SparkNotes: Gulliver’s Travels: Character List Gulliver’s Travels Plot Overview Analysis of Major Characters Gulliver - The narrator and protagonist of the story. Although Lemuel Gulliver’s vivid and detailed style of narration makes it clear that he is intelligent and well educated, his perceptions are naïve and gullible. He has virtually no emotional life, or at least no awareness of it, and his comments are strictly factual. Indeed, sometimes his obsession with the facts of navigation, for example, becomes unbearable for us, as his fictional editor, Richard Sympson, makes clear when he explains having had to cut out nearly half of Gulliver’s verbiage. Gulliver never thinks that the absurdities he encounters are funny and never makes the satiric connections between the lands he visits and his own home. Gulliver’s naïveté makes the satire possible, as we pick up on things that Gulliver does not notice. Read an in-depth analysis of Gulliver. The emperor - The ruler of Lilliput. Like all Lilliputians, the emperor is fewer than six inches tall.

His power and majesty impress Gulliver deeply, but to us he appears both laughable and sinister. Because of his tiny size, his belief that he can control Gulliver seems silly, but his willingness to execute his subjects for minor reasons of politics or honor gives him a frightening aspect. He is proud of possessing the tallest trees and biggest palace in the kingdom, but he is also quite hospitable, spending a fortune on his captive’s food. The emperor is both a satire of the autocratic ruler and a strangely serious portrait of political power. The farmer - Gulliver’s first master in Brobdingnag. The farmer speaks to Gulliver, showing that he is willing to believe that the relatively tiny Gulliver may be as rational as he himself is, and treats him with gentleness. However, the farmer puts Gulliver on display around Brobdingnag, which clearly shows that he would rather profit from his discovery than converse with him as an equal. His exploitation of Gulliver as a laborer, which nearly starves Gulliver to death, seems less cruel than simpleminded.

Generally, the farmer represents the average Brobdingnagian of no great gifts or intelligence, wielding an extraordinary power over Gulliver simply by virtue of his immense size. Glumdalclitch - The farmer’s nine-year-old daughter, who is forty feet tall. Glumdalclitch becomes Gulliver’s friend and nursemaid, hanging him to sleep safely in her closet at night and teaching him the Brobdingnagian language by day. She is skilled at sewing and makes Gulliver several sets of new clothes, taking delight in dressing him. When the queen discovers that no one at court is suited to care for Gulliver, she invites Glumdalclitch to live at court as his sole babysitter, a function she performs with great seriousness and attentiveness. To Glumdalclitch, Gulliver is basically a living doll, symbolizing the general status Gulliver has in Brobdingnag. The queen - The queen of Brobdingnag, who is so delighted by Gulliver’s beauty and charms that she agrees to buy him from the farmer for 1,000 pieces of gold.

Gulliver appreciates her kindness after the hardships he suffers at the farmer’s and shows his usual fawning love for royalty by kissing the tip of her little finger when presented before her. She possesses, in Gulliver’s words, “infinite” wit and humor, though this description may entail a bit of Gulliver’s characteristic flattery of superiors. The queen seems genuinely considerate, asking Gulliver whether he would consent to live at court instead of simply taking him in as a pet and inquiring into the reasons for his cold good-byes with the farmer. She is by no means a hero, but simply a pleasant, powerful person. The king - The king of Brobdingnag, who, in contrast to the emperor of Lilliput, seems to be a true intellectual, well versed in political science among other disciplines. While his wife has an intimate, friendly relationship with the diminutive visitor, the king’s relation to Gulliver is limited to serious discussions about the history and institutions of Gulliver’s native land. He is thus a figure of rational thought who somewhat prefigures the Houyhnhnms in Book IV.

Lord Munodi - A lord of Lagado, capital of the underdeveloped land beneath Laputa, who hosts Gulliver and gives him a tour of the country on Gulliver’s third voyage. Munodi is a rare example of practical-minded intelligence both in Lagado, where the applied sciences are wildly impractical, and in Laputa, where no one even considers practicality a virtue. He fell from grace with the ruling elite by counseling a commonsense approach to agriculture and land management in Lagado, an approach that was rejected even though it proved successful when applied to his own flourishing estate. Lord Munodi serves as a reality check for Gulliver on his third voyage, an objective-minded contrast to the theoretical delusions of the other inhabitants of Laputa and Lagado. Read an in-depth analysis of Lord Munodi. Yahoos - Unkempt humanlike beasts who live in servitude to the Houyhnhnms. Yahoos seem to belong to various ethnic groups, since there are blond Yahoos as well as dark-haired and redheaded ones. The men are characterized by their hairy bodies, and the women by their low-hanging breasts. They are naked, filthy, and extremely primitive in their eating habits.

Yahoos are not capable of government, and thus they are kept as servants to the Houyhnhnms, pulling their carriages and performing manual tasks. They repel Gulliver with their lascivious sexual appetites, especially when an eleven-year-old Yahoo girl attempts to rape Gulliver as he is bathing naked. Yet despite Gulliver’s revulsion for these disgusting creatures, he ends his writings referring to himself as a Yahoo, just as the Houyhnhnms do as they regretfully evict him from their realm. Thus, “Yahoo” becomes another term for human, at least in the semideranged and self-loathing mind of Gulliver at the end of his fourth journey. Houyhnhnms - Rational horses who maintain a simple, peaceful society governed by reason and truthfulness—they do not even have a word for “lie” in their language. Houyhnhnms are like ordinary horses, except that they are highly intelligent and deeply wise. They live in a sort of socialist republic, with the needs of the community put before individual desires. They are the masters of the Yahoos, the savage humanlike creatures in Houyhnhnmland.

In all, the Houyhnhnms have the greatest impact on Gulliver throughout all his four voyages. He is grieved to leave them, not relieved as he is in leaving the other three lands, and back in England he relates better with his horses than with his human family. The Houyhnhnms thus are a measure of the extent to which Gulliver has become a misanthrope, or “human-hater”; he is certainly, at the end, a horse lover. Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master - The Houyhnhnm who first discovers Gulliver and takes him into his own home. Wary of Gulliver’s Yahoolike appearance at first, the master is hesitant to make contact with him, but Gulliver’s ability to mimic the Houyhnhnm’s own words persuades the master to protect Gulliver. The master’s domestic cleanliness, propriety, and tranquil reasonableness of speech have an extraordinary impact on Gulliver. It is through this horse that Gulliver is led to reevaluate the differences between humans and beasts and to question humanity’s claims to rationality.

Don Pedro de Mendez - The Portuguese captain who takes Gulliver back to Europe after he is forced to leave the land of the Houyhnhnms. Don Pedro is naturally benevolent and generous, offering the half-crazed Gulliver his own best suit of clothes to replace the tatters he is wearing. But Gulliver meets his generosity with repulsion, as he cannot bear the company of Yahoos. By the end of the voyage, Don Pedro has won over Gulliver to the extent that he is able to have a conversation with him, but the captain’s overall Yahoolike nature in Gulliver’s eyes alienates him from Gulliver to the very end. Read an in-depth analysis of Don Pedro de Mendez. Brobdingnagians - Giants whom Gulliver meets on his second voyage. Brobdingnagians are basically a reasonable and kindly people governed by a sense of justice. Even the farmer who abuses Gulliver at the beginning is gentle with him, and politely takes the trouble to say good-bye to him upon leaving him.

