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BCHCT-131 : ATOMIC STRUCTURE, BONDING,
GENERAL ORGANIC CHEMISTRY AND
ALIPHATIC HYDROCARBONS
Time : 2 hours Maximum Marks : 50
Note : (i) Attempt any five questions from Part A and
any five questions from Part B on separate
answer sheets.
(ii) All questions carry equal marks.
PART A (Maximum Marks : 25)
1. (a) Discuss the contribution of Rutherford in
explaining the structure of an atom. 3
(b) Which of the following molecules has a
dipole moment, CH4
or NH3
? Give reason. 1
(c) Name the force by which the molecules are
held together in the crystal structure of a
compound.
2. (a) Why is oxygen paramagnetic ? Explain
using molecular orbital theory.
3
(b) State the type of hybridisation present in
benzene and SF4 molecules. 2
3. (a) Write the steps used in valence bond
method to arrive at the structure of a
molecule.
3
(b) Classify the following statements as true or
false. Also give reason in support of your
answer. 2
(i) Ionisation energy of sodium is less
than that of magnesium.
(ii) First ionisation energy of magnesium
is more than its second ionisation
energy.
4. (a) Write all steps to obtain the Lewis
structure of CO2
. 3
(b) Briefly explain the photoelectric effect. How
did Einstein explain it ? 2
5. Name the four quantum numbers of an electron
and give their significance. What is Pauli’s
Exclusion Principle ? 5
.
6. (a) Explain the difference between a covalent
and a coordinate covalent bond with a
suitable example. 3
(b) Write the electronic configurations of
Cr (At. No. = 24) and Ag (At. No. = 47). 2
7. (a) Explain the significance of and
2
.
(b) Give the characteristics of a well-behaved
wave function. Draw a suitable diagram for
the well-behaved wave function. 3
PART B (Maximum Marks : 25)
8. (a) What is the product of Kolbe’s electrolysis
of sodium acetate ? Write the reaction and
its mechanism. 3
(b) How will you convert 2-pentyne to cis and
trans-2-pentene ? 2
9. (a) Write the products of oxidative ozonolysis of
2-methyl-2-butene. 2
(b) Arrange the following compounds in the
increasing order of their acidity and give
reason for answer : 3
CH3CHCH2COOH, CH3CH2CHCOOH,
| |
Cl Cl
ClCH2CH2CH2COOH
10. (a) Which one of the following compounds will
exibit optical activity and why ?
OH
|
(i) CH3CHCOOH
(ii) HOOC(CH2
)
2COOH
Draw two Fischer projections of
compound (i). 3
(b) How will you prepare 1-hexyne from
ethyne ? 2
11. What are electrophiles and nucleophiles ? Give
one example each of
(i) a neutral electrophile
,
(ii) a neutral nucleophile, and
(iii) a charged
electrophile. 5
12. (a) Explain Saytzeff’s rule with the help of a
suitable example. 3
(b) Write the products formed by the reaction of
HBr and propene when
(i) no peroxide is
present, and (ii) in the presence of peroxide. 2
13. (a) Draw the conformations of cyclohexane.
Comment on their relative stabilities. 3
(b) How are straight chain alkanes converted to
branched chain alkanes ? What is the
importance of this reaction ?
1. Swift is usually charged with being a misanthrope. Does your reading of Gulliver’s
Travels justify this?
2. Can we read Book 1 of Gulliver‘s Travels without being conscious of the satire?
Give reasons in support of your answer.
3. Which episodes in Book I of Gulliver’s Travels make you feel that the book is a
satire rather than merely an adventure story? Give reasons in support of your answer.
4. Describe the picture of Brobdingnagian society as given by Swift in Book II of
Gulliver’s Travels. What evils of contemporary society was it designed to expose?
5. What are the objects of Swift’s satire in Gulliver’s Travels Book I and II?
6. “Swift’s picture of Brobdingnagian society is not merely a piece of satire but also a
vision of society as he would like it to be.” Discuss.
7. Examine the complex use of irony that Swift makes in Gulliver’s Travels Book I and
II.
8. “The Voyage to Lilliput” is the neatest and most diverting of the four voyages . . . It
holds our interest chiefly as imaginative narrative.” Discuss.
9. “Though Gulliver makes the error of identifying himself and the other human beings
completely with the Yahoos, we and Swift do not.” Do you agree with this view?
Give a reasoned answer.
10. Bring out the significance of Gulliver’s voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms in
terms of irony and satire.
11. Bring out the significance of Gulliver’s voyage to Laputa.
12. Comment of the narrative technique of Swift in Book I and II of Gulliver’s Travels.
What does Swift achieve by this technique.
13. In Gulliver’s Travels Swift holds up a mirror to human defects and depravity.
Elaborate.
14. Beneath the comic storyline of Gulliver’s Travels lies the savage satire of Swift.
Illustrate with examples.
JONATHAN SWIFT: AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND
WORKS (1667-1745)
Jonathan Swift was the son of a Jonathan Swift who had followed a more prosperous older
brother, Godwin, from Yorkshire to Ireland. Jonathan’s career was brief, and he died several
months before his son Jonathan was born (1667). Jonathan Swift was thus brought up by his
uncle Godwin. He was sent to Kilkenny school, and at fourteen, entered Trinity College,
Dublin as a pensioner. In 1688 Godwin, who had lost his fortune, died and Swift was left
without resources. He left Ireland and became a kind of secretary to the celebrated diplomat
Sir William Temple, then living in retirement at Moor Park in Surrey, about forty miles from
London. Temple’s father had been a friend of Godwin Swift; Temple himself had known the
Swifts in Ireland and Lady Temple was said to be a connection of Swift’s mother.
