GULLIVER’S STORIES

BY: JONATHAN SWIFT

Brief information about the author

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland, on November 30, 1667. Swift's father died before he
was born, and his mother left the young Swift in the care of his uncle. The family was not
wealthy, but it had good connections. Swift attended secondary school at Kilkenny College in
Dublin, earning his bachelor's degree from Trinity College. He then moved to England, where he
attended Hertford College at Oxford and earned a master's degree that would make him
eligible to join the clergy, a backup plan to his political aspirations.

Swift was assigned a post as a parish priest for the Church of Ireland in Derry when he was 32,
but he continued to work and write actively in politics. His first work of satire, "A Tale of a Tub,"
was published anonymously in 1704 and expanded in 1710. This publication earned him the
scorn of Queen Anne of England, who misunderstood the work, even though Swift was active in
the English Tory party (political conservatives whose policies Anne supported) throughout the
early 1700s, dividing his time between London and Ireland. He became dean of St. Patrick's
Cathedral in Dublin in 1713, but in the following year, the queen died. George I took the throne,
the Whig party dominated the English government, and these events effectively ended Swift's
hopes for advancement in the church or government. He returned to Ireland and focused on his
writing, pouring many of his political opinions and experiences into his best-known work,
Gulliver's Travels.

When it was first published in 1726, Gulliver's Travels became an immediate success with adults
and children, requiring multiple reprints in its first few months on the shelves. Adventure
stories were all the rage at the time, made popular by the publication of Daniel Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe a few years earlier. Almost 300 years later, Gulliver's Travels remains Swift's
most famous work and is a staple of the English literary canon. The novel has remained in print
consistently since 1726 and has been adapted to picture books, comics, and a number of films,
including a 2010 adaptation starring Jack Black. The 1965 Japanese adaptation Gulliver's Travels
Beyond the Moon places the title's character in outer space.
The novel also introduced new terms into the English language. Lilliputian, derived from the six-
inch-tall Lilliputians Gulliver visits on the island of Lilliput, is used as an adjective to describe
things that are very small, and Brobdingnagian, derived from the 60-feet-tall giants Gulliver
visits in the country of Brobdingnag, is an adjective to describe something that is very large.
Yahoo, derived from the term the Houyhnhnm horses use to describe humans, is perhaps
better known as an exclamation or an Internet search engine, but it is also used as a noun for "a
person who is very rude, loud, or stupid" according to Merriam-Webster.

In Ireland, Swift remained politically active, writing pamphlets supporting Irish causes, such as
Irish independence from British colonialism. The most famous of these, "A Modest Proposal,"
published in 1729, brought attention to poverty in Ireland with its outrageous and sarcastic
suggestion that starving Irish families sell their children as food for the wealthy English. This and
other writings established Swift as an Irish political hero. Swift's commitment to social good
extended beyond his death, through the money he donated for the establishment of a mental
hospital in Dublin; St. Patrick's Hospital, known in its early days as "Dr. Swift's," remains in
operation today.

In his personal life, Swift cultivated friendships with other prominent literary figures, including
poet Alexander Pope and playwrights William Congreve and John Gay. His lifelong friendship
with Esther Johnson, better known as Stella, has inspired scholarly and non-scholarly
speculation over the years. When Swift died on October 19, 1745, he was buried in St. Patrick's
Cathedral in Dublin next to Stella.

Impression about the book based on title and cover: Gulliver's Travels takes its name from the
novel's protagonist and narrator, Lemuel Gulliver, a trained surgeon who travels by sea to a
number of strange lands. Gulliver's Travels features a first-person narrator in Gulliver. As the
only dynamic character in the novel, Gulliver provides the lens through which Swift filters his
insights regarding England.

Chapter 1 summary: Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator of Gulliver's Travels, describes his career,
education, and family. Gulliver is a surgeon in London. He has always wanted to travel,
however, and becomes a surgeon traveling aboard different merchant ships. During this time,
he reads extensively and learns many new languages.