The farmer’s daughter, Glumdalclitch, gives Gulliver perhaps the most kindhearted treatment he receives on any of his voyages. The Brobdingnagians do not exploit him for personal or political reasons, as the Lilliputians do, and his life there is one of satisfaction and quietude. But the Brobdingnagians do treat Gulliver as a plaything. When he tries to speak seriously with the king of Brobdingnag about England, the king dismisses the English as odious vermin, showing that deep discussion is not possible for Gulliver here. Lilliputians and Blefuscudians - Two races of miniature people whom Gulliver meets on his first voyage. Lilliputians and Blefuscudians are prone to conspiracies and jealousies, and while they treat Gulliver well enough materially, they are quick to take advantage of him in political intrigues of various sorts. The two races have been in a longstanding war with each over the interpretation of a reference in their common holy scripture to the proper way to eat eggs.

Gulliver helps the Lilliputians defeat the Blefuscudian navy, but he eventually leaves Lilliput and receives a warm welcome in the court of Blefuscu, by which Swift satirizes the arbitrariness of international relations. Laputans - Absentminded intellectuals who live on the floating island of Laputa, encountered by Gulliver on his third voyage. The Laputans are parodies of theoreticians, who have scant regard for any practical results of their own research. They are so inwardly absorbed in their own thoughts that they must be shaken out of their meditations by special servants called flappers, who shake rattles in their ears. During Gulliver’s stay among them, they do not mistreat him, but are generally unpleasant and dismiss him as intellectually deficient. They do not care about down-to-earth things like the dilapidation of their own houses, but worry intensely about abstract matters like the trajectories of comets and the course of the sun. They are dependent in their own material needs on the land below them, called Lagado, above which they hover by virtue of a magnetic field, and from which they periodically raise up food supplies.

In the larger context of Gulliver’s journeys, the Laputans are a parody of the excesses of theoretical pursuits and the uselessness of purely abstract knowledge. Mary Burton Gulliver - Gulliver’s wife, whose perfunctory mention in the first paragraphs of Gulliver’s Travels demonstrates how unsentimental and unemotional Gulliver is. He makes no reference to any affection for his wife, either here or later in his travels when he is far away from her, and his detachment is so cool as to raise questions about his ability to form human attachments. When he returns to England, she is merely one part of his former existence, and he records no emotion even as she hugs him wildly. The most important facts about her in Gulliver’s mind are her social origin and the income she generates. Jonathan Swift and 'Gulliver's Travels' | Great Writers Inspire Jonathan Swift and 'Gulliver's Travels' by: Cover from a 1943 Comic of Gulliver's Travels Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons Authorship, Originality, and Publication History The notion of authorship is (as ever) problematic in Gulliver's Travels.

This is evident in two ways: the publication history of the work reveals the extent to which Swift lost control of the production over the Travels: the first edition of the Travels was heavily and illicitly doctored by its printer. the author's obsessive harping on the idea of veracity, verisimilitude, and authenticity that characterises Gulliver’s account Gulliver's Travels began life not as the work of a single man, but as a group project. The idea originated with the Scriblerus Club, a group including Swift, John Gay, Alexander Pope and John Arbuthno. The Scriblerus Club was a group of writers and wits devoted to satirising what they perceived as the folly of modern scholarship and science. They invented an author and pedant called Martinus Scriblerus, and wrote an imaginary biography of him, which was finally published in 1741, as The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus. However, parts of the memoirs were written in the early years of the 1720s, and Pope says that Gulliver's Travels was formed from a hint in the memoirs.

If you actually read the memoirs as they appeared in 1741, you'll see that chapter 16 describing the travels of Martinus bears a close resemblance to the travels of Gulliver. If the Travels were initially generated by the Scriblerians interest in mocking pedantry and contemporary science, it was Swift alone who fleshed out the narrative of a Scriblerus character sent off on a series of imaginary journeys. From Swift's correspondence, we know that the main composition of Gulliver began around the end of 1720, and was finished in the autumn of 1725. It was not a good time for Swift. While writing A Tale of a Tub, Swift thought he could realise his ambitions for a rise within the church, and the Tory leaders with which he had aligned himself were in the ascendancy. By the time he started work on Gulliver's Travels things looked bleaker. He had failed to obtain any Church preferment in England, and he had been forced instead to accept a lowly deanery in Ireland. The Tory government had fallen, and his friends and allies impeached by the Whigs.

Gulliver's Travels was in part a virulent attack on the Whig ministry that Swift blamed for these circumstances. Portrait of Alexander Pope by Jean-Baptiste van Loo [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons Swift saw the book as politically explosive, and therefore as something that he had to present and position quite carefully in order to avoid prosecution. He secretly sent the manuscript to a publisher, Benjamin Motte. Accompanying the manuscript was a letter asking Motte if he would publish Gulliver's Travels signed by Gulliver's imaginary cousin, Richard Sympson. Sympson is the author of the prefatory letter to Gulliver's Travels. So already there is a distinct blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction: in his real life dealings with his publisher, Swift hides behind a fictional figure that later appears within the work itself. Motte was keen to publish Gulliver's Travels, and it came out in October 1726, very quickly – in fact, so quickly that Swift was unable to correct proof copies of his work before it appeared in print.

When it did appear, he discovered to his horror that not only was it full of misprints, but also that Motte had deliberately altered the text of several passages, cutting out or toning down the sections he thought were too dangerously outspoken. Swift was outraged at this invasion of his authorial rights. While many of the misprints were corrected in the next edition, it was not until 1735, that Motte's heavy editing of Gulliver's Travels was removed, then it appeared in Dublin publisher George Faulkner's multi-volume edition of Swift's works. Despite Swift's fury, Motte's 1726 edition of Guliver's Travels was a huge success. The first impression sold out within a week. Within three weeks, ten thousand copies had been sold. Gulliver's Travels was the talk of the town. Swift's correspondence from the time is jubilant about its success, but also makes joking references to the fact that he didn't write it. So here already we have a rather strange set of relationships established between Swift and the authorship of Gulliver's Travels. First the book starts out as the product of several minds, a group project.

Then it becomes Swift's own, but one from which he distances himself by pretending that its really by its fictional narrator, Gulliver, and brought to the publisher by Gulliver's fictional cousin, Sympson. Then the book is published, and rather than getting Swift’s own version of Gulliver's Travels, the London literati get a version bowdlerised by the publisher. Nonetheless, it is a hit, and Swift revels in the success of 'his' book; yet he continues to pretend that it's not 'really' by him. By 1726, the notion of authorship of Gulliver's Travels is a tricky business. Fact, Fiction, and Authenticity Gulliver's Travels also reveals some strange overlap between fact and fiction. Swift pretends that Gulliver is the author of his travels.

And Gulliver himself is obsessed with defending the authenticity of the travels as factual account of his own real life experiences: in a letter from Captain Gulliver, which prefaces the travels, he says: 'If the Censure of Yahoos could any Way affect me, I should have great reason to complain, that some of them are so bold as to think my Book of Travels a meer Fiction out of Mine own Brain'. This concern is emphasised in the letter from the publisher to the reader: 'There is an Air of Truth apparent through the whole; and indeed the Author was so distinguished for his Veracity, that it became a Sort of Proverb among his Neighbours as Redriff, that when any one affirmed a Thing, to say, it was as True as if Mr Gulliver had spoke it'.

