Gulliver stay at his own
house and borrow some clothes (again, over Gulliver's protests, since he's
not used to thinking about style or fit any longer).
After 10 days in Portugal, Don Pedro tells Gulliver that it is his
responsibility to go back home to his family.
It would be impossible for Gulliver to find a solitary island to maroon
himself on, but in his own home, he could be as much of a hermit as he
wants to be.
Gulliver grudgingly agrees, and heads back to his home.
His wife and children are delighted to see him, because they thought he
was dead.
But Gulliver is disgusted: he is still having trouble looking at Yahoos.
The thought that he had sex with one, his wife, and brought three more
Yahoos onto this earth, fills him with despair.
In fact, it's been five years since he's gotten back to England, and he can
still barely stand to be in their presence.
Gulliver has bought two young stallions, which he keeps in a good stable.
He visits them and talks to them at least four hours a day (!).
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS PART 4, CHAPTER 12 SUMMARY
"The author's veracity. His design in publishing this work. His censure of those
travellers who swerve from the truth. The author clears himself of any sinister
ends in writing. An objection answered. The method of planting colonies. His
native country commended. The right of the crown to those countries described
by the author is justified. The difficulty of conquering them. The author takes his
last leave of the reader; proposes his manner of living for the future; gives good
advice, and concludes."
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Gulliver claims that absolutely everything he has written is absolutely true.
In fact, he thinks it's a disgrace that so many travelers embroider or
exaggerate their published accounts of their trips around the world.
Gulliver's motto is: Nec si miserum Fortuna Sinonem/Finxit, vanum etiam,
menacemque improba finget (4.12.3) – "Though Fortune has made Sinon
wretched, she has not made him untrue and a liar." (citation: Robert
Greenberg, Editor, Gulliver's Travels: An Annotated Text With Critical
Essays. New York: Norton, 1961, 256). In other words, though Gulliver is
bummed about having left Houyhnhnm Land, he still refuses to lie about
any of his experiences.
The purpose of writing his memoirs is not to gain fame, but to share the
superior example of the Houyhnhnms with the world.
Gulliver has been warned that he must first relate his experiences to an
English secretary of state in order to give England the opportunity of
invading the lands he has visited.
It wouldn't be profitable to try: the Lilliputians are too small to be worth it,
the Brobdingnagians, too large and dangerous, and the Laputians, literally
out of reach.
While the Houyhnhnms are totally inexperienced with war, still, the English
shouldn't invade them.
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The Houyhnhnms are smart, strong, and love their country – they would
figure out how to defend it quickly enough.
In fact, Gulliver wishes that the Houyhnhnms would come over and teach
all of their virtues to the European Yahoos.
A further reason why Gulliver doesn't want the Europeans to conquer the
lands he has seen is because they don't seem to want to be conquered.
Taking their lands against their will is cruel.
So now, Gulliver is nearing the end of his tale.
Gulliver is sitting in his garden thinking; he is instructing his family as best
he can; he is applying the lessons of Houyhnhnm Land; he is looking at his
face in the mirror to get used to the features of Yahoos; and he is mourning
the treatment of Houyhnhnms in England.
Just this last week (after five years home), Gulliver is able to let his wife sit
at dinner with him – at the far end of the table.
What he really hates is not the bad qualities that Yahoos can't seem to
escape. It's the pride they feel in themselves even though they are so
disgusting, diseased, and detestable.
The Houyhnhnms, who possess good natures, are not proud, because they
are born good, and cannot help but be good. They don't need to
congratulate themselves.
The only way that Gulliver will ever be able to sit in the company of an
English Yahoo again is if they avoid at least this one sin: the sin of pride.