Gulliver grows tired of sea travel. He takes a job on the Antelope, anticipating it will be his final
voyage. But a violent storm causes the Antelope to crash into a rock. As the sole survivor of the
wreck, Gulliver swims to safety, landing on the island of Lilliput and falls asleep. When he
wakes, his body has been tethered to the beach by the island's six-inch-tall residents, the
Lilliputians. The Lilliputians climb on Gulliver and shoot tiny arrows at him. Gulliver could
escape, but he is impressed by his captors' bravery and remains still. The Lilliputians bring
Gulliver a meal, including a drugged drink that puts him to sleep, and transport his body on an
"engine" (a giant cart) to meet the emperor. Gulliver is chained to an abandoned temple, which
is the only building large enough to hold him.

Chapter 2 summary: On his first morning in the temple, Gulliver wakes up in chains, stands up,
and admires the countryside. He relieves himself inside the building but feels guilty for doing
so. He resolves to make his morning duties outside, away from the temple, so servants can
carry away his waste.

The emperor arrives at the temple on horseback and speaks, but Gulliver cannot understand
him. The emperor leaves, placing Gulliver under the watch of his guards, some of whom attack
Gulliver. As punishment, they are given to Gulliver. He pretends to eat one soldier to scare the
men, but he does not hurt them and gently releases them.

Gulliver's mercy impresses the emperor's court. He agrees to give Gulliver meals, servants, and
a tutor to teach him the Lilliputian language. Gulliver learns quickly and asks to be free. The
emperor refuses Gulliver's freedom but favors giving Gulliver accommodations. Gulliver
cooperates with the emperor's order to search Gulliver for weapons. The emperor does not
recognize Gulliver's pistol, so Gulliver demonstrates its function by firing into the air. Two
officers make a detailed inventory of Gulliver's pockets. They allow Gulliver to keep most of his
things, but he surrenders a knife, a razor, and the pistol.

Characters and Characterization

Gulliver

Lemuel Gulliver is surgeon on a ship. The last of his voyages are the strangest he has ever
known. He is taken prisoner by a race of tiny men called Lilliputians. Then he becomes a pet for
the giants of Brobdingnag. Later he visits a city on an island in the sky called Laputa and visits
the quirky academies of Laputa's sister island below, Balnibarbi. He talks to the dead on
Glubbdubdrib and meets immortals on Luggnagg. His final adventure finds him living with
horses called Houyhnhnms, discovering the deep flaws of the human race, or Yahoos, primitive
humanlike creatures. Having learned about the evils of his own species, Gulliver reluctantly
returns home.

Emperor of Lilliput
The emperor of Lilliput treats Gulliver well as long as he believes Gulliver is showing him respect
and obedience. In fact, the emperor expects obedience from everyone in his court.
Disobedience is met with a death sentence, as evidenced by the treason charges leveled at
Gulliver—the result of Gulliver's politeness toward visitors from a neighboring kingdom during
peace talks—and the danger Gulliver's friend faces in warning him about said charges.

Glumdalclitch

Glumdalclitch is the name Gulliver calls the farm girl who becomes his caretaker, as it means
"little nurse." The girl is devoted to Gulliver, keeping him comfortable as her father works
Gulliver nearly to death by making him perform for money. Although there are social
advantages to her acceptance at court, Glumdalclitch makes a presumably difficult decision to
leave her family behind out of loyalty to Gulliver and a desire to protect him after the queen
buys him. Her kindness and devotion give Gulliver a safe and comfortable life in Brobdingnag.

King of Laputa

The king of Laputa, like his subjects, absorbs himself in the abstract contemplations of science,
mathematics, and astronomy. At the same time, he is a monarch, subject to the abuse of power
all monarchs display on some level in Gulliver's Travels. Although his power is limited by his
ministers, he is not above threatening the lands he governs below with the possibility that he
might use the floating island of Laputa as a weapon against them.