This concern that the reader should accept the truth of the fiction continues to be apparent once we get into the travels proper: describing the King of Brobdignag's Kitchen, Gulliver says: 'But if I should describe the Kitchen-grate, the prodigious Pots and Kettles, the Joints of Meat turning on the Spits, with many other Particulars; perhaps I should be hardly believed; at least a severe Critick would be apt to think I enlarged a little, as Travellers are often suspected to do…'. This emphasis on the trueness of the account presented works in part as a parody of emergent traditions in contemporary prose and prose fiction. Those of you who’ve read any of Daniel Defoe's fictions will know that they are always prefaced with professions of authenticity. Moll Flanders begins: 'The World is so taken up of late with Novels and Romances that it will be hard for a private History to be taken for Genuine'.<.cite> Defoe is attempting to define the veracity of his account in opposition to the fictionality of contemporary romance fiction.

But the narrators of romance fiction also stressed that their accounts were genuine fact: the narrator of novelist Eliza Haywood's prose fiction The British Recluse (1722) begins her story by saying: 'The following little History (which I can affirm for Truth, having it from the Mouths of those chiefly concerned in it) is a sad Example of what Miseries may Attend a Woman'. As those of you who have read either Moll Flanders or The British Recluse will know, there isn't anything all that plausible or realistic about the events that occur in these 'true' fictions. The emphasis on authenticity comes hand in hand with a heavy dose of sensationalism. 1803 etching by James Gillray, The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver as King George III and Napoleon respectively [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons In a highly competitive book market, this sensationalism became ever and ever more outlandish, as authors struggled to surpass one another in novelty and singularity. In some ways, Gulliver's Travels satirises the competing commitment to sensationalism and truth claims that characterised contemporary successful prose fiction.

It stretches the plausibility of the 'life and surprising adventures' genre to its limit, by attempting to pass off as private history an account that is palpably fantastical. Gulliver's Travels and Travel Writing But the emergent novel wasn't the only genre marked by these defences of authenticity. They are also found in contemporary travel writing. Swift's use of the name Sympson in his negotiations with his publisher, and his creation of this Sympson as a fictional cousin of Gulliver's, links him to Captain William Sympson, the equally fictitious author of A New Voyage to the East Indies (1715). A New Voyage asserted in bold terms the autobiographical nature of its account, but was in fact plagiarized from an earlier travel book. Gulliver's Travels derived much of its popularity from the contemporary readers' enthusiastic consumption of travel compilations and the records of journeys and voyages. Swift himself owned a number of accounts by famous travel writers, including the sixteenth century such as travel writers Richard Hakluyt, Samuel Purchas, and William Dampier.

There is a sustained imitation of various travel accounts in Gulliver's Travels: the description of the storm in Book II closely copies the style of a seventeenth narrative called Mariners Magazine by Captain Samuel Sturmy. Swift places the locations of his fictitious voyages in regions visited by one of the most famous travel writers of the period: the pirate, explorer and author William Dampier. Dampier produced an account of his 1699 expedition to Australia, then known as New Holland, which had appeared as a two part account called A Voyage to New Holland published in 1702, and A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland published in 1709. Lilliput is supposed to be between Van Dieman's land, which was Tasmania, and the northern coast of Australia. The land of the Houyhnhnms in Book 4 is just south west of Australia. Gulliver's Travels also exploits some of the potential for absurdity that was evident in travel accounts. In contemporary travelogues, one way in which authors attempted to emphasize the authenticity of their account was by representing islands in woodcuts as they would appear if they were seen through a telescope.

Having no sea shown on them, and cut off at the base, they in fact look as if they’re flying through the air. When Laputa flies over Balnibarbi, Swift literalizes the comic potential of the travel narrative and its illustrative apparatus. Another important aspect of the travel narrative satirised by Gulliver's Travels is its function as a form of reflection on contemporary European society. Travelogue's observations about new nations and experiences could be used to interrogate domestic culture and mores, not always to their advantage. And this aspect of the growing interest in the new world that wasn't just confined to travel-writing. Contemporaries were fascinated by the possibility that a savage could be noble, revealing by contrast the corruption of a 'civilised' voyager (Consider Aphra Behn's Oroonoko). Gulliver's progressive disillusionment with his own society, and his preference for the civilised world of the Hounymnyms in the final book, represents this contemporary vogue taken to an extreme: by the end of the fourth book, Gulliver returns to England and can only tolerate the company of horses, and he stuffs his nose with lavender and rue to cut out the smell of mankind.

Map of Lugnagg from the 1726 edition of Gulliver's Travels [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons And as a story, Gulliver's Travels both capitalises on the commercial vogue for travel writing, and shares some of the excitement of a real travellers tale. We aren't just distanced readers enjoying the irony of the satire – one of the things that has made the Travels into a children's classic is that on a basic level of plot and story, we want to know what Gulliver finds, and what happens next. But the Travels are also a parody. And Gulliver is a splendid liar, masquerading as a purveyor of genuine experiences. Swift draws on the rhetoric of veracity to undercut the truth claims found in contemporary prose and prose fiction. The irony of this satire is that underwriting Gulliver's Travels is the implicit assumption that this fictional world can in fact tell us the truth about the 'real' world of contemporary English society and politics, for the narrative works as a form of allegory.

Swift draws on a tradition developed through Thomas More's Utopia, and the satiric narratives of Rabelais and Cyrano de Bergerac: the tradition of describing fantastic countries that satirise contemporary clerics, politicians, and academics. Like all allegories, these mock-traveller's tales gesture towards the true state of things by telling a lie, or in the Hounynyms' phrase, 'telling the thing that is not'. So Gulliver's Travels is a fictional tale masquerading as a true story, yet the very fictionality of the account enables Swift author to reveal what it would not be possible to articulate through a genuine account of the nation. Allegory and Meaning Allegory provides an interpretative framework within which a 'true' set of values or ideas can be communicated, as one narrative gestures toward another which is not directly perceivable or communicable. Allegory does this via a series of equations or equivalences. For example, in A Tale of a Tub, Martin equals Anglicanism, Peter equals Catholicism, and their quarrel equates to the Reformation.

The trouble with Gulliver's Travels is that the allegory does not remain constant: the frame of reference shifts, making it hard to decipher the ultimate reality toward which it points. For example, it is never entirely clear for who or what the figure of Gulliver stands. At some points Gulliver is a cipher for Swift himself: in the second chapter of the book of Lilliput, Gulliver gives an account of the way in which his excrement has to be carried off in a two wheelbarrows by the Lilliputians. He explains his justification for this detail: 'I would not have dwelt so long upon a Circumstance, that perhaps at first sight may appear not very Momentous; if I had not thought it necessary to justify my Character in Point of Cleanliness to the World, which I am told, some of my Maligners have been pleased on this and other Occasions, to call in Question'. This clearly seems to operate as a reference to previous attacks on Swift, whose writings, especially A Tale of a Tub, had been attacked as filthy, lewd, and immodest.