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
Jonathan Swift
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Might Versus Right
Gulliver’s Travels implicitly poses the question of whether physical power or moral
righteousness should be the governing factor in social life. Gulliver experiences
the advantages of physical might both as one who has it, as a giant in Lilliput
where he can defeat the Blefuscudian navy by virtue of his immense size, and as
one who does not have it, as a miniature visitor to Brobdingnag where he is
harassed by the hugeness of everything from insects to household pets. His first
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encounter with another society is one of entrapment, when he is physically tied
down by the Lilliputians; later, in Brobdingnag, he is enslaved by a farmer. He
also observes physical force used against others, as with the Houyhnhnms’
chaining up of the Yahoos.
But alongside the use of physical force, there are also many claims to power
based on moral correctness. The whole point of the egg controversy that has set
Lilliput against Blefuscu is not merely a cultural difference but, instead, a
religious and moral issue related to the proper interpretation of a passage in their
holy book. This difference of opinion seems to justify, in their eyes at least, the
warfare it has sparked. Similarly, the use of physical force against the Yahoos is
justified for the Houyhnhnms by their sense of moral superiority: they are
cleaner, better behaved, and more rational. But overall, the novel tends to show
that claims to rule on the basis of moral righteousness are often just as arbitrary
as, and sometimes simply disguises for, simple physical subjugation. The
Laputans keep the lower land of Balnibarbi in check through force because they
believe themselves to be more rational, even though we might see them as absurd
and unpleasant. Similarly, the ruling elite of Balnibarbi believes itself to be in the
right in driving Lord Munodi from power, although we perceive that Munodi is the
rational party. Claims to moral superiority are, in the end, as hard to justify as
the random use of physical force to dominate others.
The Individual Versus Society
Like many narratives about voyages to nonexistent lands, Gulliver’s
Travels explores the idea of utopia—an imaginary model of the ideal community.
The idea of a utopia is an ancient one, going back at least as far as the
description in Plato’sRepublic of a city-state governed by the wise and expressed
most famously in English by Thomas More’s Utopia. Swift nods to both works in
his own narrative, though his attitude toward utopia is much more skeptical, and
one of the main aspects he points out about famous historical utopias is the
tendency to privilege the collective group over the individual. The children of
Plato’s Republic are raised communally, with no knowledge of their biological
parents, in the understanding that this system enhances social fairness. Swift
has the Lilliputians similarly raise their offspring collectively, but its results are
not exactly utopian, since Lilliput is torn by conspiracies, jealousies, and
backstabbing.
The Houyhnhnms also practice strict family planning, dictating that the parents
of two females should exchange a child with a family of two males, so that the
male-to-female ratio is perfectly maintained. Indeed, they come closer to the
utopian ideal than the Lilliputians in their wisdom and rational simplicity. But
there is something unsettling about the Houyhnhnms’ indistinct personalities
and about how they are the only social group that Gulliver encounters who do not
have proper names. Despite minor physical differences, they are all so good and
rational that they are more or less interchangeable, without individual identities.
In their absolute fusion with their society and lack of individuality, they are in a
sense the exact opposite of Gulliver, who has hardly any sense of belonging to his
native society and exists only as an individual eternally wandering the seas.
Gulliver’s intense grief when forced to leave the Houyhnhnms may have
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something to do with his longing for union with a community in which he can
lose his human identity. In any case, such a union is impossible for him, since he
is not a horse, and all the other societies he visits make him feel alienated as well.
Gulliver’s Travels could in fact be described as one of the first novels of modern
alienation, focusing on an individual’s repeated failures to integrate into societies
to which he does not belong. England itself is not much of a homeland for
Gulliver, and, with his surgeon’s business unprofitable and his father’s estate
insufficient to support him, he may be right to feel alienated from it. He never
speaks fondly or nostalgically about England, and every time he returns home, he
is quick to leave again. Gulliver never complains explicitly about feeling lonely,
but the embittered and antisocial misanthrope we see at the end of the novel is
clearly a profoundly isolated individual. Thus, if Swift’s satire mocks the excesses
of communal life, it may also mock the excesses of individualism in its portrait of
a miserable and lonely Gulliver talking to his horses at home in England.
