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• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary
• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary:Part I Chapters I-III
• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary: Part I Chapters IV-VI
• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary: Part I Chapters VII-VIII
• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary: Part II Chapters I-III
• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary: Part II Chapters IV-VIII
• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary: Part III Chapters I-III
• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary: Part III Chapters IV-XI
• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary: Part IV Chapters I-III
• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary: Part IV Chapters IV-VII
• Gulliver's Travels: Novel Summary: Part IV Chapters VIII-XII
• Gulliver's Travels: Character Profiles
• Gulliver's Travels: Metaphor Analysis
• Gulliver's Travels: Theme Analysis
• Gulliver's Travels: Top Ten Quotes
• Gulliver's Travels: Biography: Jonathan Swift

Gulliver's Travels: Essay Q&A

Essay Q&A

1. How does Gulliver's role develop and change throughout the novel? At the beginning of the novel, Gulliver is an everyman through whose eyes the reader sees the inhabitants of the places he visits. For most of the book, merely recounts his observations in deadpan mode. He appears to have no will or desires, but is led from land to land by fate. He gives his detailed descriptions without judgment, and without the capacity for reflection and distance that the reader possesses. He often fails to see the ludicrous, greedy, and morally depraved nature of the people around him, whereas this is all too clear to the reader. This gap between Gulliver's and the reader's perception of events leads to dramatic irony (a literary device in which the reader or audience of a work knows more than the character). As a middle-of-the-road human being, Gulliver finds himself to be morally superior to the Lilliputians but morally inferior to the Brobdingnagians. In Brobdingnag, his weakness becomes clear. It is his pride in, and loyalty to, England, which leads him to lie to the Brobdingnagian king in order to paint his country in a favorable light. As Gulliver's education progresses, he makes more direct judgments on the societies he visits, though at first these are understated. For example, in Part I, Chapter V, after the ministers have plotted to kill Gulliver in gruesome ways for trivial offenses, he notes for the first time that courts and ministers may not be perfect. By the end of his stay in Laputa, he is overtly despondent about the Laputans' shortcomings and the ruined society that they have sacrificed to theoretical thought. Gulliver's stay in the land of the Houyhnhnms marks the complete loss of his objectivity and innocence. He finds himself midway between the rationality of the Houyhnhnms and the bestiality of the Yahoos. So impressed is he by the Houyhnhnms and so disgusted is he by the Yahoos that he becomes obsessed with trying to be like the Houyhnhnms, when he physically resembles the Yahoos far more. Finally, he gives way to an insanity in which he seems to believe himself to be a Houyhnhnm and rejects even the best of humankind because he believes them to be Yahoos. At the end of the book, Gulliver is still trying to re-acclimatize to life among humans. While condemning his fellow men for their pride, he fails to see that he himself has fallen victim to pride in his disgust at humanity. As a result, the reader ceases to look through his eyes to judge others and begins to look at him and judge him. He, too, becomes an object of satire. 2. What is the significance of size in the novel? The physical size of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians reflects their moral stature. The tiny Lilliputians are petty, vain, hypocritical, and self-important, and their government enshrines all that is foolish, vicious, and cruel in human nature. Though they are the smallest beings in the novel, they are the only race that parades its army in front of Gulliver to impress him. This is done, however, in full view of the nether regions of Gulliver's body, which are exposed due to the deterioration of his breeches. This detail makes the vanity and pomposity of the Lilliputians appear ridiculous. The smallness combined with the military aggressiveness of the Lilliputians calls to mind another small country with a tradition of military aggression and disproportionate power in the world: England. This equivalence is confirmed by the fact that Swift based several of the characters in the Lilliputian government on real-life models from the English government of his time. These include Flimnap (Sir Robert Walpole) and Reldresal, who probably represents Viscount Townshend or Lord Carteret, political allies of Walpole. The hysterical and vindictive