As a child, most people have probably imagined becoming a giant among midgets or hearing a talking horse. In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift makes these dreams a reality. On the outside, his story of Lemuel Gulliver’s adventures is a light-hearted, fictitious account of giants, talking horses, and flying islands. But on the inside, Gulliver’s Travels has a deeper meaning – an attack on European society. Swift’s book satirizes the main parts of European society ranging from its people to its societies, religion to human nature, and war and money to politics.
After his ship is wrecked during a massive storm, Gulliver swims to a nearby island and falls asleep from exhaustion. When he awakens, he notices that the islands’ minute inhabitants, the Lilliputians, are tying him down. After the ordeal of communicating with the Lilliputians, he is taken to the Lilliputian emperor where Swift attacks his first victim – George I. He describes the emperor’s face as handsome; George I was actually ugly (Soens Jr. and Soreno 13). Later, Gulliver learns of the two Lilliputian political parties at odds with each other: the High Heels and the Low Heels. These are the English political parties the Tories and Whigs; Emperor George II is satirized as wearing one high and low heel since he supported both sides (Soens Jr. and Soreno 18).
In poking at the Whigs, Swift singles out the statesman Sir Robert Walpole. The Lilliputian treasurer named Flimnap is seen doing somersaults and other odd tasks in front of the king to retain his office; this satirizes Walpole’s dexterity in politics (Ray 244). When the King of Brobdingnag, the king of the giants, inquires Gulliver as to “Whether members of parliament are not sometimes elected by bribery” (Soens Jr. and Soreno 36) this is mean to refer to Walpole’s rigging of elections.
Swift does not leave out the English philosophers, historians, and science; he starts by asserting that the historians of Glubbdubdrib, the English Moderns, “distort those they write about,” (Soens Jr. and Soreno 51) namely the thinkers Homer, Aristotle, Descartes, and Gassendi. Gulliver’s bringing them back from the dead is meant to point out the writers who misinterpreted these thinkers (Soens Jr. and Soreno 51). In pointing out this corruption, Swift implies that “although mankind is corrupt now, it was less before and [can] still be saved” (“Travels”).
When Gulliver is discussing humanity with the Houyhnhnms, he hears the stories of “two Yahoos [fighting] over a shiny object, and a third [robbing] them both of it” (“Travels”) and “a Yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly as he can” (“Travels”). The two Yahoos fighting represent the plaintiff and defendant in court, and the third Yahoo is the lawyer leaving with his money made from the case; the Yahoo killing another that has not offended him stands for a soldier fighting another who he does not have a grudge against and has never seen before.
The scientists of the flying island of Laputa are satirized in them being so engrossed in their work “that they might worry over a comet and not notice their [wives cheating on them]” (Soens Jr. and Soreno 43-44). Ray builds on this concept by mentioning the English scientist stress of theory instead of the application of math and music through Swift’s description of Laputian clothing as being “adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars, interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsichords, and many more…” (250). The article “Travels” goes even further in stating, “their science is done only for its own sake[;] Laputians who invent something that has actual practical value are expelled from society.” This satirizes the Enlightenment scientists and expresses the Swift’s ideal that science should serve humanity (Travels). The Grand Academy of Lagado is a group of scientific projectors performing experiments with no practical use which “are in some instances based upon actual experiments” (Ray 251) of the Royal Society. When Gulliver describes the movement of Laputa, it was meant to confuse the reader with its complexity, which was what Swift was trying to hit: the Royal Society’s love for technicality (Soens Jr. and Soreno 45).