Life at Moor Park was of immense value to Swift. He grew familiar with public
affairs and with the rich experiences of his patron. He also had time to read and to try his
hand at writing. Nevertheless, he resented his dependent status and was disappointed that Temple had found no suitable place for him. In 1694, Swift took the only course that seemed
to promise advancement and was ordained. Temple obtained for him the prebend of Kilroot,
near Belfast in Ireland. There he stayed for two years, returning to Temple in 1696. At Moor
Park in 1696 he edited Temple’s correspondence, and in 1697 wrote The Battle of the Books,
which was published in 1704, together with A Tale of a Tub, his celebrated satire on
‘corruption in religion and learning.’ At Moor Park, Swift met Esther Johnson, the daughter
of a servant or companion of Temple’s sister, with whom he formed the lasting attachment of
his life. On the death of Temple in 1699, Swift went again to Ireland, was given a prebend in
St. Patrick’s, Dublin. But Swift frequently visited England and was by now on familiar terms
with wits and ministers. He became acquainted with Addison, Steele, Congreve, and Halifax,
and was on friendly terms with Dryden and Pope.
Swift wrote a series of pamphlets on Church questions in 1708-09. These pamphlets
show his conviction that the Whigs were unfriendly to the Church; and when the Whigs came
into power in 1708, he knew his hopes of becoming a bishop in England were vain, and he
retreated to Ireland. When the Tories came back to power in 1710, Swift returned to London
and the events of the following three years, with all his thoughts and hopes, are set down in
his letters to Esther Johnson and Mrs Dingley. These later came to be known as the Journal
to Stella. The Tories made serious efforts to bring the war with France to an end. Swift
composed, in November and December 1711, two formidable pamphlets in favour of peace.
By this time, he had attained a position of great importance as a serious writer, and the
authority he possessed and the respect he received gave him much pleasure. Recognition of
his services was, however, made difficult by doubts about his orthodoxy. Queen Anne was
hostile towards him. At last, in 1713, he was made Dean of St. Patrick’s. This was a
promotion, but it put an end to his life-time ambition of becoming a Bishop in England and it
once more banished him to Ireland. His health was bad and his reception in Dublin was not
friendly. He again returned to London but the Queen’s death in 1714 settled the matter. Swift
could hope for nothing, with the Whigs coming back to power. He once again went back to
Dublin.
Upon his return to Dublin Swift found trouble of another kind. His long, peaceful
association with Stella (Esther Johnson) for whom Swift had a deep affection and respect was
disturbed by a strange complication, A rich heiress, Esther Van Homrigh, with whom Swift
had become quite friendly on his visits to London fell passionately in love with him, despite a
vast disparity in age. Swift was forty-three and Esther was supposed to be just twenty. In their
friendly intercourse she was ‘Vanessa’ and he Cadenus, an anagram for ‘decanes’ i.e. “dean”;
and to her he wrote a poem Cadenus and Vanessa in 1713, which was not meant for publication. A couple of years later, on the death of her mother, Vanessa left England to settle
down in Ireland. By coming to Ireland, Vanessa caused a lot of embarrassment to Swift and
anguish to Stella. Vanessa died in 1723, and Stella in 1728. Beyond this, almost nothing is
known about the relations between Swift and the two women who figure in his life. Despite
all this trouble in his private and personal life Swift occupied himself, 1714 onwards, with
Irish affairs. He deeply resented the unfair treatment of Ireland at the hands of the Whigs. The
pamphlets relating to Ireland form a very important part of Swift’s works. The series began
with A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture, in cloaths, etc. (1720),
advocating a scheme for boycotting English fabrics. This was followed by his famous
Drapier’s Letters by which he prevented the introduction of ‘Wood’s Half-pence’ into
Ireland. He came to England in 1726, visited Pope and Gray, and dined with Sir Robert
Walpole, to whom he addressed a letter of remonstrance on Irish affairs, with no result. He
published Gulliver’s Travels in the same year and paid a last visit to England in 1727, when
the death of George I created a vague hope of dislodging Walpole. He wrote some of his most
famous tracts and characteristic poems during his last years in Ireland.
A Short View of the State of Ireland (1728) gives a touching account of the condition
of the country and A Modest Proposal for preventing the Children of the Poor People from
becoming a burthen to their Parents, or the Country and for making them Beneficial to the
Public (1729) suggests that the poverty of the people should be relieved by the sale of their
children as food for the rich. The pamphlet reveals with bitterness and irony the Irish
helplessness and the political insensitivity.
In 1731, Swift wrote Verses on his own Death in which, with mingled pathos and
humour he posthumously reviewed his own life and work. A Complete Collection of Polite
and Ingenious Conversation was written in 1738 and the ironical, Direction to Servants in
1731. During all these years he kept up his correspondence with a number of literary figures
and attracted to himself a small circle of friends and was adored by people. He set up a
monument of Schomburg (a noble military General) in the Cathedral at his own expense,
spent a third of his income on charities, and saved up another third to found a charitable
institution at his death; St Patrick’s Hospital for Imbeciles.
The symptom of illness from which Swift suffered all his life, (a form of vertigo)
became very marked in 1738 and for a long time before his death he was insane. He died in
1745 and was buried by the side of Stella in St. Patrick’s, Dublin. The ironical fact about the
extraordinary life of Swift is that though he was born in Ireland, which was an accident, he
did not want to spend his entire life there because he knew that Ireland was not the land of
big opportunity, suitable for a man of his capabilities and talent. He lived a life that might almost be described as a continual flight from Ireland and a constant return to it, compelled
by circumstances. Yet he became, in the end, a ‘national hero,’ and an ‘Irish Patriot.’ During
the last thirty years of his life, he became thoroughly identified with Irish life, mainly through
his brilliant pamphlets, which reveal the genuineness and the intensity of his indignation at
oppression and unfairness. But, ironically too, it was this intensity, this ferocity in his writing
that alienated from him writers like Dr. Johnson, Macaulay, Thackeray and so many others.
Yet another curious irony is that nearly all his works were published anonymously and for
only one, Gulliver’s Travels did he receive any payment (£ 200).
It may be added, as a satiric touch, that not until very recently (1939-59), was any
serious attempt made to produce full, true and accurate editions of his writings.
DETAILED SUMMARY AND CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
BOOK 1: “A VOYAGE TO LILLIPUT”
Chapter One
In Book I, Gulliver gives an account of himself and his family; his education and the
inducements to travel. Gulliver was the son of a man who lived in Nottinghamshire. At the
age of fourteen he was sent to Emanuel Cottage, Cambridge, where he studied for three years.