Gulliver's self defence operates as Swift's own self defence in the face of existing criticisms of his work. But at different points Gulliver serves as a cipher for other historical figures. For example, at one point he comes to stand in as a figure for Swift's friend, the disgraced Tory leader Lord Bolingbroke. When Gulliver is arrested by the Lilliputians and forced to stand trial, Gulliver decides to escape rather than testify. Justifying this apparently cowardly decision, he says: 'Having in my Life perused many State-Tryals, which I ever observed to terminate as the Judges thought fit to direct; I durst not rely on so dangerous a Decision, in so ciritical a Juncture, and against such Powerful Enemies'. Here Swift, via Gulliver, offers a defence of Bolingbroke's decision not to stand trial over his part in the Jacobite Atterbury plot of April 1722. We read, in this context, Gulliver's reasoning as an allegorical figuration of Bolingbroke's part in recent political history. But can allegory function in this way?

Gulliver's Travels invites interpretation as an allegory, but the allegorical framework is constantly shifting, making it hard to pin down exactly to what version of 'reality' the fiction relates. Who is Gulliver? Is he Swift? Bolingbroke? Locke? Dampier? Ever since the book was first published, readers have tried to 'fix' an interpretative system for decoding the topical satirical focus for the Travels. Just two weeks after Gulliver's Travels came out, newspapers were advertising A Key, Being Obervations and Explanatory Notes, upon the Travels of Lemuel Gulliver (1726), which offered all the necessary identifications for unpicking Swift's satire. Some of these offered genuinely relevant readings of individual figures (for example, Flimnap as Walpole), but in attempting to offer a systematic explanation of the whole book in terms of topical comment, it revealed just how hard it is to tie much of the Travels down. While there is substantial pointed topical satire, the targets of Swift's attack keep changing. One moment he comments on Whig politics in 1720s, and the next he widens out to embrace all human folly.

The changes of perspective afforded by our unreliable narrator are almost dizzying, and they make it hard to establish a sense of proportion. This confusion of perspective, and sense of the difficulty in establishing relative values is something that is reflected in Gulliver's own difficulties in measuring what he sees around him. For example, in 'Voyage to Brobdignag', he writes: 'I was an Hour walking to the end of this Field; which was fenced in with a Hedge of at least one hundred and twenty Foot high, and the Trees so lofty that I could make no Computation of their Altitude'. When Gulliver arrives back home again, his sense of perspective, of what is the norm, has so altered that he is flummoxed by the size of the members of his family: 'My Wife ran out to embrace me, but I stooped lower than her Knees, thinking she could otherwise never be able to reach my mouth'.

'Gulliver Exhibited to the Brobdingnag Farmer' by Richard Redgrave, 1836 [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons Interpretation and Objectivity One way of looking at these crises of interpretation in Gulliver's Travels is to consider them alongside the empirical philosophy of John Locke, of which Swift was critical. In his 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding' (1690), Locke attempted to investigate the formulation and workings of systems of knowledge. In broad terms, Locke's essay attacks the idea of imagination as the key to knowledge, in favour of recognising that the mind acquires knowledge through direct experience, empirically: '…Men, barely by the use of their natural faculties, may attain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any innate impressions, and may arrive at certainty without any such original notions or principles'. At the core of Locke's philosophy is the argument in which Locke describes the mind at birth as a tabula rasa – a wax tablet as yet unmarked by the impressions that experience will write on it. Experience is something that the mind cannot refuse, and at a basic level, the mind is marked by the initial sensation of the object perceived.

From those markings, we use sense and reason to build up a system of knowledge. What we know then, is derived from connections made between perceived experiences – not from any innate wisdom or understanding. Locke's theory provoked a debate about what was real. His idea of the materialism of objects external to the body seemed opposed to any sense of inner reality. In Locke's philosophy of knowledge, reason is elevated above spiritual revelation. For a staunch Anglican like Swift, it seemed to offer a defence or intellectual basis for deism, or atheism. Although Locke's Essay was initially intended to provide an investigation of the nature of religious belief, many Anglicans thought Locke was creating an epistemology that cut God out of the equation. Portrait of John Locke by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1697 [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons We could read Gulliver's troubles in understanding what he sees as a parody of Locke’s philosophy of human understanding. Gulliver looks to the material world around him to gain a sense of knowledge. There is a great deal of emphasis on what he sees, and a real striving to attain some kind of objectivity, to record his impressions accurately.

However, his impressions and his sensory apprehension of those worlds do not help him to gain knowledge. He looks at the trees around him to get a sense of scale, but they do not help. One of the central parts of Lockeian philosophy was that knowledge was not purely derived from sense data, but that man used reason to work out the connections between the ideas received through experience. However, although Gulliver tries to measure one object against another to establish a correct perspective, he remains unable to establish a secure view of the world. In a broader sense, Gulliver should be able to calibrate moral behaviour by using his external experiences of the people that he meets on his travels as a body of knowledge from which he can derive a sense of an ideal society. In terms of Lockean empiricism, it is significant that Gulliver has no inbuilt, preformed sense of spiritual or inner revelation. All he has is what he sees, and he uses that to define his own moral philosophy.

But the philosophy he arrives at by the end of the book is one which is profoundly misanthropic and patently ridiculous: when he returns home after his voyage to the Hounynyms, he has concluded that he wants to live with horses, and make canoes out of humans. Swift offers us a mind which has indeed been imprinted with what it experiences from the senses, but which is unable to configure these experiences into a useful and meaningful worldview. The ultimate result of all Gulliver's experiences is a profound disorientation: because he has no innate sense of himself and his own values, he merely tries to internalise the perceptions and value systems of the cultures that he finds himself in, none of which quite match with his own needs. While evaluating Gulliver's final philosophy, it is important to bear in mind that book 4 wasn't the original ending to the book. Swift originally proposed to have the third book last.

This essay is only the beginning of an attempt to situate some of the salient features of Gulliver's Travels in the context of existing texts and ideas, and to consider how the fantastical world described by Swift's maverick traveler might relate to wider concerns about the relationship between authenticity and authorship, and authenticity and truth. Gulliver's Travels Gulliver's Travels or browse other Shmoopers' Questions In A Nutshell You might have heard people call Gulliver's Travels a satire. A satire is a (generally funny) fictional work that uses sarcasm and irony to poke fun at the general patheticness of humanity – our weakness, our stupidity, all that jazz. Some of our favorite satires include The Onion and The Daily Show . But if you love twenty-first century satire (like we do), you should check out the eighteenth century – those guys were huge fans of a good satire. In fact, some of the greatest thinkers of the eighteenth century, including poet Alexander Pope, mathematician John Arbuthnot, and our main man, Jonathan Swift, could not get enough satire.

They even started a club, the Scriblerus Club , to express their general contempt for humanity and for bad writing in particular. Thus, we think it's fair to say that the early eighteenth century was a good time for haters. This was lucky for Jonathan Swift, since he's like the king of haters – one of the greatest writers of satire that English literature has ever seen. In fact, Swift had a lot of cause to despise people, because he had a somewhat disastrous public life. Swift was an Irish clergyman who regularly came to London to participate in the political and literary scene under Queen Anne . While Jonathan Swift began life as a Whig (Britain's liberal party in the eighteenth century), he eventually became a prominent Tory (a member of England's conservative party). Tories favored royal authority and the national church (Anglicanism). The Tories also opposed increased power for the Parliament, the English equivalent of the American Congress. Swift may not have believed as strongly in the divine right of kings as some dyed-in-the-wool Tories (as you might guess from his satire of kings in Gulliver's Travels). Still, he did generally side with political conservatives on the issues of the day.

