Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift (Might Versus Right (He also…
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Might Versus Right
He also observes physical force used against others, as with the Houyhnhnms’ chaining up of the Yahoos.
-
Later, in Brobdingnag, he is enslaved by a farmer.
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.
His first encounter with another society is one of entrapment, when he is physically tied down by the Lilliputians
As a miniature visitor to Brobdingnag, he is harassed by the hugeness of everything from insects to household pets.
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.
Gulliver experiences the advantages of physical might both as one who has it, as a giant in Lilliput.
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. Claims to moral superiority are, in the end, as hard to justify as the random use of physical force dominate others.
-
-
-
Modern alienation
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.
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.
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.
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.
Key facts
-
Major Conflict · On the surface, Gulliver strives to understand the various societies with which he comes into contact and to have these societies understand his native England. Below the surface, Swift is engaged in a conflict with the English society he is satirizing.
The story is set in the early eighteenth century, primarily in England and the imaginary countries of Lilliput, Blefuscu, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms
Gulliver’s encounters with other societies eventually lead up to his rejection of human society in the fourth voyage.
Gulliver’s tone is gullible and naïve during the first three voyages; in the fourth, it turns cynical and bitter. The intention of the author, Jonathan Swift, is satirical and biting throughout.
Gulliver rejects human society in the fourth voyage, specifically when he shuns the generous Don Pedro as a vulgar Yahoo.
It is narrated by Lemuel Gulliver, who speaks in the first person. He describes other characters and actions as they appear to him.
Gulliver’s unhappy return to England accentuates his alienation and compels him to buy horses, which remind him of Houyhnhnms, to keep him company.
It was written in 1712–1726, London and Dublin.
-
-
Don Pedro de Mendez
Were Gulliver able to 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.
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.
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.
Mary Burton Gulliver
-
It suggests that despite Gulliver’s curiosity about new lands and exotic races, he is virtually indifferent to those people closest to him.
-
-
Gulliver never thinks about Mary on his travels and never feels guilty about his lack of attention to her.
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.
Gulliver’s wife is mentioned only briefly at the beginning of the novel and appears only for an instant at the conclusion.
Lemuel Gulliver
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.
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 simply devoid of a sense of mission, a goal that would make his wandering into a quest.
Gulliver is gullible, as his name suggests. For example, he misses the obvious ways in which the Lilliputians exploit him.
What seems most lacking in Gulliver is not courage or feelings, but drive.
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.
Although Gulliver is a bold adventurer who visits a multitude of strange lands, it is difficult to regard him as truly heroic.
He provides us only with literal facts and narrative events, never with any 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.