Because of his father’s inability to maintain him at college any longer, Gulliver was made an
apprentice to Mr. Bates, a London surgeon. Along with his medical studies, Gulliver pursued
navigation and other ‘parts of the mathematics’ useful to those who intend to travel. For two
years, Gulliver studied physics at Leyden University. After Leyden, Gulliver served as a
surgeon for three and half years on a ship called Swallow. He married Mary Burton, daughter
of a hosier in Newgate Street, London. He again joined Mr Bates as a medical practitioner
but, after two years, when Mr. Bates died Gulliver gave up his medical career. He went back
to the sea for several voyages and at last he sailed on May 4, 1699, on board the Antelope,
under Captain William Prichard, to the South Sea. Near Van Dieman’s Land, the ship was
driven violently north-west by a storm and wrecked. Gulliver was thrown to the mercy of the
waves, but he managed to swim, until he could touch firm ground and wade ashore.
Exhausted, he fell asleep. He slept for about nine hours. When he woke up, he attempted to
rise but found that he could not move as his arms, legs and hair were fastened to the ground.
He was surrounded by human creatures not six inches high. These creatures carried tiny bows
and arrows in their hands and tiny quivers on their backs. When Gulliver tried to rise, breaking free from the thin ropes that bound him, the tiny people discharged such a volley of
stinging arrows at him that he thought it more prudent to lie still until nightfall when, under
the cover of darkness, it would be easier for him to escape.
The Lilliputians erected a platform from which, presently, a little person who seemed
to be a person of importance, made a long speech addressed to Gulliver. Gulliver, however,
did not understand what he was saying. But the speaker understood Gulliver’s signs
indicating that he was hungry. By the speaker’s orders, little ladders were set up against
Gulliver’s sides and delicious food and wine were brought for him. The little creatures
walked all over his body and poured food and wine into his mouth.
Influenced by a drug that had perhaps been put into his wine, Gulliver soon fell asleep
again. When he woke up, he found that he was bound to a sort of low wagon, which was
being drawn by fifteen hundred horses, each about four and half inches high. Gulliver was
being taken to Mildendo, the capital of Lilliput. In the city, he was housed in an abandoned
temple; very large but no longer considered sacred because of an unnatural murder
committed there some years before. To this building, Gulliver was chained by one leg and
had the liberty to walk forward and backward in a semicircle as the chains that held him were
two yards long.
Critical Comments
1. Swift makes a serious effort to create an illusion of reality for an absolutely
imaginary figure. Gulliver is projected as a real, middle-class Englishman having a
definite place of birth, education, and connections. This has yet another advantage:
this is a hint that we are not supposed to identify Swift with Gulliver.
2. Swift keeps everything in Lilliput proportionate to the six-inch size of the tiny
people; the tallest trees are seven feet high; the largest buildings are four or five feet
high and so on.
3. The “unnatural murder” is perhaps supposed to refer to the execution of Charles I in
1649 and the temple, therefore, refers to Westminster Abbey, where Charles was
condemned to die. This brings us to the political element in Gulliver’s Travels. Tory
and Whig are the names of two great political parties in England. These parties had
their beginning at the time of the civil war of the 17th century. The Cavaliers and the
Royalists, who were on the side of the King in his confrontation with the Parliament
and the church, came to be known as the Tories. The Tory party’s modern
incarnation is the Conservative party. As the new name of the Tory suggests, this party is against change. It stands for retaining the constituted authority, order in
church and state, and for opposing concessions in the direction of greater religious
liberty and growing demands of liberalism or for widening the basis of parliamentary
representation.
Those who wrested, in 1648, the government from the Royalists came to be known as
Whigs. The Whigs, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, rebelled against the authority of
the King and his designs to dissolve the parliament. Since the middle of the 19th century the
term Whig has been superseded by Liberal but is now occasionally used to express adherence
to moderate or antiquated liberal principles, and very limited fondness for liberty. The Whigs
were, in the 17th century, supporters of Puritanism and against the Church of England.
It was the politics of the Whigs in his own time that made Swift a Tory sympathizer.
The Whigs showed too little interest in Swift’s efforts for the Irish Church in 1707-9 and that
perhaps made him turn against them. He re-joined the Scriblerus club, an association of all
the leading Tory writers. Pope, Gray, and Arbuthnot were some of those writers. In Gulliver’s
Travels, the Whigs are an object of mockery while glowing tributes are paid to the famous
contemporary Tories.
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Once on his feet Gulliver looked around and saw Mildendo. The place was beautiful, it
looked like a continued garden, like a painted scene of a city in a theatre. The entire prospect
was very entertaining, but Gulliver was bugged by the very embarrassing problem of how
and where to disburden himself, which he had not done for almost two days. He could think
of nothing else except to go inside the house, as far as the chain would allow, and relieve
himself there. This was an unclean thing to do but he could not help it. On creeping back out
of the house, he found that the entire Royal family was there to pay him a visit. The Emperor
was taller than all the other men in his company and very majestic. The Emperor and Gulliver
got on well together, having taken a liking for each other at the very first meeting, but no
conversation was possible between them as there was no language they knew in common. As
the news of the presence of Gulliver, the man-mountain spread in Lilliput, crowds of curious
people flocked to his house to see him. This resulted in a lot of chaos and the King passed a
direction according to which no one could come near his house without a license from the
court; whereby the secretaries of State got considerable fees.
Gulliver became a national problem and a subject of many high level and secret
debates. There were apprehensions of all kinds; what would happen if Gulliver should break
loose? Would maintaining him empty the treasury or cause famine in the land? Should he be
starved to death? Poisoned? Would so large a carcass cause a plague in the city and the whole
country? The Emperor and his council, however, were convinced of Gulliver’s goodwill and
that he meant no harm when they heard the reports about Gulliver’s leniency to the six
soldiers who were delivered up to him for shooting at him with arrows. Being thus
convinced, the Emperor sent out national orders about supplying the needs of the manmountain and appointed six scholars to teach him his language. The King had Gulliver’s
pocket searched. The Lilliputians were terrified when Gulliver waved his sword in the sun
and shot from his pistol.
Critical Comments
1. Swift has often been bitterly criticized for writing about the natural functions of man.
Swift did so purposely. The book aims at removing man’s romantic misconceptions
about himself, by emphasizing his sheer physicality, his being basically an animal.