Houyhnhnm Master

The Houyhnhnm Master treats Gulliver with kindness and provides him with a home and
sustenance, in keeping with Houyhnhnm principles of benevolence and hospitality. He also sees
Gulliver as a lesser creature, not as primitive as the island Yahoos but also not terribly evolved.
He is deeply critical of Gulliver's accounts of life in Europe, and his criticism eventually
convinces Gulliver of his own inferiority.

Governor of Glubbdubdrib

The governor is a mysterious figure, and he tends to be feared by those who know of him. He is
a necromancer, meaning he can raise the dead to serve him. He also shows Gulliver total
hospitality, going beyond the standard provisions of food and shelter and offering to use his
own magical gifts to allow Gulliver an extraordinary and life-changing opportunity to talk to
dead leaders and scholars from the whole of history
Plot Summary

Gulliver's Travels is the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon who takes to the seas. He completes
many voyages without incident, but his final four journeys take him to some of the strangest
lands on the planet, where he discovers the virtues and flaws in his own culture by comparing it
with others.

A storm destroys the ship, leaving Gulliver as the sole survivor of the wreck. He washes up on
the shores of Lilliput, an island populated by people only six inches tall. Understandably
terrified of the giant in their midst, the Lilliputians keep Gulliver restrained with ropes and
chains until he proves he can be trusted. The emperor of this land calls on Gulliver to help him
defeat his enemy country, Blefuscu, and Gulliver obliges by taking Blefuscu's entire navy.
Although Gulliver is hailed as a hero in Lilliput, things turn sour when he becomes too friendly
with the ambassadors who negotiate peace with Blefuscu, and when he puts out a fire in the
emperor's palace by urinating on it. Charged with treason, Gulliver flees to Blefuscu and leaves
behind both islands in a boat he finds by chance. He encounters an English ship and returns
home to his family in England.

Gulliver does not stay at home for long and sets out on another journey that leaves him
stranded in a land known as Brobdingnag, populated by giants. A farmer's family takes in
Gulliver, but soon the farmer works Gulliver nearly to death by putting him on display and
making him perform for audiences all over the country. When the queen sees Gulliver, she
offers to buy Gulliver from the farmer, who accepts her offer. She also takes the farmer's
daughter, Gulliver's caretaker Glumdalclitch, into her service. Gulliver lives for two harrowing
years in the Brobdingnagian court, his tiny size putting him at the mercy of larger creatures at
every turn. On an outing to the beach, a bird picks up Gulliver's carrying-box and drops it into
the sea. Another English vessel finds the box afloat in the water, and the crew returns Gulliver
home again.

Within weeks of his homecoming, however, Gulliver accepts a voyage to the East Indies. When
pirates take Gulliver's ship, he is set adrift and ends up on a deserted island. He is spotted by
inhabitants of the floating island of Laputa and taken to the Laputans' city in the sky. There he
finds a race of men wholly concerned with theoretical matters and constantly absorbed in
abstract thought. Although he is treated well, Gulliver grows bored and ventures to the land
below Laputa, Balnibarbi. On Balnibarbi Gulliver learns how a little knowledge can be a
dangerous thing, as he sees projectors, men who have been briefly educated in Laputa, attempt
to improve life in their country through a series of absurd scientific theories and experiments.
Gulliver grows frustrated and travels to the nearby island of Glubbdubdrib, where the governor
uses his magical powers to allow Gulliver to converse with dead figures from history. Gulliver
moves on to Luggnagg, where he learns that the potential cost of immortality is a lifetime of
unending old age, and then returns to England by way of Japan and Holland.