Everything seemed to be going relatively well until George I took the English throne in 1714. With George came a strongly pro-Whig Parliament. The Whigs were the political enemies of the Tories, and Swift found himself up a creek without a paddle. Facing the end of his political life, Swift headed back to Ireland, becoming dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. This feud between the Whigs and the Tories provides the primary political material for Gulliver's Travels – for more specifics, check out our "Character Analysis" of the Lilliputians. Swift completed Gulliver's Travels in 1725 and published it through London printer Benjamin Motte in 1726. Swift wrote to Motte under an assumed name, Richard Sympson, to arrange the novel's printing. Motte was so concerned with being charged with treason for publishing Gulliver's Travels that he tried to tone down the political content of several parts of the novel ( source ).

The fact that Swift couldn't even use his own name when planning his book's publication, and that the publisher tried to censor its content, gives us a sense of exactly how offensive Gulliver's Travels must have been when it was written. Outraged that Motte rearranged his original text, Swift finally sent Gulliver's Travels to another press for printing. The 1735 edition, printed by George Faulkner in Dublin, restores the novel in its complete form and includes a nasty little letter supposedly from "Captain Gulliver" criticizing the 1726 edition's changes. But even Motte got a happy ending: Gulliver's Travels sold out its first printing in 10 days. Everybody read it, and now here we all are, ready to get to the nitty gritty of Lemuel Gulliver and his travels. Why Should I Care? When we first started seeing ads for director James Cameron's CGI extravaganza Avatar, we were like, warrior Smurfs? But now that we've seen it, whoa, are we impressed. It's not just the beautiful visual material that kept us riveted to our seats.

We were also fascinated by the whole idea of the avatars: when wheelchair-bound Jake Sully gets to walk, run, and jump using his new, better body? It was as though we were running and jumping for the first time in who knows how long. We take a lot of things for granted in our daily lives. The great thing about science fiction or fantasy is that it can take totally familiar aspects of human experience and show them to us again in a fresh light. Avatar makes basic movements of the human body – walking and running – seem new and remarkable. But, you may be saying to yourselves, what does Avatar have to do with Gulliver's Travels? Well, James Cameron is drawing on a long fantasy tradition of bending reality to make ordinary things seem strange and unfamiliar. And Gulliver's Travels is one of the granddaddies of this genre: Swift takes regular topics like politics, international relations, math and science, and even old age and twists them. He makes political differences seem tiny by sending Gulliver to Lilliput and he makes math and science seem airy and far from daily life by floating the island of Laputa overhead.

By depicting human customs we take for granted as weird and alien, Gulliver's Travels is asking us to look at them again as though for the first time. But what Gulliver uncovers during his travels is nowhere near as lovely as James Cameron's Pandora. He finds nearly everything about people – their desires, their interests, even their smell – totally repulsive. Gulliver's Travels reflects human beings back to us in all kinds of creatively disgusting ways. This is a book to read when you're feeling mad at people in general, because boy, Swift is right there with you, hilariously hating all the while. Swift uses his creative reorganization of daily life to create the meanest, funniest, dirtiest rant of the entire eighteenth century – and we have to tell you, this novel has to be read to be believed. Study Questions Swift's Gullivers Travels Summary of Part I: What is Lemuel Gulliver's job on the ship? When Gulliver arrives in Lilliput, what is unusual physically about the Lilliputian people in contrast with the people of Europe? With what neighboring country are the Lilliputians at war?

What threat does the King of Lilliput make against Gulliver if Gulliver will not help the Lilliputians enslave the enemy country? (I.e., how will the Lilliputian injure Gulliver if he doesn't cooperate?) Summary of Part II: What is unusual about the inhabitants of Brobdingnag when we contrast them physically with the people of Europe? How tall is the farm-laborer in Brobdingnag who finds Gulliver in the wheat field? To what family member does the farmer entrust Gulliver as a "pet"? How does the farmer make money from his "pet," Gulliver? After Gulliver's health takes a turn for the worst, to whom does he sell Gulliver? What is the King of Brobdingnag's conclusion about the nature of Gulliver's race when Gulliver explains the policies of his human civilization? Summary of Part III: What unusual trait does the island of Laputa possess? What is the primary interest of the Laputan people? What military advantage do the Laputans gain by the nature of their island that allows them to terrorize other nations?

The Grand Academy of Lagado parodies what famous British scientific institution? Glubbdubdrib is a land inhabited by people with what unusual occupation? Part IV: Chapter I: In Gulliver's fourth voyage, what is the name of the ship he captains? What do James Welch's buccaneers/mutineers do with Gulliver after taking over the ship on May 9th, 1711? How does Gulliver end up being left marooned? What Bristol captain takes Lemuel Gulliver out on the fateful voyage from Portsmouth? Several men on the ship die of calentures. What are calentures? What horrible discovery does Lemuel Gulliver make about the men he hires in the Barbadoes islands? (I.e., what do these new recruits end up doing on the voyage?) Strange half-shaggy, half-hairless creatures assault Gulliver on the island. What do we later learn is the name of these creatures? When Gulliver first encounters the Yahoos, they surround him and fling what material at him from above in the tree branches? What type of animal frightens away the horrible creatures that attack Lemuel in the fields?

Gulliver comes up with two incorrect theories about the inhabitants of the island after encountering his first Houhyhmhn. What is his first theory regarding the mental traits of the human-masters on the island if the horse is so special? What is his second theory regarding the "magical" nature of the horses? While the "horses" examine Gulliver, what causes him to "roar" as he puts it? What is a yahoo? What is ironic about Gulliver's sense of revulsion about seeing these Yahoos? Chapter II: When the horses take Gulliver out to the yard, he finds three yahoos tied to a beam where they are eating animal corpses. When Gulliver looks at the beasts more closely, he discerns the true identify of these creatures by looking at their faces, hands, and feet. What does he realize these animals are? Why does Gulliver think he is going to starve after the Houynyhyms take him into their custody? What do the Houyhnhnm eat at dinner? What is a Houyhnhnm? What two human languages does Gulliver think closest to the Houynhm language?

In the Houynyhm language, what does the word Houynhnhm mean? The Houynhhm are incapable of expressing several human ideas in their language. List any one of these. When three months have passed, and Gulliver can speak with the Houyhnhm, he learns much in conversation. How does the Master Houyhnhm respond when Gulliver tries to explain he comes from another country and that he sailed to the island in a boat built by humans? What is the etymological root of Houyhnhm or horse in the Houyhnhm language? Why is Gulliver unwilling to take off his clothes in front of the Houyhnhm? How does the Master Houyhnhm respond to Gulliver's claim that Nature forbids him to be naked? Chapter IV: What does "saying the thing that was not" indicate in Houyhnhm language? Why does this make the Houyhnhm so confused and uneasy? When Gulliver attempts to explain the condition of his crew to the Houyhnhm, he keeps hitting holes in his vocabulary. What are some concepts he has that have no equivalent in the Houyhnhm language? List three.