2. Swift’s presentation of the King is a calculated irony since George 1, who reigned
from 1714-1727, was gross and unattractive.
3. The search of Gulliver’s pockets is a satirical reference to the Whig’s practice of
prying into the public and private affairs of the Tories, with the intention of
harassing them.
3 Chapter Three
Gulliver was getting tired of living like a prisoner, and he knew that the only hope of getting
freedom was to gain the Lilliputian’s trust in himself. By his gentleness and good behaviour,
Gulliver managed to convince the people of Lilliput that he was harmless. The King one day
decided to entertain him with country shows performed at his court. Gulliver was highly
impressed, particularly by the dexterity of the rope-dancers. He learned that only those who
aspired to high offices were allowed to enter those rope-dancing competitions. How skillful
they were at rope-dancing qualified them for high offices. He also learnt that many
candidates broke their limbs in the attempt. By far, the most skillful in that art was Flimnap,
the Treasurer. Another contest, for which prizes were silken threads of blue, red and green,
tested the skill of the candidates in leaping over or creeping under a stick held by the King.
Gulliver, in his turn, entertained the court by making the King’s cavalry test their horses’
strength by jumping over his hand or foot. At the King’s request he stood like a Colossus,
with legs apart, while the Lilliputian army staged a grand parade beneath him. The young
officers were highly amused to see the vents in Gulliver’s breeches. By this time everyone, except one member of the Royal Council, was in favour of
granting Gulliver freedom from captivity. Skyresh Bolgolam, for some unknown reason,
considered Gulliver his personal enemy. Bolgolam too consented to free Gulliver but after
dictating all kinds of conditions. Gulliver was, according to these conditions, to perform some
duties for Lilliput in return for which he would be allowed to have his food and drink; enough
to feed 1728 Lilliputians.
Critical Comments
1. The butt of ridicule here is Flimnap, who represents Robert Walpole, who was the
leader of the Whig government and dominated the Irish policy for twenty-one years
(1721-42). He remained in power not because of his abilities as a minister but
because he was politically agile.
2. Though Gulliver is naive and uncritical, it is obvious that irony is implied: though
Gulliver does not recognize this as such in the statement that rope-dancing, leaping
and creeping are tests and skills required for responsible government positions or for
honours from the Emperor. Those who aspire for high offices are required to be
servile and to be a source of amusement. They are not supposed to be conscious of
dignity and self-respect. In other words, Swift’s observation is that courts do not
bestow their favours on considerations of merit or character but on those who have
neither morality nor capability; the court’s favourites are the most corrupt and
contemptible specimens of mankind.
3. Skyresh Bolgolam represents an English lord and member of parliament who had
referred to Swift as a clergyman “hardly suspected of being a Christian.” This lord
was hostile to Swift for reasons quite unknown to Swift, except perhaps because
Swift made him conscious of his inferiority.
4. Swift’s purpose in this book is to expose man’s hollow and utterly false claims to
rationality and morality, in particular of those men who wield power and authority.
4 Chapter Four
Gulliver’s first act after regaining his freedom was to make a tour of the city of Mildendo. He
observed that the city was an exact square, 500 feet on each side, protected by a wall twoand-a-half feet high and eleven inches wide. The entire city was very neatly planned, with the
Royal palace at the center. Two streets running across the city were five feet wide while the
by-lanes and alleys were just twelve to eighteen inches wide. The population of the town was
five thousand strong. The houses were from three to five stories. The shops and markets looked well stocked and prosperous. Gulliver could walk only in the principal streets and that
too very carefully, for fear of causing damage to the houses or trampling over the little
inhabitants of those streets. By making two stools to stand on, Gulliver was able to step over
the palace enclosure which was five feet high and admire the beauty of the Royal grounds
and the apartments.
A fortnight later, Reldresal, principal Secretary of Private affairs, visited Gulliver. He
told Gulliver that Lilliput had two serious problems: a violent division at home and the
danger of invasion by a most powerful enemy from abroad. As to the first, he said, there have
been, for about seventy moons (months) two rival parties in the Empire, under the names of
Tramecksan, and Slamecksan; whose members could be distinguished by the high or low
heels on their feet. It was alleged that the Tramecksan or High-Heel principles were more in
keeping with time-honoured traditions and the ancient constitution; they were also in the
majority. However, power was wholly on the side of the Low-Heels, the Slamecksans, as the
King and his administration currently ruling the country belonged to this party. The heir to
the crown, however, was inclined to go with the High-Heels, as the heel on one of his feet
was a little higher than the other one, which gave him a hobble in his gait.
These domestic divisions in Lilliput were involved with a related quarrel between
Big-Endians and Little-Endians, a quarrel dating back to an edict of the present ruler’s
grandfather, ordering the people under the threat of severe punishment to break their eggs at
the smaller end instead of at the larger end, as was dictated by tradition. Resistance to this
innovation had caused six rebellions, in which one Emperor had lost his life and another his
crown and 1,000 Lilliputians had died. The Emperor of Blefuscu, calling the new manner of
breaking eggs a fundamental religious error had, for generations, given refuge to Big-Endian
exiles from Lilliput. Blefuscu had been preparing to help the exiles wrest power from the
present monarch and reimpose the ancient discipline on Little-Endian Lilliput for 36 moons
(months), Reldresal reported. A costly and bloody war had been going on over the question
between the two nations and, at the moment, Blefuscu was all prepared to attack Lilliput with
a powerful fleet of battleships. Reldresal told Gulliver that he had come on behalf of the
Emperor to inform him of the state of affairs and to seek his help. Gulliver, on his part,
promised to defend the Emperor and his state from all invaders.
Critical Comments
1. Gulliver, on inspecting the town, becomes convinced about the ingenuity and
intelligence of the Lilliputians. He is all admiration for the Lilliputians who impress
him as excellent town-planners, architects and as people with a developed aesthetic sensibility. At this stage, Gulliver is hardly bothered to find out whether the
Lilliputians have a developed moral character as well, to match their intelligence and
ingenuity. The question is a revealing ironical comment on the British character.
2. The High-Heels stand for the Tories or the High-Church party; the Low-Heels for
the Whigs, or the Low-Church party. George I favoured the Whigs; the Prince of
Wales (afterwards James II) indicated partiality to both parties, which shows a
divided mind, hence his hobble.