Empress of Lilliput represents Queen Anne, who took offense at Swift's satirical writings. In making the reader view Lilliputians as tiny but threatening, and vicious, Swift is passing a similar judgment upon England. The Brobdingnagians, in contrast, are physically and morally larger than Gulliver. Morality is built into their government, in contrast with England as described by Gulliver to the King of Brobdingnag, where immorality and vice are built into the government. The King is shocked by Gulliver's account of the abuses that have grown in English institutions and government and refuses Gulliver's offer to tell him the secret of gunpowder on the grounds that it is inhumane. The King's conclusion that mankind is "pernicious" and "odious" can be considered to be a commonsense judgment. His alarm at the destruction that man wreaks upon his fellow man is equivalent to the alarm that the reader (and even the insensitive Gulliver) feels at the vicious threats posed by the tiny Lilliputians. It is noteworthy that, while the Brobdingnagians' great size means that they could effortlessly destroy other nations and races, they would not dream of doing so. However, the real danger that Gulliver faces daily in Brobdingnag merely by virtue of being smaller than the natives stresses the vulnerability of the powerless in the face of the powerful. This fact of nature can only be mediated by kindness and compassion, such as Glumdalclitch shows towards Gulliver when he is threatened by the farmer's exploitation. 3. What kind of attitude or thinking is Swift satirizing in his section on the Lagado Academy? Does this satire only relate to his own time, or does it still have relevance in the modern age? The Lagado Academy satirizes abstract or theoretical knowledge which is pursued for its own sake, with no thought to the practical applications or consequences in the real world. The professor who is working on a project to extract sunbeams from cucumbers is a famous and often-quoted example of the academicians' brand of learned idiocy. It may surprise modern readers to learn that most of the ludicrous experiments and theories espoused at the Academy had actually been carried out or proposed by the scientist members of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge, a scientific society founded in 1660 which as of 2006 continues under the shortened name, the Royal Society. It had among its members such luminaries as Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, and Robert Hooke. Though the Royal Society was set up to improve the practice of crafts through science, it proved more successful at discovering and codifying natural forces and phenomena than in creating useful technologies. Hence it was vulnerable to attacks such as Swift's in this section of Gulliver's Travels. In the twenty-first century, public debate still rages about the usefulness or otherwise of ambitious scientific projects, some of which, like the one that Swift's academician hopes to launch, consume large amounts of public and private money. Obvious examples include the cloning of humans and animals, and the genetic engineering of food crops, both being technologies that (critics assert) establishments including the Royal Society continue to support as of 2006. Though, in opinion polls, public criticism of these technologies runs high and public demand for them is low, Western governments funnel large amounts of public money into them. Public debate about such topics centers around whether the benefits of such technologies outweigh the risks, whether there is any problem in the first place that needs to be fixed, and whether the "solution" could cause more problems that would require ever more elaborate and expensive solutions. In cases where there is popular consensus that a problem does exist, the conflict often focuses on whether proven, lower-technology (and thus cheaper) solutions already exist but are being sidelined in favor of the expensive, high-technology solution. Proponents of these high-technology methods, like the professors of Lagado, accuse their critics of being ignorant Luddites (protestors who, during England's Industrial Revolution, smashed new weaving machines that were putting hand-weavers out of business), anti-science, and anti-progress. Opponents of these high-technology methods accuse genetic engineers and cloners of pursuing their own private agenda and of being out of touch with what works for farmers and consumers. Swift would recognize the conflict as mirroring that of his own time. 4. Do you think that Swift meant the country of the Houyhnhnms to represent an ideal society? It is open to debate whether Swift intended the seemingly ideal Houyhnhnm society to be attractive or subtly unattractive, and to what extent Swift shares Gulliver's completely approving attitude. However, no proper arguments against the Houyhnhnms' society are presented, whereas many arguments are presented against