Chapter V: When Gulliver explains to his master the causes of war, Swift has him list dozens. List any one example of these possible causes. What is Swift's point about these specific motivations for going to war? Why does Gulliver's master think that humans should be incapable of actually injuring each other in a war? How does Gulliver convince him otherwise? When Gulliver tries to impress his master by emphasizing the valor of the English in blowing up their enemies, what does the master order him to do? How does Gulliver explain what a lawyer does to the Master? Why does Gulliver say that lawyers seeking to argue a just cause are at a disadvantage? Chapter VI: Why does the Master find it hard to understand human illness? Explain Swift's joke about medical prognostics--i.e., why are doctors so good at predicting deadly maladies? What three methods do governmental ministers use to rise to power, according to Lemuel Gulliver? What are the common traits of the nobility, according to Lemuel Gulliver? According to Gulliver, what do people commonly believe about any aristocrat who is healthy and strong in appearance?

Chapter VII: Gulliver's Travels Summary - eNotes.com Gulliver's Travels Summary Trivia Gulliver's Travels Summary In Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver encounters strange groups, like the Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians. Upon his return to England, he no longer wishes to associate with people, whom he associates with the repulsive Yahoos. Gulliver's Travels summary key points: In Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver first travels to the island of tiny men called Lilliputians. He is accused of treason and sentenced to death after putting out a fire with his urine, but escapes before having to face his punishment. Two months later, Gulliver embarks on a second voyage. This time he travels to the land of the gigantic Brobdingnagians, where he is exhibited like a freak and made to fight animals. An eagle drops him into the sea where he is picked up by a British ship and returned to England. On his third voyage, Gulliver visits a series of islands devoted to abstract things like mathematics, abstract ideas, and magic.

On his fourth voyage, he visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, who enslave the repulsive human-like Yahoos. He is expelled after the Houyhnhnms deem they cannot have a partly-rational Yahoo like Gulliver. link Link Summary of the Novel In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver describes his four voyages. In the first voyage, he is the only person to reach land after a shipwreck. He awakes to find himself tied down by tiny men; these are the Lilliputians. A Hurgo (official) supervises them. Gulliver agrees to cooperate, and is untied and taken to the capital where he meets Lilliput’s Emperor. He agrees to serve the Lilliputians, and is granted partial freedom in return. Gulliver prevents an invasion from Lilliput’s enemy, Blefuscu, by stealing the enemy’s ships and is given a high title of honor. He makes friends and enemies at court and learns details of Lilliputian society. After putting out a fire in the palace by urinating on it, he is accused of high treason through polluting the palace.

He is sentenced to be blinded and starved. However, Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, finds a boat, sails out to sea, and is picked up by an English ship. Two months after his return to England, Gulliver leaves on his second voyage. He lands in an unknown country to get water and is abandoned. A giant reaper picks him up (he is in the country of the gigantic Brobdingnagians) and takes him to a farmer, who wants him to be on exhibit as a freak. He fights a gigantic cat and other monstrous animals. The Queen of Brobdingnag buys Gulliver and presents him to the King. The farmer’s daughter, Glumdalclitch, who had befriended Gulliver, is hired by the King as Gulliver’s guardian and nurse. Gulliver quarrels with the King’s dwarf, but describes England in detail to the King. Gulliver is carried around in a box and tours the kingdom. He fights birds and animals and finds the King’s Maids of Honor, who undress before him, disgusting him because of their great size.

Gulliver’s box is picked up by a gigantic eagle and dropped into the sea; he is picked up by an English ship and returns to England. Shortly after his return, Gulliver leaves on his third voyage. His ship is captured by pirates, who set him adrift in a small boat. He arrives on the flying island of Laputa, which flies over the continent of Balnibarbi. The people he meets are interested only in abstract speculations. Their king asks Gulliver only about mathematics in England. Gulliver learns that the island is kept flying by magnetism. He travels to Balnibarbi, and he is shown the Academy of Laputa, where scholars devote all their time to absurd inventions and ideas. He then goes to Glubbdubdrib, an island of magicians. The king is waited on by ghosts, and he calls up the ghosts of dead historical characters at Gulliver’s request. He then goes to Luggnagg, where the Struldbruggs who have eternal life but not eternal youth. After spending time in Japan, Gulliver returns to England. On his fourth voyage, Gulliver is set on shore in an unknown land by mutineers.

This is the land of the Houyhnhms: intelligent, rational horses who hold as servants repulsive animal-like human beings called Yahoos. A dapple-gray Houyhnhm who becomes his master is unable to understand the frailties and emotions in Gulliver’s account of England. The Assembly is distressed at the idea of a partly-rational Yahoo living with a Houyhnhm, votes to expel Gulliver. He makes a boat and is picked up by a Portuguese ship. On his return to England, Gulliver is so disgusted with human beings that he refuses to associate with them, preferring the company of horses. The Life and Times of Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift, dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, was a major figure in literature and politics in both Ireland and England. He was famous in his own time as a witty satirist of many aspects of life. He later became world-famous as the author of a children’s classic, Gulliver’s Travels, which was not originally intended by its author as a children’s book.

He was born in Dublin to a well-to-do family partly of English descent, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford University, and worked as secretary to the retired politician Sir William Temple. These other experiences acquainted him with the vanity and follies of leading figures in British life. Later, after difficulties in obtaining employment as a clergyman of the Church of England, he increased his acquaintance with fashionable society and acquired the tinge of bitterness that characterizes much of his literary work. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Swift (already a fashionable satirist), received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Dublin and began to write political satires. In 1704, having already published some widely-read political works, Swift became famous with the publication of The Battle of the Books and The Tale of a Tub. Other satirical works spread Swift’s fame to London, which he visited frequently. Swift was a major figure in the Tory party as well as a journalist and writer when, in 1713, he became the dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Anglican (Episcopal) cathedral of Dublin. As dean, he was assistant to the bishop, supervising the cathedral’s day-to-day affairs.

Although he never married, Swift had a long and close friendship with Esther Johnson, known to him as Stella, to whom the published diary called the Journal to Stella was addressed. After becoming dean, Swift met Ester Vanhomrigh, daughter of a wealthy merchant. He called her “Vanessa,” and they too had a close friendship. In 1723, Vanessa, hearing of Swift’s friendship with Stella, died. Gulliver’s Travels, which Swift began writing by 1720, was published anonymously in 1726. Additional successful satirical works were written in the following years, but as Swift grew old, his health deteriorated. In 1742, after suffering several strokes, he was declared insane. He died several years later in 1745. Swift’s numerous works, including articles as well as books, attacked many of the evils of his time, particularly political corruption and the oppression of the Irish by the English. His wit and satire attract, amuse, and educate the reader. Estimated Reading Time Three weeks should be allowed for the study of Gulliver’s Travels. Two weeks will be required to read the novel, reading four chapters at a sitting.

The student should read every day from Monday to Friday. After reading the chapters, the student should answer all study questions in this guide to ensure understanding and comprehension. The essay questions may be used if needed. The fourth week is set aside for reports, projects, and testing as deemed necessary by the teacher. More Content: Summary (hide) link Link Lemuel Gulliver, the title character of Gulliver’s Travels, is a capable, brave, and educated Englishman whose unlucky adventures drive him to sickness and madness. His simple, straightforward way of telling his story suggests that he lacks the imagination to understand what he has experienced. Gulliver is shipwrecked off the shore of Lilliput and captured by humans only six inches tall. Practical man that he is, he promises to obey their laws controlling him. He finds Lilliput, not unlike Europe, in a state of perpetual and petty disorder. Low-heelers and High-heelers squabble over politics much as do the Whigs and Tories of Swift’s day. Courtiers compete for distinctions by leaping over sticks and other such ridiculous games.