3. As Lilliput is England, so Blefuscu is France. The Big-Endians represent the Roman
Catholics of England and the Little-Endians, the Protestants. The exiled Catholics
and Tories from England received refuge in France or Blefuscu, from which England
received threats of invasion. This episode regarding the Endians accounts for over
150 years of English history, from the time of breaking off relations with the Roman
Church and the establishment of the Church of England. Charles I was the Emperor
who lost his life as a result of the conflict between the Roman Catholics and the
Protestants. The same conflict forced James II to go into exile.
The pretty country of the Lilliputians is a victim of religious prejudices which cause
bloodshed and all kinds of brutal acts. The surface of the book is comic but at its centre is
tragedy transformed through style and tone into icy irony. Behind the gay, comic, fanciful
inventiveness of words and episodes, behind all the mirth and liveliness, lies Swift’s
understanding of the dark truth about man. He provides to serious/tragic matters a cover of
comedy, because his aim is to make us fully understand and experience the central truth:
man’s weakness and irrationality. He makes us laugh so that we may not give way to
depression, that is to enable us to better grasp what he is trying to convey. Irony is intended
when Reldresal tells Gulliver that the two great Empires of Blefuscu and Lilliput make up the
entire universe.
5 Chapter Five
True to his promise, Gulliver started putting into practice his plans for preventing the
Blefuscudian invasion of Lilliput. Looking through his pocket-glass, across the 800-yard
channel that separated the two countries, Gulliver espied 50 battleships, standing ready to
sail. Gulliver immediately ordered a quantity of very strong cable and iron bars with which he
made big hooks. Armed with these, he waded as far as he could and then swam across the
deeper part of the channel to reach the Blefuscu country. With the help of the hooks and
cables, Gulliver fastened together all the fifty ships and swam back to Lilliput, dragging
behind him the entire bunch of ships which could have caused havoc to it. The Emperor, who was watching the whole operation, conferred on Gulliver the rank of Nardac (Man of highest
honour). The Emperor desired that Gulliver would take some other opportunity to capture the
remaining ships of the enemy and reduce Blefuscu to absolute slavery. Gulliver, however,
refused to co-operate in this with the emperor for he said he, “would never be an instrument
of bringing a brave and free people into slavery.”
The Emperor took offence and began to intrigue against Gulliver. The Emperor was
further offended by Gulliver’s friendly attitude towards the ambassadors from Blefuscu who
arrived to make a treaty with Lilliput. The King did not approve of Gulliver’s promptly
accepting an invitation to visit the Blefuscu court. Gulliver noticed definite signs of coldness
in the Emperor’s treatment when he sought his permission for the visit. This coldness, he
later discovered, was the result of the treachery of Flimnap and Bolgolam, who had
persuaded the Emperor that Gulliver’s friendliness to Blefuscans signalled disaffection for
the Emperor.
Gulliver next made an enemy of the Emperor. At the dead of one night, it was
discovered that the Queen’s apartments were on fire. Gulliver rushed to put out the fire, but
finding no other means urinated upon it to extinguish the fire.
Comment
Lilliput is full of characters clearly identifiable as personages in British politics. The Queen’s
horror at Gulliver’s well-intended help has usually been considered a reference to Queen
Anne’s horror at Swift’s A Tale of a Tub and her consequent refusal to make him a Bishop -
all despite the fact that Swift’s book supported Anne’s Church of England against both the
Catholics and Dissenters.
Here Gulliver does what is necessary to preserve the palace, using whatever means
are available to him. Also, he does not share the religious prejudices of the nation and is
unwilling to be inhuman for the sake of what appeared as senseless dogma to him. He cannot
also see the importance of the ambition of the King. Big End, Small End - they all appear
petty to him. He also does not accept the distinction between friend and enemy defined by the
limits of the nations. Once again, common humanity is what he sees. At the same time, from
the perspective of the Lilliputians, he is a foreigner, and if he gets friendly with the enemy,
how can he be trusted? The truth of the matter is that Gulliver does not allow himself to be
blindly used by any party and therefore loses everybody’s trust. This seems to be Swift’s
description of his own situation and of other great men
Chapter Six
In this chapter, Gulliver records graphic details about the life of the inhabitants of Lilliput,
their learning, laws, and customs, how they educated children and how he himself lived in
that country.
Gulliver found some of the laws and customs of Lilliput “peculiar.” False accusers
were put to death after the accused had proved their innocence, and those falsely accused
were reimbursed four-fold for all charges, from the accuser’s estates. Fraud was thought a
greater crime than theft because it took advantage of trust, whereas one could easily guard
against mere theft.
The Lilliputians rewarded keepers of the law, just as they punished the law breaker. In
choosing people for government jobs, those with good morals were given preference to those
with great abilities. Moral virtues of truth, justice, and temperance were considered to be
higher and essential qualification than extraordinary intelligence. Disbelief in providence
barred a man from public office. To Lilliputians ingratitude was a capital crime, for he who
injured his benefactor must be an enemy to all men. They considered children under no
obligation to parents for bringing them into the world, nor were parents allowed to rear their
own children. Public nurseries and schools cared for the children from infancy and educated
them in ways appropriate to the rank to which they belonged. There were separate nurseries
and schools for boys and girls.
Gulliver gives an account of how hundreds of servants cooked and served his food,
sewed his clothes, and generally looked after him. Gulliver defends the wife of Flimnap
against malicious gossip with mock seriousness.
Chapter Seven
Gulliver came to know of an intrigue against him that had been going on for two months. He
was taken by surprise at finding that what he had only heard of courts and princes, he was
going to experience in Lilliput. An intrigue led by Flimnap and Bolgolam had succeeded in
bringing charges of treason and other capital crimes against him. He was impeached for
treason for “maliciously, traitorously declining to annihilate Blefuscudian power after he had
captured its fleet; for aiding, abetting, and comforting” the ambassadors of Blefuscu; for
preparing to travel to Blefuscu with “only verbal license from his Imperial Majesty” and
thereby to “aid, comfort, and abet the Emperor of Blefuscu, so late an enemy.”