The Limits of Human Understanding
The idea that humans are not meant to know everything and that all
understanding has a natural limit is important in Gulliver’s Travels. Swift singles
out theoretical knowledge in particular for attack: his portrait of the disagreeable
and self-centered Laputans, who show blatant contempt for those who are not
sunk in private theorizing, is a clear satire against those who pride themselves on
knowledge above all else. Practical knowledge is also satirized when it does not
produce results, as in the academy of Balnibarbi, where the experiments for
extracting sunbeams from cucumbers amount to nothing. Swift insists that there
is a realm of understanding into which humans are simply not supposed to
venture. Thus his depictions of rational societies, like Brobdingnag and
Houyhnhnmland, emphasize not these people’s knowledge or understanding of
abstract ideas but their ability to live their lives in a wise and steady way.
The Brobdingnagian king knows shockingly little about the abstractions of
political science, yet his country seems prosperous and well governed. Similarly,
the Houyhnhnms know little about arcane subjects like astronomy, though they
know how long a month is by observing the moon, since that knowledge has a
practical effect on their well-being. Aspiring to higher fields of knowledge would
be meaningless to them and would interfere with their happiness. In such
contexts, it appears that living a happy and well-ordered life seems to be the very
thing for which Swift thinks knowledge is useful.
Swift also emphasizes the importance of self-understanding. Gulliver is initially
remarkably lacking in self-reflection and self-awareness. He makes no mention of
his emotions, passions, dreams, or aspirations, and he shows no interest in
describing his own psychology to us. Accordingly, he may strike us as
frustratingly hollow or empty, though it is likely that his personal emptiness is
part of the overall meaning of the novel. By the end, he has come close to a kind
of twisted self-knowledge in his deranged belief that he is a Yahoo. His revulsion
with the human condition, shown in his shabby treatment of the generous Don
Pedro, extends to himself as well, so that he ends the novel in a thinly disguised
state of self-hatred. Swift may thus be saying that self-knowledge has its
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necessary limits just as theoretical knowledge does, and that if we look too closely
at ourselves we might not be able to carry on living happily.
Motifs
Excrement
While it may seem a trivial or laughable motif, the recurrent mention of
excrement in Gulliver’s Travels actually has a serious philosophical significance
in the narrative. It symbolizes everything that is crass and ignoble about the
human body and about human existence in general, and it obstructs any attempt
to view humans as wholly spiritual or mentally transcendent creatures. Since the
Enlightenment culture of eighteenth-century England tended to view humans
optimistically as noble souls rather than vulgar bodies, Swift’s emphasis on the
common filth of life is a slap in the face of the philosophers of his day. Thus,
when Gulliver urinates to put out a fire in Lilliput, or when Brobdingnagian flies
defecate on his meals, or when the scientist in Lagado works to transform
excrement back into food, we are reminded how very little human reason has to
do with everyday existence. Swift suggests that the human condition in general is
dirtier and lowlier than we might like to believe it is.
Foreign Languages
Gulliver appears to be a gifted linguist, knowing at least the basics of several
European languages and even a fair amount of ancient Greek. This knowledge
serves him well, as he is able to disguise himself as a Dutchman in order to
facilitate his entry into Japan, which at the time only admitted the Dutch. But
even more important, his linguistic gifts allow him to learn the languages of the
exotic lands he visits with a dazzling speed and, thus, gain access to their culture
quickly. He learns the languages of the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnagians, and
even the neighing tongue of the Houyhnhnms. He is meticulous in recording the
details of language in his narrative, often giving the original as well as the
translation. One would expect that such detail would indicate a cross-cultural
sensitivity, a kind of anthropologist’s awareness of how things vary from culture
to culture. Yet surprisingly, Gulliver’s mastery of foreign languages generally does
not correspond to any real interest in cultural differences. He compares any of the
governments he visits to that of his native England, and he rarely even speculates
on how or why cultures are different at all. Thus, his facility for translation does
not indicate a culturally comparative mind, and we are perhaps meant to yearn
for a narrator who is a bit less able to remember the Brobdingnagian word for
“lark” and better able to offer a more illuminating kind of cultural analysis.