Protestants and Catholics are mirrored as Big-enders and Little-enders, who cannot agree on which end of the egg should be cracked first. The war between England and France is parodied in the conflict between Lilliput and its neighbor Blefuscu. Gulliver becomes a hero by wading into the surf and carrying off the tiny Blefuscan navy. When he puts out a fire in the palace by urinating on it, he falls from favor at court and joins the Blefuscans, who help him salvage the wrecked ship in which he makes his escape. Gulliver’s next voyage takes him to Brobdingnag, the opposite of Lilliput. Proportions are reversed. People stand as tall as steeples. Gulliver is a caged pet exhibited as a freak. The queen buys him and brings him to court, where he is imperiled by the lewd curiosity of the ladies, by a dwarf who nearly drowns him in a bowl of cream, and by a monkey who almost dashes his brains out.

Yet Brobdingnagian society is a utopia, based on useful studies of poetry and history, not on metaphysics, theology, and speculative science, as in Europe. The king rules a prosperous state not torn by strife. In Brobdingnag, a law cannot be written using more than twenty-two words, and to comment on laws is a capital crime. Horrified by Gulliver’s description of England’s government, the king concludes that Englishmen must be “the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.” His third voyage, to Laputa and other islands, is the most fantastic of them all. Gulliver finds himself on the airborne island of Laputa. Its people are devoid of practicality, so lost in abstraction that servants must flap their mouths and ears with inflated bladders to keep their minds on conversations. Though bent upon music, mathematics, and astronomy, they lack reason and cannot construct walls perpendicular to the floor. The monarch is proud of his dominion over the island of Balnibari below. Any mutiny can be literally crushed by dropping Laputa upon it, smashing whole towns.

Yet the monarch is reluctant to use this power for fear of cracking Laputa, and, besides, Laputians own country estates on the nether island. Swift here satirizes England’s dominion over Ireland. At the Academy of Lagado, Gulliver witnesses the absurdities of misapplied scholarship. There, the projectors experiment with building houses from the top down, making pillows out of marble, extracting sunshine from cucumbers, and the like. He visits nearby Glubbdubdrib, where the governor by sorcery summons dead persons back to life for a day. Gulliver thus meets with Alexander the Great, Homer, Aristotle, and René Descartes, who admits his philosophy is confounded conjecture. In Luggnagg, Gulliver views the ghastly spectacle of human immortality. The wretched Struldbrugs live forever, not in perpetual youth but in unending decay. From there, Gulliver makes a short trip to Japan, and thence back to England. Gulliver leaves behind a pregnant wife to make his final journey to a land ruled by intelligent horses, called Houyhnhnms. These purely rational creatures know neither pride nor passion.

Without love or lust, they procreate merely to meet a social obligation. They live in stoical calm, without government and without crime. They are served by a despised underclass of Yahoos, depraved, libidinous creatures quite unlike themselves but strongly resembling humans. Gulliver shares the Houyhnhnms’ disgust and disdain for them. When a lusty Yahoo woman tries to embrace him, he is repulsed. The Houyhnhnms, however, decide that Gulliver must live as a Yahoo or else leave, so he departs on a Portuguese ship with Captain Pedro de Mendez. Still, Gulliver cannot bear the smell of the captain and crew. He shuns their civilities and tries to jump overboard. He arrives in England only under shackles. Now too proud to associate with humans, whom he sees as Yahoos, Gulliver faints when his wife kisses him, and he abandons his family to consort with horses at pasture. Gulliver himself has become the object of the satire, for he has lost all reason and proportion. The very Houyhnhnms he so admires do him the greatest wrong, but he scorns humanity with irrational pride.

Having seen him from so many different perspectives, a reader recognizes that Gulliver’s weaknesses are those of humankind. link Link Lemuel Gulliver, a physician, takes the post of ship’s doctor on the Antelope, which sets sail from Bristol for the South Seas in May, 1699. When the ship is wrecked in a storm somewhere near Tasmania, Gulliver has to swim for his life. Wind and tide help to carry him close to a low-lying shore, where he falls, exhausted, into a deep sleep. Upon awakening, he finds himself held to the ground by hundreds of small ropes. He soon discovers that he is the prisoner of humans six inches tall. Still tied, Gulliver is fed by his captors; then he is placed on a special wagon built for the purpose and drawn by fifteen hundred small horses. Carried in this manner to the capital city of the small humans, he is exhibited as a great curiosity to the people of Lilliput, as the land of the diminutive people is called. He is kept chained to a huge Lilliputian building into which he crawls at night to sleep.

Gulliver soon learns the Lilliputian language, and through his personal charm and natural curiosity, he comes into good graces at the royal court. At length, he is given his freedom, contingent upon his obeying many rules devised by the emperor prescribing his deportment in Lilliput. Now free, Gulliver tours Mildendo, the capital city, and finds it to be similar, except in size, to European cities of the time. Learning that Lilliput is in danger of an invasion by the forces of the neighboring empire, Blefuscu, he offers his services to the emperor of Lilliput. While the enemy fleet awaits favorable winds to carry their ships the eight hundred yards between Blefuscu and Lilliput, Gulliver takes some Lilliputian cable, wades to Blefuscu, and brings back the entire fleet by means of hooks attached to the cables. He is greeted with great acclaim, and the emperor makes him a nobleman. Soon, however, the emperor and Gulliver quarrel over differences concerning the fate of the now helpless Blefuscu. The emperor wants to reduce the enemy to the status of slaves; Gulliver champions their liberty.

The pro-Gulliver forces prevail in the Lilliputian parliament; the peace settlement is favorable to Blefuscu. Gulliver, however, is now in disfavor at court. He visits Blefuscu, where he is received graciously by the emperor and the people. One day, while exploring, he finds a boat from a wreck washed ashore. With the help of thousands of Blefuscu artisans, he repairs the boat for his projected voyage back to his own civilization. Taking some cattle and sheep with him, he sails away and is eventually picked up by an English vessel. Back in England, Gulliver spends a short time with his family before he boards the Adventure, bound for India. The ship is blown off course by fierce winds. Somewhere on the coast of Great Tartary a landing party goes ashore to forage for supplies. Gulliver, who wandered away from the party, is left behind when a gigantic human figure pursues the sailors back to the ship. Gulliver is caught in a field by giants threshing grain that grows forty feet high. Becoming the pet of a farmer and his family, he amuses them with his humanlike behavior.

The farmer’s nine-year-old daughter, who is not yet over forty feet high, takes special charge of Gulliver. The farmer displays Gulliver first at a local market town. Then he takes his little pet to the metropolis, where Gulliver is put on show repeatedly, to the great detriment of his health. The farmer, seeing that Gulliver is near death from overwork, sells him to the queen, who takes a great fancy to the little curiosity. The court doctors and philosophers study Gulliver as a quaint trick of nature. He subsequently has adventures with giant rats the size of lions, with a dwarf thirty feet high, with wasps as large as partridges, with apples the size of Bristol barrels, and with hailstones the size of tennis balls. He and the king discuss the institutions of their respective countries, the king asking Gulliver many questions about Great Britain that Gulliver finds impossible to answer truthfully without embarrassment. After two years in Brobdingnag, the land of the giants, Gulliver miraculously escapes when a large bird carries his portable quarters out over the sea. The bird drops the box containing Gulliver, and he is rescued by a ship that is on its way to England.