Flimnap and Bolgolam demanded “the most painful and ignominious death” for the
traitor. According to some suggestions, he deserved to be blinded or starved to death.Gulliver considered what he might do. He eventually decided to flee to the court of Blefuscu.
He managed to escape to Blefuscu, where he was received with royal honours.
Critical Comments
1. Swift is again concerned with the events surrounding the Treaty of Utrecht and the
conduct of the Whigs after the death of Queen Anne. He refers to the charges of
treason brought against some Tory leaders, and their connection with French
diplomats towards a peace treaty (1711-1772) between England and France, carried
out without written authorization by the Queen.
2. The proposal to blind Gulliver shows the monstrous cruelty of the puny Lilliputians
and their fatuous vanity and ingratitude. The whole chapter is an example of nice
irony on the ways of the court. Gulliver’s flight seems to represent Bolingbroke’s
escape to France, just as the Whigs were about to arrest him. Bolingbroke was a
Tory leader and a friend of Swift’s.
Chapter Eight
Three days after landing in Blefuscu, Gulliver happened to find a boat which he supposed had
been lost by some ship in a storm. With great effort and with much help from the people of
Blefuscu, he brought the boat to the shore and fitted it out for his departure. Meanwhile, the
Emperor of Blefuscu was diplomatically rejecting the demands from Lilliput that Gulliver be
returned for punishment as a traitor. He also proposed to Gulliver to stay on in Blefuscu, but
Gulliver had now grown wise enough not to put his trust in princes. He also perceived that
the Emperor and the ministers were glad to know that he would soon be gone.
Besides provisions for his journey, Gulliver put in his boat some small cattle and
sheep of Blefuscu. He was, however, not allowed to take along with him Blefuscudians, even
with their own desire and consent. Not long after sailing from the island, Gulliver was picked
by an English merchant ship, whose captain could not believe Gulliver’s story until he saw
the small cattle. On April 13, 1702, Gulliver arrived home in England and earned some
money by showing his little animals to rich people and by finally selling the animals to them.
The little animals proved to be a welcome addition to the wool industry of England. Gulliver
was happy to be reunited with his family. He earned enough money to leave his family in
comfortable circumstances before he was prepared to set out on the next voyage.
Critical Comments
1. The Lilliputian experience adds to Gulliver’s education about the ways of the world,
of the princes and the courts 2. Gulliver’s coming back to his family and the reference to the introduction of the
little animals to the woollen industry of England adds to the realism and
verisimilitude of the story.
In Book One, Gulliver’s character is basically humane, simple, good-natured,
patriotic, and honest. By the end of the book, he is not only embittered but suspicious about
the conduct of princes. In its larger meaning, the book views man as petty and small: both
physically and morally. Swift would say that man is Lilliputian; his ridiculous pride blinds
him to his insignificance in the face of the universe, his vices are enormous, and his efforts
for doing good very small.
BOOK II: “A VOYAGE TO BROBDINGNAG”
Chapter One
After two months in England, Gulliver again became restless. He again sailed, on June 20,
1702, aboard the Adventure, bound for Surat. The ship was blown off course by two great
storms. After aimless wandering for several months the ship reached an unknown island.
Gulliver, with some of his fellow sailors went ashore for water. Here, they were pursued by a
monster of a man. Gulliver was left behind, while the other sailors managed to escape.
Gulliver hid himself in a field of corn whose stalks were forty feet high. He was terribly
frightened for he saw that several huge men with huge reaping hooks were cutting corn and
getting closer and closer to the spot where he was hiding. In this difficulty, he was reminded
of the Lilliputians whom he had put in a similar predicament. He thought of the philosopher
who had said that nothing is great or small except by comparison.
Afraid of being harmed by those enormous men, Gulliver decided to give himself up.
One of the reapers picked him up carefully to examine him. As he stood on the palm of the reaper’s hand, Gulliver found that he was close to sixty feet above the ground. The master of
the reapers, a farmer, took him home to his family. He was placed as a new curiosity on the
table, at dinner. The family gathered round the table, the sound of their speech almost
deafened Gulliver, but those huge people could hardly hear him even though he was shouting.
During the meal the farmer’s young son picked him up by the leg and swung him in the air; a
cat three times the size of an ox frightened him; and the baby snatched up and put his head in
his mouth. The nurse’s breast, seen at close quarters by Gulliver, for whom everything was
magnified as though seen through a microscope, showed ugly spots and holes and he
remembered a Lilliputian who had told him of huge holes in his skin. After dinner, the
farmer’s wife carried Gulliver to rest on a bed twenty yards wide and eight yards high, in a
room 300 feet wide and over 200 feet high. Here two rats attacked him, and Gulliver
defended himself with his sword. With great difficulty, he conveyed by signs to the farmer’s
wife that he needed to “discharge his natural functions.” He was set free in the garden and
there, hidden behind some leaves, he relieved himself.
Critical Comments
In Book II, Gulliver becomes a real Lilliputian, but he seems more comical, more ridiculous
than them as he stumbles over a crust on the table and is surrounded by hugeness of all kinds;
the cat, the dog as large as four elephants, and a mouse that could have eaten him up.
Dropped by the baby, the former man-mountain would have been killed. And once again
Swift shows man as a slave to his bodily needs.
Chapter Two
The farmer’s nine-year old daughter (40 feet tall) took complete charge of Gulliver, taking
care of all his needs. She also taught him her language. The two became very fond of each
other. To her he was “Gridring” (little man) and to him she was “Glumdalclitch” (little
nurse). Soon Gulliver became an object of the neighbours’ curiosity. The farmer decided to
make money out of this curiosity by showing him in the town on the next market day. Both
Gulliver and his nurse were unhappy with the decision, but the nurse was badly upset because
she was afraid that her father might sell him off for money as he had done earlier with
another pet of hers. Gulliver felt humiliated but consoled himself thinking that under the
same circumstances the King of Britain would have perhaps fared no better.
Gulliver’s shows proved to be so popular and profitable that he was soon made to put
up shows every day. Two months later, he accompanied his master and nurse on a tour of the
cities of the kingdom. In the capital city of the country, he was shown ten times a day to the
delighted crowds.Critical Comments
1. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver is reduced to the position of a pet, the equal of a pet lamb.