Clothing
Critics have noted the extraordinary attention that Gulliver pays to clothes
throughout his journeys. Every time he gets a rip in his shirt or is forced to adopt
some native garment to replace one of his own, he recounts the clothing details
with great precision. We are told how his pants are falling apart in Lilliput, so
that as the army marches between his legs they get quite an eyeful. We are
informed about the mouse skin he wears in Brobdingnag, and how the finest silks
of the land are as thick as blankets on him. In one sense, these descriptions are
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obviously an easy narrative device with which Swift can chart his protagonist’s
progression from one culture to another: the more ragged his clothes become and
the stranger his new wardrobe, the farther he is from the comforts and
conventions of England. His journey to new lands is also thus a journey into new
clothes. When he is picked up by Don Pedro after his fourth voyage and offered a
new suit of clothes, Gulliver vehemently refuses, preferring his wild animal skins.
We sense that Gulliver may well never fully reintegrate into European society.
But the motif of clothing carries a deeper, more psychologically complex meaning
as well. Gulliver’s intense interest in the state of his clothes may signal a deepseated anxiety about his identity, or lack thereof. He does not seem to have much
selfhood: one critic has called him an “abyss,” a void where an individual
character should be. If clothes make the man, then perhaps Gulliver’s obsession
with the state of his wardrobe may suggest that he desperately needs to be
fashioned as a personality. Significantly, the two moments when he describes
being naked in the novel are two deeply troubling or humiliating experiences: the
first when he is the boy toy of the Brobdingnagian maids who let him cavort nude
on their mountainous breasts, and the second when he is assaulted by an elevenyear-old Yahoo girl as he bathes. Both incidents suggest more than mere prudery.
Gulliver associates nudity with extreme vulnerability, even when there is no real
danger present—a pre-teen girl is hardly a threat to a grown man, at least in
physical terms. The state of nudity may remind Gulliver of how nonexistent he
feels without the reassuring cover of clothing.
Symbols
Lilliputians
The Lilliputians symbolize humankind’s wildly excessive pride in its own puny
existence. Swift fully intends the irony of representing the tiniest race visited by
Gulliver as by far the most vainglorious and smug, both collectively and
individually. There is surely no character more odious in all of Gulliver’s travels
than the noxious Skyresh. There is more backbiting and conspiracy in Lilliput
than anywhere else, and more of the pettiness of small minds who imagine
themselves to be grand. Gulliver is a naïve consumer of the Lilliputians’ grandiose
imaginings: he is flattered by the attention of their royal family and cowed by
their threats of punishment, forgetting that they have no real physical power over
him. Their formally worded condemnation of Gulliver on grounds of treason is a
model of pompous and self-important verbiage, but it works quite effectively on
the naïve Gulliver.
The Lilliputians show off not only to Gulliver but to themselves as well. There is
no mention of armies proudly marching in any of the other societies Gulliver
visits—only in Lilliput and neighboring Blefuscu are the six-inch inhabitants
possessed of the need to show off their patriotic glories with such displays. When
the Lilliputian emperor requests that Gulliver serve as a kind of makeshift Arch of
Triumph for the troops to pass under, it is a pathetic reminder that their grand
parade—in full view of Gulliver’s nether regions—is supremely silly, a basically
absurd way to boost the collective ego of the nation. Indeed, the war with
Blefuscu is itself an absurdity springing from wounded vanity, since the cause is
not a material concern like disputed territory but, rather, the proper
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interpretation of scripture by the emperor’s forebears and the hurt feelings
resulting from the disagreement. All in all, the Lilliputians symbolize misplaced
human pride, and point out Gulliver’s inability to diagnose it correctly.