Back home, it takes Gulliver some time to accustom himself once more to a world of normal size. Soon afterward, Gulliver goes to sea again. Pirates from a Chinese port attack the ship. Set adrift in a small sailboat, Gulliver is cast away upon a rocky island. One day, he sees a large floating mass descending from the sky. Taken aboard the flying island of Laputa, he soon finds it to be inhabited by intellectuals who think only in the realm of the abstract and the exceedingly impractical. The people of the island, including the king, are so absentminded that they have to have servants following them to remind them even of their trends of conversation. When the floating island arrives above the continent of Balnibari, Gulliver receives permission to visit that realm. There he inspects the Grand Academy, where hundreds of highly impractical projects for the improvement of agriculture and building are under way. Next, Gulliver journeys by boat to Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers. By means of magic, the governor of the island shows Gulliver such great historical figures as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Thomas More.

Gulliver talks to the apparitions and learns from them that history books are inaccurate. From Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver ventures to Luggnagg. There he is welcomed by the king, who shows him the Luggnaggian immortals, or Struldbrugs—beings who will never die. Gulliver travels on to Japan, where he takes a ship back to England. He has been away for more than three years. Gulliver becomes restless after a brief stay at his home, and he signs as captain of a ship that sails from Portsmouth in August, 1710, destined for the South Seas. The crew mutinies, keeping Captain Gulliver prisoner in his cabin for months. At length, he is cast adrift in a longboat off a strange coast. Ashore, he comes upon and is nearly overwhelmed by disgusting half-human, half-ape creatures who flee in terror at the approach of a horse. Gulliver soon discovers, to his amazement, that he is in a land where rational horses, the Houyhnhnms, are masters of irrational human creatures, the Yahoos.

He stays in the stable house of a Houyhnhnm family and learns to subsist on oaten cake and milk. The Houyhnhnms are horrified to learn from Gulliver that horses in England are used by Yahoolike creatures as beasts of burden. Gulliver describes England to his host, much to the candid and straightforward Houyhnhnm’s mystification. Such things as wars and courts of law are unknown to this race of intelligent horses. As he did in the other lands he visited, Gulliver attempts to explain the institutions of his native land, but the friendly and benevolent Houyhnhnms are appalled by many of the things Gulliver tells them. Gulliver lives in almost perfect contentment among the horses, until one day his host tells him that the Houyhnhnm Grand Assembly has decreed Gulliver either be treated as an ordinary Yahoo or be released to swim back to the land from which he had come. Gulliver builds a canoe and sails away. At length, he is picked up by a Portuguese vessel. Remembering the Yahoos, he becomes a recluse on the ship and begins to hate all humankind.

Landing at Lisbon, he sails from there to England; on his arrival, however, the sight of his own family repulses him. He faints when his wife kisses him. His horses become his only friends on earth. The 100 best novels, No 3 – Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726) | Books | The Guardian The 100 best novels The 100 best novels, No 3 – Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726) Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels comes third in our list of the best novels written in English. Robert McCrum discusses a satirical masterpiece that’s never been out of print On the island of Lilliput: a colour print from an 1860s edition of Gulliver’s Travels.

Photograph: Alamy Sunday 6 October 2013 08.00 EDT Last modified on Thursday 1 December 2016 10.59 EST Share on Messenger Close Seven years after the publication of Robinson Crusoe , the great Tory essayist and poet Jonathan Swift – inspired by the Scriblerus club, whose members included John Gay and Alexander Pope – composed a satire on travel narratives that became an immediate bestseller. According to Gay, Gulliver was soon being read “from the cabinet council to the nursery”. In its afterlife as a classic, Gulliver’s Travels works on many levels. First, it’s a masterpiece of sustained and savage indignation, “furious, raging, obscene”, according to Thackeray . Swift’s satirical fury is directed against almost every aspect of early 18th-century life: science, society, commerce and politics. Second, stripped of Swift’s dark vision, it becomes a wonderful travel fantasy for children, a perennial favourite that continues to inspire countless versions, in books and films.

Finally, as a polemical tour de force, full of wild imagination, it became a source for Voltaire, as well as the inspiration for a Telemann violin suite, Philip K Dick’s science-fiction story The Prize Ship , and, perhaps most influential of all, George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver (to give its original title) comes in four parts, and opens with Gulliver’s shipwreck on the island of Lilliput, whose inhabitant are just six inches high. The most famous and familiar part of the book (“Lilliputian” soon became part of the language) is a satirical romp in which Swift takes some memorable shots at English political parties and their antics, especially the controversy on the matter of whether boiled eggs should be opened at the big or the little end. Next, Gulliver’s ship, the Adventure, gets blown off course and he is abandoned on Brobdingnag whose inhabitants are giants with a proportionately gigantic landscape. Here, having been dominant on Lilliput, Gulliver is exhibited as a curious midget, and has a number of local dramas such as fighting giant wasps.

He also gets to discuss the condition of Europe with the King, who concludes with Swiftian venom that “the bulk of your natives [are] the most pernicious race of odious little vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” In the third part of his travels, Gulliver visits the flying island of Laputa (a place-name also referenced in Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr Strangelove ), and Swift mounts a dark and complicated assault on the speculations of contemporary science (notably spoofing the attempted extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers). Finally, in the section that influenced Orwell (Gulliver’s Travels was one of his favourite books), Swift describes the country of the Houyhnhnms, horses with the qualities of rational men. These he contrasts with the loathsome Yahoos, brutes in human shape. Orwell would later echo Swift’s misanthropy, looking ahead to a time “when the human race had finally been overthrown.” At the end of it all, Gulliver returns home from his travels in a state of alienated wisdom, purged and matured by his experiences.

“I write,” he concludes, “for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind… I write without any view to profit or praise. I never suffer a word to pass that may possibly give the least offence, even to those who are most ready to take it. So that I hope I may with justice pronounce myself an author perfectly blameless…” When he died in 1745, Swift, remembered as “the gloomy Dean”, was buried in Dublin with the famous epitaph “ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit” (where fierce indignation can no further tear apart his heart) inscribed on his tomb. A note on the text: Swift probably started writing Gulliver’s Travels in 1720 (when Crusoe fever was at it height), and delivered the manuscript to the London publisher Benjamin Motte in March 1726. The book was published, anonymously, at top speed. Motte, who sensed a bestseller, used several presses to foil any attempt at piracy, and made many cuts to reduce the risk of prosecution.

The first edition appeared, in two volumes, on 26 October 1726, priced 8s 6d, and sold out its first printing in less than a week. In 1735 the Irish publisher, George Faulkner printed a collection of Swift’s works. Volume III became Gulliver’s Travels, based on a working copy of the original manuscript. The textual history of Gulliver’s Travelsnow becomes incredibly complicated, and Swift later disowned most versions, including Motte’s first edition, saying it was so much altered that “I do hardly know mine own work”. Later scholarly editions of Swift have to choose between Motte and Faulkner, but whatever the version it has never been out of print since the day it first appeared.

Three more from Jonathan Swift A Tale of a Tub (1704); A Modest Proposal, an essay (1729); Verses on the Death of Dr Swift (1739) Jonathan Swift (Author of Gulliver's Travels) edit data Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms — such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier — or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.

Question: In Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels what is Gulliver's first name?
Answer: Lemuel