His humiliation is complete when he becomes a curiosity that men pay to have a
look at. Gulliver feels quite helpless though he does not lose his pride or good
nature, with his sense of gratitude and love for his nurse remaining intact.
2. Though ten times bigger in body, the Brobdingnagians are not different from
mankind in nature; some are loving and kindly while others are greedy and
thoughtless.
Chapter Three
Too many public shows destroyed Gulliver’s health. He grew thin and lost his appetite. His
master, thinking he would soon die, sold him to the Queen who found the toy-like little man
so amusing that she paid a good price for him. The King was rather suspicious and had
Gulliver examined by three great scholars/ scientists who were ordered to determine what
kind of animal the strong creature was. One of the scholars said it was an embryo, the other
two disagreed. After long debates they concluded that he was a “replum Seakath,” a freak of
nature. This, Gulliver thought, was consistent with the findings of the modern philosophical
minds in Europe.
The King ordered arrangements to be made for the best possible care of Gulliver, with
Glumdalclitch’s help. Along with Gulliver, she too was to live at the court. A governess was
appointed for her education, and she was given a personal maid and two servants. A very
comfortable box was prepared for Gulliver. He dined every day with the Queen and
sometimes with the King and the whole family. Whenever he met the King, he gave him an
account of the laws, religion, and education in Europe. Gulliver’s account of affairs in
England provoked the King to hearty laughter and he asked Gulliver whether he was a Whig
or a Tory. The King reflected on “how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which
could be mimicked by such diminutive insects as I.” He sneered at the idea that the tiny
English, “have their Titles and distinctions of Honour; they contrive little nests and Burrows,
that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in Dress and Equipage, they love, they
fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray.” The King used to go on like that and all the while
Gulliver, the insect, burned with shame and anger.
As time went on Gulliver himself thought of tiny Englishmen, strutting around in their
pride and finery, quite ridiculous. He himself shrank in size in his imagination. Everything in
Brobdingnag conspired against his self-esteem. The Queen’s dwarf, finding someone smaller
than himself, got a sense of superiority; he teased and bullied Gulliver. Once he dropped Gulliver in a bowl of cream and at another time, he put him in the hollow of a marrow bone.
The dwarf was removed from the Queen’s service for he was too dangerous to be around
Gulliver. One day Gulliver was attacked by giant wasps as big as partridges. Gulliver killed
some of them and preserved their stings, which he brought home to England, where Gresham
College put them on display.
Critical Comments
Gulliver becomes a slave, an article of sale and purchase. His job is to amuse his masters and
his humiliation deepens as he becomes a specimen, a subject for laboratory examination.
Swift, in fact, exploits every imaginable way for conveying the smallness of man and the
stupidity of his pride. Proper names of existing institutions, for instance Gresham College -
the seat of the Royal Society in London, link the known world with the unknown ones,
discovered by Gulliver.
Chapter Four
Gulliver describes the geographical position and features of the Brobdingnagian country. It’s
a vast tract of land on the north-west part of America. The land is a peninsula cut off from the
rest of the continent by 30-mile-high mountains topped with active volcanoes. It is
surrounded on three sides by oceans but blocked from them by high pointed rocks.
Everything in the country is on a scale that paralyses the imagination. Even the lice look like
swine. Gulliver rode about the capital city in a coach as vast as a square of Westminster Hall.
Gulliver was taken to see the chief temple in Brobdingnag. He was impressed by the beauty,
strength, and the enormous size of the statues of gods and emperors cut in marble. He
measured a little finger which had fallen from the statues and found that it was exactly four
and half feet in length. His nurse picked up the finger, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and
carried it home in her pocket to keep among other trinkets.
Gulliver also saw the King’s kitchen and started to talk about the huge proportions of
its building, its oven, pots, and pans but, at this point, stopped elaborating on the enormous
size of things for fear of censorship by his readers, who might suppose that he exaggerated
the wonders like other travellers. He knew that if the Brobdingnagians ever happened to read
his book, they would complain that he had diminished the size of things in their country.
Chapter Five
Gulliver met with some frightening accidents in Brobdingnag because of his small size, like
that of an insect, and not because he was not taken care of. There was always the danger of
being crushed by falling objects of huge bulk; apples, for example, which were of the size of barrels, falling from apple trees or hailstones, 1800 times the size of hail in England. Once a
spaniel grabbed him in his mouth and carried him to his master.
Gulliver, on several occasions, happened to see the maids of honour very closely and
experienced the ugliness of the body seen too closely. It was a grotesque sight to see a fortyfoot blade cut off the head at an execution and cause the blood to spout into the air, higher
than the fountain at Versailles, that is over 70 feet. Gulliver describes the boat and the huge
trough filled with water in which he rowed his boat for the entertainment of the court ladies;
sometimes their fans raised a gale for him. He recalls how he was once snatched up by a
monkey and carried to the top of a building 900 feet high. Gulliver was a target of court jokes
and sometimes he made himself ridiculous trying to exhibit his physical prowess.
Chapter Six
The King and the Queen of Brobdingnag were extremely nice to Gulliver and he on his part
tried to please them by employing his skill at making small objects of craft; for instance, a
comb from bits of hair from the King’s beard and ‘cane’ chairs from the combings of the
Queen’s hair. Of the same material, he made a purse for Glumdalclitch. The King, at this
point, began to ask Gulliver questions about his country and learned in detail about the
climate, the soil, the institutions, and the history of England. Gulliver spoke about the House
of Lords, representing the aristocracy and wealthy families. He spoke about the men of holy
living; of the other part of the parliament, the House of Commons, constituted by the elected
members of the people and about the judicial system in his country. Gulliver’s account of
England is quite Utopian. He is fired by patriotic zeal: “how often then wished for the tongue
of Demosthenes or Cicero . . . to celebrate the praise of my own dear native country in a style
equal to its merits and felicity.”