Brobdingnagians
The Brobdingnagians symbolize the private, personal, and physical side of
humans when examined up close and in great detail. The philosophical era of the
Enlightenment tended to overlook the routines of everyday life and the sordid or
tedious little facts of existence, but in Brobdingnag such facts become very
important for Gulliver, sometimes matters of life and death. An eighteenthcentury philosopher could afford to ignore the fly buzzing around his head or the
skin pores on his servant girl, but in his shrunken state Gulliver is forced to pay
great attention to such things. He is forced take the domestic sphere seriously as
well. In other lands it is difficult for Gulliver, being such an outsider, to get
glimpses of family relations or private affairs, but in Brobdingnag he is treated as
a doll or a plaything, and thus is made privy to the urination of housemaids and
the sexual lives of women. The Brobdingnagians do not symbolize a solely
negative human characteristic, as the Laputans do. They are not merely
ridiculous—some aspects of them are disgusting, like their gigantic stench and
the excrement left by their insects, but others are noble, like the queen’s goodwill
toward Gulliver and the king’s commonsense views of politics. More than
anything else, the Brobdingnagians symbolize a dimension of human existence
visible at close range, under close scrutiny.
Laputans
The Laputans represent the folly of theoretical knowledge that has no relation to
human life and no use in the actual world. As a profound cultural conservative,
Swift was a critic of the newfangled ideas springing up around him at the dawn of
the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, a period of great intellectual
experimentation and theorization. He much preferred the traditional knowledge
that had been tested over centuries. Laputa symbolizes the absurdity of
knowledge that has never been tested or applied, the ludicrous side of
Enlightenment intellectualism. Even down below in Balnibarbi, where the local
academy is more inclined to practical application, knowledge is not made socially
useful as Swift demands. Indeed, theoretical knowledge there has 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 has not improved the lot of the Laputans. They have few material
worries, dependent as they are upon the Balnibarbians below. But they are
tormented by worries about the trajectories of comets and other astronomical
speculations: their theories have not made them wise, but neurotic and
disagreeable. The Laputans do not symbolize reason itself but rather the pursuit
of a form of knowledge that is not directly related to the improvement of human
life.
Houyhnhnms
The Houyhnhnms represent an ideal of rational existence, a life governed by
sense and moderation of which philosophers since Plato have long dreamed.
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Indeed, there are echoes of Plato’s Republic in the Houyhnhnms’ rejection of light
entertainment and vain displays of luxury, their appeal 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 have no need to
lie nor any word for lying. They do not use force but only strong exhortation.
Their subjugation of the Yahoos appears more necessary than cruel and perhaps
the best way to deal with an unfortunate blot on their otherwise ideal society. In
these ways and others, the Houyhnhnms seem like model citizens, and Gulliver’s
intense grief when he is forced to leave them suggests that they have made an
impact on him greater than that of any other society he has visited. His
derangement on Don Pedro’s ship, in which he snubs the generous man as a
Yahoo-like creature, implies that he strongly identifies with the Houyhnhnms.
But we may be less ready than Gulliver to take the Houyhnhnms as ideals of
human existence. They have no names in the narrative nor any need for names,
since they are virtually interchangeable, with little individual identity. Their lives
seem harmonious and happy, although quite lacking in vigor, challenge, and
excitement. Indeed, this apparent ease may be why Swift chooses to make them
horses rather than human types like every other group in the novel. He may be
hinting, to those more insightful than Gulliver, that the Houyhnhnms should not
be considered human ideals at all. In any case, they symbolize a standard of
rational existence to be either espoused or rejected by both Gulliver and us.
