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Gulliver’s Travels
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Summary
The
book is written in the first person from the point of view of Lemuel Gulliver,
a surgeon and sea captain who visits remote regions of the world, and it
describes four adventures. In the first one, Gulliver is the only survivor of a
shipwreck, and he swims to Lilliput, where he is tied up by people who are less
than 6 inches (15 cm) tall. He is then taken to the capital city and eventually
released. The Lilliputians indulge in ridiculous customs and petty debates.
Political affiliations, for example, are divided between men who wear
high-heeled shoes (symbolic of the English Tories) and those who wear low ones
(representing the English Whigs), and court positions are filled by those who
are best at rope dancing. Gulliver is asked to help defend Lilliput against the
empire of Blefuscu, with which Lilliput is at war over which end of an egg
should be broken, this being a matter of religious doctrine. Gulliver captures
Blefuscu’s naval fleet, thus preventing an invasion, but declines to assist the
emperor of Lilliput in conquering Blefuscu. Later Gulliver extinguishes a fire
in the royal palace by urinating on it. Eventually he falls out of favour and
is sentenced to be blinded and starved. He flees to Blefuscu, where he finds a
normal-size boat and is thus able to return to England.
Gulliver’s
second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag, inhabited by a race of giants. A farm
worker finds Gulliver and delivers him to the farm owner. The farmer begins
exhibiting Gulliver for money, and the farmer’s young daughter, Glumdalclitch,
takes care of him. One day the queen orders the farmer to bring Gulliver to
her, and she purchases Gulliver. He becomes a favourite at court, though the
king reacts with contempt when Gulliver recounts the splendid achievements of
his own civilization. The king responds to Gulliver’s description of the
government and history of England by concluding that the English must be a race
of “odious vermin.” Gulliver offers to make gunpowder and cannon for the king,
but the king is horrified by the thought of such weaponry. Eventually Gulliver
is picked up by an eagle and then rescued at sea by people of his own size.
On
Gulliver’s third voyage he is set adrift by pirates and eventually ends up on
the flying island of Laputa. The people of Laputa all have one eye pointing
inward and the other upward, and they are so lost in thought that they must be
reminded to pay attention to the world around them. Though they are greatly
concerned with mathematics and with music, they have no practical applications
for their learning. Laputa is the home of the king of Balnibarbri, the
continent below it. Gulliver is permitted to leave the island and visit Lagado,
the capital city of Balnibarbri. He finds the farm fields in ruin and the
people living in apparent squalor. Gulliver’s host explains that the
inhabitants follow the prescriptions of a learned academy in the city, where
the scientists undertake such wholly impractical projects as extracting sunbeams
from cucumbers. Later Gulliver visits Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers,
and there he speaks with great men of the past and learns from them the lies of
history. In the kingdom of Luggnagg he meets the struldbrugs, who are immortal
but age as though they were mortal and are thus miserable. From Luggnagg he is
able to sail to Japan and thence back to England.
In
the extremely bitter fourth part, Gulliver visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, a
race of intelligent horses who are cleaner and more rational, communal, and
benevolent (they have, most tellingly, no words for deception or evil) than the
brutish, filthy, greedy, and degenerate humanoid race called Yahoos, some of
whom they have tamed—an ironic twist on the human-beast relationship. The
Houyhnhnms are very curious about Gulliver, who seems to be both a Yahoo and
civilized, but, after Gulliver describes his country and its history to the
master Houyhnhnm, the Houyhnhnm concludes that the people of England are not
more reasonable than the Yahoos. At last it is decided that Gulliver must leave
the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver then returns to England, so disgusted with humanity
that he avoids his family and buys horses and converses with them instead.
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
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 Yahoo like.
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.
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Click for Characters and Symbols - Gullivers travels 2
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