A few months after Gulliver returns home, he is offered the chance to captain a voyage, so he
sets off again. Gulliver's crew mutinies and leaves him on an island populated by intelligent
horses called Houyhnhnms and primitive humans called Yahoos. Gulliver fears the Yahoos and
finds camaraderie with the Houyhnhnms, although the Houyhnhnms never fully accept Gulliver
because they believe he, too, is a Yahoo. Gulliver lives comfortably with his Houyhnhnm master
and his family for three years, learning the Houyhnhnm language and embracing the
Houyhnhnm philosophy of living by principles of pure reason. He comes to hate his own Yahoo
heritage and vows never to return to England, but the Houyhnhnm leaders decide a Yahoo
cannot live with a Houyhnhnm family, and they cast him out of their society. Gulliver builds a
boat with the intent of settling on a deserted island and avoiding the Yahoo world of Europe,
but he is rescued by a Portuguese ship and returns again to his family in England. He spends
years readjusting to life among the Yahoos and finds he prefers his horses' company to his
wife's.

Comprehension questions

 What is the significance of Lemuel Gulliver's name?

 What is unusual about Gulliver's reaction to meeting the Lilliputians?
 What is significant about the emperor of Lilliput's appearance and manner as described
in Gulliver's Travels, Part 1, Chapter 2?
 What does the Lilliputians' decision to keep Gulliver alive in Gulliver's Travels, Part 1,
Chapter 2 reveal about them?

Short response essay

In Part 1, Chapter 1 readers learn that while Lemuel derives from a Hebrew word that means
"devoted to God," Gulliver (an actual English surname) derives from an Old French word
meaning "glutton." The name Gulliver also evokes the word gullible. Gulliver himself does not
express a particularly religious point of view, but his generally good fortune in his voyages and
his status as the sole survivor of the wreck of the Antelope indicate he may have found some
form of favor with a higher power. Gulliver's surname comes to bear much more clearly during
his time in Lilliput. Because the Lilliputians are very small, as are their livestock and other
foodstuffs, they must produce enormous amounts of food in order to keep Gulliver alive, which
becomes a contentious issue in later chapters of Part 1 as Gulliver's human appetite threatens
to bankrupt the Lilliputian government. Gulliver also tends to believe the best about the
Lilliputians, and other civilizations he encounters, even when the evidence indicates otherwise.
His sunny disposition even in the face of terrible circumstances—bound and attacked by tiny
people, among other things—could be interpreted as gullibility.

After a harrowing escape from a shipwreck that kills all the other men on board, Gulliver
awakens on land, bound by ropes and stung by the arrows and spears of a minuscule race of
people. A natural reaction to this circumstance might be terror, shock, or rage. Gulliver
expresses none of these feelings. He seems to find the existence of six-inch-tall people a
perfectly normal occurrence, and he finds the injuries they inflict upon him more of a nuisance
than anything else. Despite the unreality of his circumstances, Gulliver thinks logically and
clearly through these first moments. He could break free of his bonds and wreak havoc on the
Lilliputians, but he knows they outnumber him and recognizes he has weak points—his eyes,
for instance—that their tiny weapons could use to incapacitate him. Instead, Gulliver's curiosity
and practicality wins the day, and he recognizes that placating these tiny violent people
represents his best chance for his continued survival.