the society of the Yahoos and that of the humanoids visited by Gulliver. For these reasons, it is probable that the author shares Gulliver's approval of the Houyhnhnms and his growing disgust at humankind. This said, it is difficult for the reader of this section of the book to continue to sympathize with Gulliver and to look through his eyes at the society he visits. This is because he is increasingly hostile to, and isolated from, his fellow humans. His disgust at their follies and vices is so overwhelming that it would seem to encompass the whole of humankind, the reader included. This makes the reader stand back from Gulliver and look at him with more critical eyes than in previous sections, in which he was a more objective, if gullible, observer. His rejection of Don Pedro's kindly and courteous treatment and, later, of his family, comes across as mean-minded and unbalanced. His preference for talking to his horses over his family appears to be a kind of madness. In his devotion to the rationality exemplified by the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver has become irrational. On one hand, Swift may be suggesting that Gulliver is now an insane person who has given way to the vice he most condemns, pride; thus he has forfeited any claim to the reader's sympathy and trust. On the other hand, he may be suggesting that Gulliver's state of mind is a predictable response to living for so long in a rational society and then returning to the irrational and vice-ridden human society. In this latter interpretation, Swift's purpose may be to suggest that a man who has awoken to the insanity in human society has little choice but to turn his back on it and to take refuge in any rational element he can find: in Gulliver's case, his horses. This is as heavy a condemnation of human society as it is possible to make. It is more likely that Swift was not presenting the Houyhnhnms as the ideal that mankind should reflect, any more than he meant the Yahoos to be a true portrayal of humankind. Gulliver, as everyman, is poised between the rationality of the Houyhnhnms and the brutality of the Yahoos. He symbolizes man's potential for both higher reason and vicious, base appetites. But finally, he gives way to pride, the vice that is the most seductive of all because it often accompanies real virtues. Pride leads Gulliver to turn his back on his fellow man, in effect, giving up all faith and hope in humanity. 5. What view of humanity is presented by comparisons between humans and Yahoos? Gulliver, as a fundamentally decent man, tries to dissociate himself from the Yahoos, but both the Houyhnhnm master's descriptions of the Yahoos and Gulliver's own observations confirm that the Yahoos' behavior is identical to that of human beings at their worst. For example, they are greedy, so that one Yahoo will keep for himself enough food to feed fifty. This behavior corresponds to the greed and resulting inequality of human society that has come to light previously in the novel. They have an inordinate fondness for shiny stones, which they hoard secretly in their kennels, and which are the focus of many fights between Yahoos. This is a reference to human avarice. The Yahoos eat to excess so that they are prone to diseases, just as humans are. Yahoos, like rich, idle Englishmen, are subject to the fashionable eighteenth-century disease of spleen, for which (the Houyhnhnms find) the only remedy is hard work. Female Yahoos, like human females, have a tendency to treat each other with disrespect and are prone to the human vanity of coquetry. Gulliver is horrified to discover on his reconnaissance mission among the Yahoos that he is sexually desirable to the females. This convinces him that he is, indeed, a Yahoo. When he captures a young male Yahoo, the creature defecates over him, to his disgust. This would be just as likely to happen with a human infant, so again, the emphasis is on equating Yahoos with humans. Sometimes, a distinction is drawn between humans and Yahoos. Gulliver's Houyhnhnm master, in spite of his poor view of the Yahoos, notes that Gulliver falls short of them in respect of physical agility. This confirms Swift's point that the Yahoos are bestial creatures with certain animal characteristics. In addition, in Part IV, Chapter V, Gulliver's Houyhnhnm master draws an important distinction between Yahoos and humans. He points out that he does not blame the Yahoos for their despicable behavior, since they are not endowed with reason and therefore have no choice. With mankind, the case is different: ". . . when a creature pretending to reason could be capable of such enormities, he dreaded lest the corruption of that faculty might be worse than brutality itself." In other words, because man has free will, he is more reprehensible than the Yahoos for immoral or destructive behavior. Instead of using reason to choose virtue, as the Houyhnhnms do, man uses reason to enlarge his vices.