England
As the site of his father’s disappointingly “small estate” and Gulliver’s failing
business, England seems to symbolize deficiency or insufficiency, at least in the
financial sense that matters most to Gulliver. England is passed over very quickly
in the first paragraph of Chapter I, as if to show that it is simply there as the
starting point to be left quickly behind. Gulliver seems to have very few
nationalistic or patriotic feelings about England, and he rarely mentions his
homeland on his travels. In this sense, Gulliver’s Travels is quite unlike other
travel narratives like theOdyssey, in which Odysseus misses his homeland and
laments his wanderings. England is where Gulliver’s wife and family live, but they
too are hardly mentioned. Yet Swift chooses to have Gulliver return home after
each of his four journeys instead of having him continue on one long trip to four
different places, so that England is kept constantly in the picture and given a
steady, unspoken importance. By the end of the fourth journey, England is
brought more explicitly into the fabric ofGulliver’s Travels when Gulliver, in his
neurotic state, starts confusing Houyhnhnmland with his homeland, referring to
Englishmen as Yahoos. The distinction between native and foreign thus
unravels—the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos are not just races populating a faraway
land but rather types that Gulliver projects upon those around him. The
possibility thus arises that all the races Gulliver encounters could be versions of
the English and that his travels merely allow him to see various aspects of
human nature more clearly.
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
Jonathan Swift
Analysis of Major Characters
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Lemuel Gulliver
Although Gulliver is a bold adventurer who visits a multitude of strange lands, it
is difficult to regard him as truly heroic. Even well before his slide into
misanthropy at the end of the book, he simply does not show the stuff of which
grand heroes are made. He is not cowardly—on the contrary, he undergoes the
unnerving experiences of nearly being devoured by a giant rat, taken captive by
pirates, shipwrecked on faraway shores, sexually assaulted by an eleven-year-old
girl, and shot in the face with poison arrows. Additionally, the isolation from
humanity that he endures for sixteen years must be hard to bear, though Gulliver
rarely talks about such matters. Yet despite the courage Gulliver shows
throughout his voyages, his character lacks basic greatness. This impression
could be due to the fact that he rarely shows his feelings, reveals his soul, or
experiences great passions of any sort. But other literary adventurers, like
Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, seem heroic without being particularly open about
their emotions.
What seems most lacking in Gulliver is not courage or feelings, but drive. One
modern critic has described Gulliver as possessing the smallest will in all of
Western literature: he is simply devoid of a sense of mission, a goal that would
make his wandering into a quest. Odysseus’s goal is to get home again, Aeneas’s
goal in Virgil’s Aeneid is to found Rome, but Gulliver’s goal on his sea voyage is
uncertain. He says that he needs to make some money after the failure of his
business, but he rarely mentions finances throughout the work and indeed
almost never even mentions home. He has no awareness of any greatness in what
he is doing or what he is working toward. In short, he has no aspirations. When
he leaves home on his travels for the first time, he gives no impression that he
regards himself as undertaking a great endeavor or embarking on a thrilling new
challenge.
We may also note Gulliver’s lack of ingenuity and savvy. Other great travelers,
such as Odysseus, get themselves out of dangerous situations by exercising their
wit and ability to trick others. Gulliver seems too dull for any battles of wit and
too unimaginative to think up tricks, and thus he ends up being passive in most
of the situations in which he finds himself. He is held captive several times
throughout his voyages, but he is never once released through his own
stratagems, relying instead on chance factors for his liberation. Once presented
with a way out, he works hard to escape, as when he repairs the boat he finds
that delivers him from Blefuscu, but he is never actively ingenious in attaining
freedom. This example summarizes quite well Gulliver’s intelligence, which is
factual and practical rather than imaginative or introspective.
Gulliver is gullible, as his name suggests. For example, he misses the obvious
ways in which the Lilliputians exploit him. While he is quite adept at navigational
calculations and the humdrum details of seafaring, he is far less able to reflect on
himself or his nation in any profoundly critical way. Traveling to such different
countries and returning to England in between each voyage, he seems poised to
make some great anthropological speculations about cultural differences around
the world, about how societies are similar despite their variations or different
despite their similarities. But, frustratingly, Gulliver gives us nothing of the sort.
He provides us only with literal facts and narrative events, never with any
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generalizing or philosophizing. He is a self-hating, self-proclaimed Yahoo at the
end, announcing his misanthropy quite loudly, but even this attitude is difficult
to accept as the moral of the story. Gulliver is not a figure with whom we identify
but, rather, part of the array of personalities and behaviors about which we must
make judgments.
