A brief comment on Gulliver’s Travels

"Gulliver's Travels can be ranked among the greatest satirical works of world literature. The book contains four parts, each dealing with one particular voyage during which Gulliver meets with extraordinary adventures on some remote island after some misfortune. His journey included Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa and the country of Houyhnhnms.

The first part tells about Gulliver’s experience in Lilliput, where the inhabitants are all with tiny size but huge ambitions, smug and think too high of themselves. A controversy even held on the oddly question whether eggs should be broken at the big end or small end caused a fantastic war. Symbols of Liliput Here, 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. Indeed, the war with Blefuscu is itself an absurdity springing from wounded vanity. All in all, the Lilliputians symbolize misplaced human pride, and point out Gulliver’s inability to diagnose it correctly. After that, Gulliver undertakes his next voyage. In the second part, Gulliver comes to Brobdingnag, which is a land of giants. Here, a farmer discovered him and treat him like a little animal, then he sold Gulliver to the Queen. The Queen thinks Europe is an anthill and makes the observation the European history is "only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments. Symbols of 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. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver is treated as a plaything, and thus is made privy to the urination of housemaids and the sexual lives of women. In some aspects, the Brobdingnagians are disgusting, like their gigantic stench and the excrement left by their insects. The Brobdingnagians symbolize a dimension of human existence visible at close range, under close scrutiny. So, Gulliver sets sail again and, after an attack by pirates, arrives at Laputa, where the third part begins. Laputa is 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 impractical, and the residents too appear out of touch with reality. Symbols of Laputa Laputa is a satire upon philosophers, scientists, historians. The Laputans represent the foolish theoretical knowledge that has no use in the actual world. Laputa symbolizes the absurdity of knowledge that has never been tested or applied, the ridicules side of Enlightenment intellectualism. Indeed, theoretical knowledge in Laputa resulting in the ruin of agriculture and architecture and the impoverishment of the population. 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. The fourth part is a visit to the Houyhnhnms—a country ruled by horses that endowed with intelligence and virtue. Besides the ruling class, the rest of the inhabitants are Yahoos, a kind of creatures shaped like human beings, who are the embodiment of evil. Indeed, Gulliver finds that the only difference between himself and the Yahoo to be the Yahoo's lack of cleanliness and clothes; otherwise, a Yahoo would be indistinguishably human. At first, Gulliver is treated with kindness by the horses and he wants to stay with the Houyhnhnms, but the horses still thinks that he is very much like a Yahoo, and after all, he is banished. So, Gulliver grieves but agrees to leave. Symbols of Houynhnms The Houyhnhnms represent an ideal of rational existence, a life governed by sense and moderation. The Houyhnhnms do not lie at all. 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. 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 that the Houyhnhnms should not be considered human ideals at all. Taken on four voyages, Gulliver's ultimate travels are to a greater understanding of human nature and its flaws. After the first voyage, his image of humanity is little changed, likewise for the second and third, Gulliver's image steadily declines until the fourth voyage, when he meets the Yahoos. In this way, Swift presents his commentary on not only government but the human nature through Gulliver's Travels. As we travel with Gulliver through the voyages, Swift brilliantly peels away our pretensions, layer by layer, until he shows us what we are and challenges us. In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift continues to vex the world so that it might awaken to the fact that humankind needs saving, but it has to save itself. "