While sailing on a ship (the trip that would lead Gulliver to Laputa), it is looted by pirates who capture Gulliver and spare his life. The Dutch are mocked because “[they would betray] a fellow Christian out of greed and malice” (Soens Jr. and Soreno 41) and kill him while the pirates would not. In Luggnagg, a Dutch-dressed Gulliver is “imprisoned merely because [the] Luggnaggians think he is Dutch” (Soens Jr. and Soreno 53). Escaping to Japan, Gulliver witnesses the Dutch participating in a “cross-stomping” ceremony. The Japanese people do not mind this and allow Gulliver to refrain from partaking in this. However, when a Dutchman sees Gulliver leaving the scene, he tries (unsuccessfully) to bring him back to stomp on the cross (Soens Jr. and Soreno 55).
At the time of this book’s writing, the Catholics and Protestants were at a bitter rivalry in Europe; religion is portrayed as the reason for the High Heels’ and Low Heels’ (Tories and Whigs) argument over the “primitive way of breaking eggs.” According to “Travels”, the egg represents Christian belief and the dispute over egg breaking is the main cause of the Lilliputian-Blefuscan rivalry. According to Ray, the Big Endians, those who cracked their eggs at the big end, stood for the Catholics; the Little Endians stood for the Protestants with their religious differences (245). And according to Soens Jr. and Soreno, Blefuscu, the enemy of Lilliput (Protestant England), stands for Catholic France (17). Along with religious beliefs, Swift also humiliates human nature; in Lilliput, Flimnap (Sir Robert Walpole) is seen doing flips to retain his official title. This process of election stands for Swift’s opinion that politicians are ready to do anything for money or ranking (Soens Jr. and Soreno 15). In Brobdingnag, Lemuel is “employed’ by the queen as a form of entertainment. But while being left alone, the Queen’s jester – a dwarf – decides to seek revenge for Lemuel taking his spot by placing him in a cup of cream; this torture is meant to characterize the English as loving to fight, cheat, and take revenge against one another. Evading a creamy doom, Gulliver attempts to teach the giants the English concept of lying. The giants are unable to understand Gulliver’s teachings, and this symbolizes the English intellectual follies (Soens Jr. and Soreno 31, 39).
Although many characters symbolize the shortcomings of human nature, the ones most emblematic are the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos. According to Ray, Swift’s thinking in Gulliver’s Travels explores man’s sinful nature – “The noisome putridity of those creatures, their envelopment in stench and dungy vileness, is, of course emblematic of their moral values” (xxiii-xxiv) and with the fourth book’s “contrasting pictures of Yahoo and Houyhnhnm,” (x) anybody today can “construct the horrendous image of […] man” (x). Soens Jr. and Soreno add to this by claiming the Houyhnhnm to be the direct opposite of the Yahoo: “the horses [Houyhnhnms] are clean and sweet-smelling; their diet is temperate and vegetarian. Their habits constitute the temperance that the eighteenth century characterized man, stoics, and Adam before the fall” (58). Like the Brobdingnagians, Swift mocks the “European Yahoos” by discussing the inability of a Houyhnhnm to understand the concept of lying.
After reading through the first book of this story, one can conclude that Gulliver is an easy man to fool. In fact, the protagonist himself is meant to spoof the Puritans and humanity. According to Knowles, “’Lemuel’ is a rare forename outside of Gulliver’s Travels” (48) and only the Puritans would name their children after a religious figure. It is Puritan nature to name their children after the Israelites because the “more obscure the name, the greater the testament to pious familiarity with the Holy Scripture” (Knowles 48). His first name ends up as a satire on the Puritan’s devotion with religion. His last name “Gulliver” contains “the noun gull [meaning] a ‘dupe’” (Knowles 49). Gulliver’s gullibility was meant to represent mankind’s ability to easily be fooled, which includes “some gullible readers [that] believed that the Travels were a real account” (Knowles 49). According to Cooper, Gulliver is a symbol of mankind’s naivety; when in Lilliput, Gulliver stands witness to the process of electing officials. He simply watches and does not comment on the “moral nastiness of the court” (Cooper). But when in Brobdingnag and is being fondled with by the females, he is “quick to notice [their] physical ugliness” (Cooper). Upon the later discovery of the immortal Struldbruggs, he is delighted with the thought of meeting them. When he actually meets them, he changes his opinion about them as they are blind, senile, old, and “the most mortifying sight ever beheld” (Cooper).