The emperor is taller than the other Lilliputians by a significant margin, which gives him an air
of authority and power based on his physical presence. His features are described as "strong
and masculine, with an Austrian lip," so the emperor's power as a man is established. The
reference to the Austrian lip associates him with the Habsburgs, one of the most powerful royal
families of Europe from the 15th through the 20th centuries, originating in Austria. The
emperor's clothing is simple, but he wears a crown "adorned with jewels, and a plume on the
crest." His movements are described as graceful and his manner "majestic." He is, in short, an
ideal of what a monarch should look like. Tall, handsome, with enough display of wealth to
establish his superiority but not so much as to appear ostentatious. He may be presented in this
manner to contrast with the king of England at the time, George I, whose Protestantism and
German heritage as a descendant of the Prussian royal house of Hanover made him a target of
some political controversy. While the emperor may appear ideal on first meeting, however,
later chapters reveal his flaws and abuse of power.
In later chapters, it becomes clear that the emperor has plans to use Gulliver as part of his
country's defense against the rival nation of Blefuscu, even to the point of asking Gulliver to
help him conquer and annex the defeated country. It is possible, even from their initial
meeting, that the emperor sees Gulliver's potential as a weapon, which indicates a certain
militaristic sensibility on his part because the initial reasoning the Lilliputians provide show
themselves to be immensely practical. Because of Gulliver's size, the Lilliputians cannot
determine an efficient way to kill him, even though they fear Gulliver may break loose and
wreak destruction on their country. At the same time, they fear if they do successfully kill him, a
decomposing corpse of such prodigious bulk could start a plague. They also show the
impractical streak that causes so many human failings. They fear the cost of feeding such a
large man may cause a famine, but since Gulliver has made a good first impression on the
emperor, the emperor chooses to issue decrees for Gulliver's feeding, clothing, and
maintenance. It appears that the Lilliputians are effective economists, weighing the costs of
terminating the giant stranger against benefits of keeping him and the benefits of
demonstrating their own courage. In Gulliver's interactions with the Lilliputians during the first
months of his tenure on the island, it becomes clear that they are motivated by curiosity about
this giant stranger as much as by their practical concerns. Gulliver makes a good impression on
everyone he meets; he is polite and accommodating to their requests. He welcomes frequent
visitors to his home. Curiosity is a powerful motivating force in human nature, and the
Lilliputians, while small, are still human. These interactions also show a fundamental goodness
in the Lilliputians' nature and an adherence to the cultural mandate of hospitality toward
strangers that has formed a social cornerstone since ancient times.

Personal view about the book and story

Abuse of Power

Gulliver encounters a number of monarchs and leaders, from tiny to giant, from practical to
esoteric, and they all take advantage of their superior position in some way. They either
demand absolute obedience from their subjects through humiliating rituals, as is the case with
the king of Luggnagg who makes his subjects lick the floor, or they exhibit extreme
incompetence, as is the case with the Lilliputian king who engages in an ill-conceived war with
his neighbors. Even Houyhnhnms, whom Gulliver idealizes, exploit the lesser species of their
island, the Yahoos, through extreme prejudice.

Society versus Individual

All of the cultures in the countries Gulliver visits demand a certain level of conformity from their
citizens, whether that means following the rules set up in the royal courts or adhering to
broader social conventions. These rules often create problems for people who break them, or
for those who want to break the conventions but feel pressure that prevents them from doing
so. For example, Gulliver faces censure and an eventual death sentence in Lilliput because he
breaks the rules of court by behaving sympathetically toward the enemy country's
ambassadors. Although the Houyhnhnms do not have a royal hierarchy, the master's family
faces pressure from friends and neighbors to exile Gulliver for being a Yahoo.

Perspective

Nothing in the world of Gulliver's Travels is purely objective, not even the size and shape of
human beings. These differences in perspective are made literal in the appearance of the
Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians, but each land Gulliver visits reveals a society firmly
enmeshed in its own point of view with little interest in exploring alternatives. The Laputans see
the universe only through the perspective of mathematical probability; the Houyhnhnms limit
their perspectives to cold reason, never emotion. All reality is filtered through the lens of each
specific society, rendering all understanding of the world—even Gulliver's—totally subjective.

Moral lesson

Gulliver's travels are enjoyable stories and a delight to read.

Well, the moral is, I would think is, do not underestimate your enemies, or indeed anyone, just
because they are of insignificant size. You might think they are too small to do any harm but
beware they can be more powerful than you think and may even stop you completely. You
might end up asking for their mercy, the tables can be turned so easily.

So, live and let live and give all the due respect even if you think that some people are
powerless and you are the stronger one. Don't be arrogant, and be respectful always.

Summary drafts

Gulliver's Travels is an adventure story (in reality, a misadventure story) involving several
voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, who, because of a series of mishaps en route to
recognized ports, ends up, instead, on several unknown islands living with people and animals
of unusual sizes, behaviors, and philosophies, but who, after each adventure, is somehow able
to return to his home in England where he recovers from these unusual experiences and then
sets out again on a new voyage.