The Queen of Brobdingnag
The Brobdingnagian queen is hardly a well-developed character in this novel, but
she is important in one sense: she is one of the very few females in Gulliver’s
Travelswho is given much notice. Gulliver’s own wife is scarcely even mentioned,
even at what one would expect to be the touching moment of homecoming at the
end of the fourth voyage. Gulliver seems little more than indifferent to his wife.
The farmer’s daughter in Brobdingnag wins some of Gulliver’s attention but
chiefly because she cares for him so tenderly. Gulliver is courteous to the
empress of Lilliput but presumably mainly because she is royalty. The queen of
Brobdingnag, however, arouses some deeper feelings in Gulliver that go beyond
her royal status. He compliments her effusively, as he does no other female
personage in the work, calling her infinitely witty and humorous. He describes in
proud detail the manner in which he is permitted to kiss the tip of her little
finger. For her part, the queen seems earnest in her concern about Gulliver’s
welfare. When her court dwarf insults him, she gives the dwarf away to another
household as punishment. The interaction between Gulliver and the queen hints
that Gulliver is indeed capable of emotional connections.
Lord Munodi
Lord Munodi is a minor character, but he plays the important role of showing the
possibility of individual dissent within a brainwashed community. While the
inhabitants of Lagado pursue their attempts to extract sunbeams from
cucumbers and to eliminate all verbs and adjectives from their language, Munodi
is a rare example of practical intelligence. Having tried unsuccessfully to convince
his fellows of their misguided public policies, he has given up and is content to
practice what he preaches on his own estates. In his kindness to strangers,
Munodi is also a counterexample to the contemptuous treatment that the other
Laputians and Lagadans show Gulliver. He takes his guest on a tour of the
kingdom, explains the advantages of his own estates without boasting, and is, in
general, a figure of great common sense and humanity amid theoretical delusions
and impractical fantasizing. As a figure isolated from his community, Munodi is
similar to Gulliver, though Gulliver is unaware of his alienation while Munodi
suffers acutely from his. Indeed, in Munodi we glimpse what Gulliver could be if
he were wiser: a figure able to think critically about life and society.
Don Pedro de Mendez
Don Pedro is a minor character in terms of plot, but he plays an important
symbolic role at the end of the novel. He treats the half-deranged Gulliver with
great patience, even tenderness, when he allows him to travel on his ship as far
as Lisbon, offering to give him his own finest suit of clothes to replace the
seaman’s tatters, and giving him twenty pounds for his journey home to England.
Don Pedro never judges Gulliver, despite Gulliver’s abominably antisocial
behavior on the trip back. Ironically, though Don Pedro shows the same kind of
generosity and understanding that Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master earlier shows
him, Gulliver still considers Don Pedro a repulsive Yahoo. Were Gulliver able to
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escape his own delusions, he might be able to see the Houyhnhnm-like
reasonableness and kindness in Don Pedro’s behavior. Don Pedro is thus the
touchstone through which we see that Gulliver is no longer a reliable and
objective commentator on the reality he sees but, rather, a skewed observer of a
reality colored by private delusions.
Mary Burton Gulliver
Gulliver’s wife is mentioned only briefly at the beginning of the novel and appears
only for an instant at the conclusion. Gulliver never thinks about Mary on his
travels and never feels guilty about his lack of attention to her. A dozen far more
trivial characters get much greater attention than she receives. She is, in this
respect, the opposite of Odysseus’s wife Penelope in the Odyssey, who is never far
from her husband’s thoughts and is the final destination of his journey. Mary’s
neglected presence in Gulliver’s narrative gives her a certain claim to importance.
It suggests that despite Gulliver’s curiosity about new lands and exotic races, he
is virtually indifferent to those people closest to him. His lack of interest in his
wife bespeaks his underdeveloped inner life. Gulliver is a man of skill and
knowledge in certain practical matters, but he is disadvantaged in self-reflection,
personal interactions, and perhaps overall wisdom.
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