Gulliver misses the point, however, when he strains to become unlike the Yahoos and like the Houyhnhnms, even trotting like a horse and speaking in their neigh-like manner. He rejects the virtuous and eminently human Don Pedro because he does not resemble a horse and, like all humans, somewhat physically resembles the Yahoos. Having the physical shape or mannerisms of a Houyhnhnm or a Yahoo does not turn a person into either. The deciding factors are how he acts and whether he chooses good or evil.

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Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan swift, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Gulliver's Travels: Introduction

Gulliver's travels: plot summary, gulliver's travels: detailed summary & analysis, gulliver's travels: themes, gulliver's travels: quotes, gulliver's travels: characters, gulliver's travels: symbols, gulliver's travels: literary devices, gulliver's travels: quizzes, gulliver's travels: theme wheel, brief biography of jonathan swift.

Historical Context of Gulliver's Travels

Other books related to gulliver's travels.

• Full Title: Gulliver’s Travels , or, Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships
• When Written: 1720-1725
• Where Written: Dublin, Ireland
• When Published: 1726
• Literary Period: Augustan
• Genre: Satire
• Setting: England and the imaginary nations of Lilliput, Blefuscu, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms
• Climax: Gulliver’s decision to reject humankind and try his best to become a Houyhnhnm
• Point of View: First person

Extra Credit for Gulliver's Travels

By Gulliver, About Gulliver. Although contemporary editions of Gulliver’s Travels have Jonathan Swift’s name printed as author on the cover, Swift published the first edition under the pseudonym Lemuel Gulliver.

Instant Classic. Gulliver’s Travels was an immediate success upon its first publication in 1726. Since then, it has never been out of print.

Gulliver's Travels

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Gulliver's Travels: Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 1, Chapters 5-8

Part 2, Chapters 1-4

Part 2, Chapters 5-8

Part 3, Chapters 1-6

Part 3, Chapters 7-11

Part 4, Chapters 1-6

Part 4, Chapters 7-12

Character Analysis

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Gulliver's Travels

By jonathan swift.

• Gulliver's Travels Summary

Gulliver goes on four separate voyages in Gulliver's Travels . Each journey is preceded by a storm. All four voyages bring new perspectives to Gulliver's life and new opportunities for satirizing the ways of England.

The first voyage is to Lilliput, where Gulliver is huge and the Lilliputians are small. At first the Lilliputians seem amiable, but the reader soon sees them for the ridiculous and petty creatures they are. Gulliver is convicted of treason for "making water" in the capital (even though he was putting out a fire and saving countless lives)--among other "crimes."

The second voyage is to Brobdingnag, a land of Giants where Gulliver seems as small as the Lilliputians were to him. Gulliver is afraid, but his keepers are surprisingly gentle. He is humiliated by the King when he is made to see the difference between how England is and how it ought to be. Gulliver realizes how revolting he must have seemed to the Lilliputians.

Gulliver's third voyage is to Laputa (and neighboring Luggnagg and Glubdugdribb). In a visit to the island of Glubdugdribb, Gulliver is able to call up the dead and discovers the deceptions of history. In Laputa, the people are over-thinkers and are ridiculous in other ways. Also, he meets the Stuldbrugs, a race endowed with immortality. Gulliver discovers that they are miserable.

His fourth voyage is to the land of the Houyhnhnms , who are horses endowed with reason. Their rational, clean, and simple society is contrasted with the filthiness and brutality of the Yahoos , beasts in human shape. Gulliver reluctantly comes to recognize their human vices. Gulliver stays with the Houyhnhnms for several years, becoming completely enamored with them to the point that he never wants to leave. When he is told that the time has come for him to leave the island, Gulliver faints from grief. Upon returning to England, Gulliver feels disgusted about other humans, including his own family.

Gulliver’s Travels Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Gulliver’s Travels is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Swift used exaggeration, parody, and irony to satirize politics and the human nature. Blind adherence to traditions without reflection is what he criticizes through caricature. In this way, in Lilliput, Gulliver becomes a giant in comparison with...

How old is Guillver?

An additional preface, attributed to Gulliver, added to a revised version of the work is given the fictional date of April 2, 1727, at which time Gulliver would have been about 65 or 66 years old.

What does Gulliver do with his penknife?

He cuts the strings that the rabble ringleaders were bound with.

Study Guide for Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver's Travels study guide contains a biography of Jonathan Swift, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Gulliver's Travels
• Gulliver's Travels Video
• Character List

Essays for Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver's Travels essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.

• The Child-like Scientist: A Study of the Similarities Between Jonathan Swifts' Gulliver's Travels and Voltaire's Candide in Reference to Satire Developed through Naivete
• Book Four of Swift's Gulliver's Travels: Satirical, Utopian, or Both?
• Gulliver's Travels and the Refinement of Language and Society
• The Duality of Book Four of Gulliver's Travels

Lesson Plan for Gulliver’s Travels

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Gulliver's Travels
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Gulliver's Travels Bibliography

E-Text of Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver's Travels e-text contains the full text of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.

• THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER
• PART I--A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT
• PART II--A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAG
• PART III--A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI, LUGGNAGG, GLUBBDUBDRIB,
• PART IV--A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE HOUYHNHNMS

Wikipedia Entries for Gulliver’s Travels

• Introduction
• Composition and history
• Major themes