Jonathan Swift likely began writing Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships five years before its publication. Later known simply as Gulliver’s Travels, it became one of the most often reprinted books in English.
With a hero to which few readers could relate, a lack of structural unity, and a purpose in its satire lost on many later readers, it lacked elements crucial to classification as a novel. It did, however, help advance progress toward the production of that genre, which would gain popularity in its nascent form a few decades later, thanks to the contributions of writers including Samuel Richardson and Daniel Defoe.
Swift adopted a familiar convention when he fabricated the persona of Gulliver, a man who supposedly related his adventures to another, with that second party, in this case Gulliver’s cousin, being responsible for its publication. A letter attached as a foreword to the tale from Gulliver to his Cousin Sympson added realism to the fantasy through Gulliver’s defense of his original version and his satiric attack against the version that appeared in print.
Swift wrote his four-part fantasy as an indictment against a government that had mostly ignored his many political contributions and that did not serve the populace well. First a member of the Whig party, Swift changed his allegiance to the Tories due to ill treatment by the Whigs.
Often too narrowly characterized as a misanthrope bearing an unhealthy fascination with bodily functions, Swift was in reality an active member of his community who served for a time as dean of St. Paul’s in London and staunchly defended his country of Ireland. His many works in addition to Gulliver’s Travels reflect a thoughtful humor and depth of experience too often later dismissed, particularly by psychoanalytic critics, who focused on his misogyny and bitterness, both of which were common attributes found in works published in the early 18th century.
Due to the vulgarity of Gulliver’s Travels, it is often reproduced in abridged form and has been paraphrased to preserve its popularity with a young audience who finds its fantasy aspects fascinating.
In Book I, Gulliver shipwrecks off the island of Lilliput, where he awakens to find himself bound to the earth by the island’s tiny inhabitants. Swift used their size to suggest the small-minded attitudes of many humans. They argue over ridiculous matters, such as which end of an egg to break, with Big-Endians protesting to the death against the emperor’s order that all shall break the egg at its small end.
The emperor also holds a ceremony testing the dexterity of his subjects, who must navigate over or under a stick that the emperor holds. The disputes and competition for the emperor’s attention suggest Swift’s low opinion of the religious and political disputes of his era, often settled by favoritism.
In Book II, Gulliver travels by sea to Brobdingnag, and in a reversal from the first book, he is tiny by comparison to that culture’s enormous inhabitants. Gulliver expounds on the pretentious ideas of his hosts, which he finds as exaggerated as their bodies. However, when he feels moved to join the bragging and tries to impress the ruler with an account of England’s history, the monarch is appalled:
“He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century, protesting it was only an heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition could produce.”
When Gulliver wonders over the “strange effect of narrow principles and short views” practiced by the Brobdingnagians, Swift reflects that criticism onto his audience.
Book III features Laputa, an island on a cloud that floats about the sky, its imagery suggesting the fantastic ideas of its inhabitants who function in an unrealistic manner. Swift criticizes in that tale the so-called scientific advances of his time and especially satirizes the Royal Academy in a depiction of an academy at nearby Lagado, where members attempt absurd acts, such as the extraction of sunbeams from vegetables.
Gulliver also meets the sorcerers of Glubbdubrib, who can summon famous persons from the past into the present with disappointing results, and the inhabitants of Struldbruggs, who have gained immortality but lose their physical prowess and earn the enmity of their fellow beings.
Finally, in Book IV, Gulliver’s journeys take him to the land of the Houyhnhnms, coldly rational horselike creatures of a superior bent who keep as slaves the filthy Yahoos, beings with an uncomfortable resemblance to humans. Most impressed by the morality and intellectual capacity of his hosts, Gulliver will gravitate toward the stable when he eventually returns home, rejecting the company of his own family and his friends.
Swift emphasizes two unsavory possibilities in human nature in the last portion of Gulliver’s Travels. One is that humans may choose to embrace their uncivilized animalistic nature, as did the Yahoos, and the other that they might reject all emotion to function only with logic, as did the Houyhnhnms.
Swift’s tale remains extremely popular and has been converted to various media forms. While it continues to be studied academically, its abridged versions are appreciated as entertainment by a broad popular audience.
Bibliography
Cline, Kelly Ann. Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture: Myth, Media, and the Man. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Probyn, Clive T. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels. London: Penguin, 1989.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis
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