People sometimes say “It is the little things in life that make life fun”; but to Jonathan Swift, it was the little things in life that gave him even more fuel for his satirizing bonfire. After making peace with the Lilliputian emperor, Gulliver decides to fight the Blefuscan navy and ends up taking their ships back to Lilliput. This naval battle pokes at the War of the Spanish Succession; to end the war, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, which lead to the destruction of the French allied Spanish navy. Money is criticized as leading people with sums of it to buy mass quantities of gourmet food. In turn, this junk food, which can be connected to the Yahoo diet of trash, lead to a declined health (Soens Jr. and Soreno 19, 65).
The Balnibarbian cities of Lagado and Lindalino are meant to represent the cities of London and Dublin and are supposed be “a composite of English and Irish social and political conditions” (Knowles 92). The Laputian attack on Lindalino stands for England’s political oppression of Ireland with Laputa’s ability to destroy any town at will; England used this threat to force goods out of Ireland (Knowles 92). In Lagado, Munodi [Lord Middleton, Chancellor of Ireland (Knowles 92)] is charged with the crime of failing “to beat time well during a concert” (Soens Jr. and Soreno 47). This parodies the relationship between the engineering intellect and politics. When Gulliver’s Travels was written, the Industrial Revolution was taking place and everybody was focused on keeping it going. Munodi’s failure to keep tempo represents a person failing to keep his factory going.
Balnibarbian politics are compared to English politics in the Balnibarbian belief that “treason can be discerned by reading signs in excrement” (Soens Jr. and Soreno 49); Bishop Atterbury was charged with treason from the evidence found in his bathroom trashcan. In Lilliput, the short ones see Gulliver’s possessions differently than what they really are; this view satirizes the evidence used against the Tory leaders Harley and Bolingbroke. The Whigs tampered the evidence in order to have treasonable meanings, which led to the two being guilty. (Soens Jr. and Soreno 13, 19). The harassment of Whig politics are exposed through the way Gulliver has to sign Lilliputian documents; he is forced to “hold his right foot in his left hand and place the middle finger of his right hand on top of his head with the right thumb on the tip of his ear” (Soens Jr. and Soreno 16). Whig thinking was obviously harsh; if they did not get what they wanted, they would find a surefire way to obtain it. The English legal system is compared to the Yahoo system in the theory that “the man on the right… is always at a disadvantage because lawyers are not comfortable unless they are arguing for the wrong side” (Soens Jr. and Soreno 64). In layman’s terms, Swift is saying reason gives men excuses instead of alternatives for war (Soens Jr. and Soreno 64).
It is amazing how a seemingly harmless work of fiction can reveal so much about a society. Swift’s work has revealed to many the downfalls of the English man, society, human nature, religion, and all of the ideals within. From George I, to the Catholics and Protestants, to money, Swift satirized it all using characters, events, or places. With all of their follies laid out in front of them, hopefully the Europeans embraced their criticisms and reformed their ways to attempt to prove to Swift (or Gulliver for the gullible people) that they are not Yahoos.
Works Cited
Cooper, Catherine. “Jonathan Swift and John Gay: Satire in the works of Swift and Gay.”
English Literature Distance Learning Course. 2001. The London School of Journalism. 23 April 2005 <http://www.english-literature.org/essays/swift_gay.html>.
“Gulliver’s Travels.” Wikipedia. 23 April 2005. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels>.
Knowles, Ronald. Gulliver’s Travels: The Politics of Satire. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996.
Ray, Gordon N., ed. Gulliver’s Travels. By Jonathan Swift. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960.
Soens, Jr., Ph.D., A. Lewis and Patrick Salerno. CliffsNotes Gulliver’s Travels. New York: Wiley Publishing Inc., 1995.