The King listened and took notes but said nothing until the speaker had finished. Then
the King indicated many doubts, raising objections on every point. He asked what kind of
education and preparation was received by the Lords, how they were selected, whether the
holy lords were selected for their religious knowledge and sanctity, how a commoner fought
the election if it was so expensive and what did he gain by buying that office. Next the King
wished to know how well qualified the judges were. He calculated and found that the annual
expenditure of the government was twice the amount it earned by way of taxes. He was
puzzled at the idea of a standing army in peace time and said that the English must be a
quarrelsome people or must be surrounded by troublesome neighbours and their generals
must be richer than their kings This is how the King saw through the corruption of English life and institutions. He
concluded from what he was told by Gulliver that the nobles were mean and vicious, they
were some kinds of imposters; the parliament a collection of ignorant, corrupt, and idle men;
the laws explained, interpreted and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in
perverting, confounding, and eluding them. The history of England was a record, he said, of
conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, and revolutions. In short, despite hints that the
establishment might originally have been acceptable, Gulliver’s people were “the most
pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of
the earth.”
Critical Comments
1. Gulliver wishes he had great oratorial skills to enable him to present a magnificent
account of his dear country. His account of England, its history and institutions is
honest and factual, but his attitude towards it is so subjective that he does not see any
faults in it. He had “made a most admirable panegyric,” as the King put it and he had
hoped to impress the King with England’s greatness and power. Instead, he receives
a most crushing and humiliating verdict, which reduces the English to “the most
pernicious race of little odious vermin.”
2. Here again Swift takes a solid Tory line: the Tories were against the Whig policies
of financing wars by running up national debts and keeping a standing army in peace
time. The Tories continuously complained against corruption in the army and the
judicial system.
3. Gulliver here represents any unthinking, unsuspecting, credulous, uncritical common
man who takes pride in his national institutions. He is concerned with only the
surface and believes what the majority says. He has no analytical talents and would
not use them even if he had them; for all his energy and time is absorbed by the
necessities of daily life. Gulliver is thus made to present the Whig positions and
practices before the objective and sharp intelligence of the King, who can see
through it. The irony is that the more eloquently Gulliver tries to praise his country,
the more he exposes the falseness of its claim to greatness.
Chapter Seven
Gulliver deeply resented the King’s reaction to his account of England. He thought his
beloved country was treated by the King most injuriously. Gulliver would have concealed
this part of the story from the reader had he not been compelled to record it by his extreme love of truth. Also, he was compelled to answer the King’s enquiries out of a sense of
gratitude to him, though he did his best to elude many of the King’s questions and sometimes
“gave to every point a more favourable turn by many degrees than the strictness of truth
would allow.” That is, he tried to hide the frailties and deformities of his political mother
(England) although his endeavour “unfortunately failed of success.”
To impress the King, Gulliver told him about gunpowder and its terribly destructive
power. He offered to teach the King how to make it, but the King was horrified at the very
idea of such a thing. The King considered the inventor of such a substance to be an enemy of
mankind, an evil genius. He was amazed that such an insect as Gulliver could entertain such
inhuman ideas. As for himself, the King would rather lose half the kingdom than share such a
secret; and he commanded Gulliver, as he valued his life, not to mention it to anyone.
Gulliver was disappointed and thought of all those points of European superiority to
Brobdingnagians that occurred to him. The King, he reflected, abominated mystery,
refinement and intrigue; those usual methods of operating in European courts. He and his
people reject “all abstractions and transcendentals.” The laws were limited to twenty-two
words, and anyone could interpret them in one reading. To write a commentary on a law was
a capital offense. Though they had been printing as long as the Chinese, their libraries were
small. The largest, the King’s, had only one thousand volumes. In writing, Gulliver records,
their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid; for they aimed at conciseness and
simple, unornamental statement.
Gulliver describes the contents of a book of morality and devotion, much like those in
Europe. It dwells on man’s contemptible and helpless condition and laments how nature “was
degenerated in these later declining ages of the world.” Gulliver thought that such complaints
were made in Europe too but were as ill-grounded there as they were in Brobdingnag.
The army of Brobdingnag was a citizen’s army, consisting of 176,000 men who were
well disciplined and well-trained. Once he saw 6,000 of the cavalries draw their swords at
once upon one word of command and brandish them in the air. It was a grand spectacle. The
cavalry mounted on large steeds ninety feet high.
Critical Comments
1. In a passage of splendid irony, Swift comments on the King’s reaction to the
gunpowder proposal. To Gulliver, the King’s reaction was the result of “the
miserable effects of a confined education” and “a strange effect of narrow principles
and short view.” But evidently it is Gulliver and the Europeans who have the narrow
principles and short views, as well as confined education. Carrying on the irony,Swift speaks of the “nice, unnecessary scruples” which the Europeans cannot even
think of and by which the King misses a chance to become a complete tyrant over
his people. Irony deepens when Swift makes Gulliver think that this episode would
considerably lessen the regard the English readers may have developed for the King.
2. Gulliver here reverses the role he played in Lilliput, where he refused to reduce by
his might, the Blefuscudians to slavery. In each case, it is the giant whose moral
virtue matches his relative size. The King of Brobdingnag speaks for Swift, when he
defends honest, simple arrangements in governments, with complete absence of
intrigue. The King says if a man “can make two ears of corn or two blades of grass
grow where one grew before,” he is worth all the politicians and war lords put
together. Swift would have laws plain and so simple that no lawyers were needed to
interpret them. He was also very impatient of philosophical jargon and admired
whatever was practical and profitable to humanity. This indicates the moral
shrinking of Gulliver, by which he is intended to earn the reader’s contempt.
Chapter Eight
Having lived in the Brobdingnag country for two years, Gulliver was sick of his captivity and
longed for liberty and the society of his own kind of people. He got his chance when he
journeyed to the coast in the company of the King and the Queen. Near the sea, a page was
entrusted to take Gulliver out for fresh air. Thinking his small charge asleep and safe in his
box, the page wandered off among the rocks. Gulliver, in the meanwhile, awoke to find his
small box being carried out to the sea by a giant eagle. After four hours the eagle dropped the
box into the sea, and eventually Gulliver was picked by an English ship. He sailed safely
home to his wife and daughter. Having got accustomed to Brobdingnag, he amazed people by
shouting when he wished to speak. He stooped to avoid striking the top of the doorframe of
his house and his wife looked very small to him. It was some time before he persuaded
people around him that he was indeed of sound mind.
Critical Comments
1. Swift emphasizes the psychological effect on Gulliver of living among the giants of
Brobdingnag.
2. Once again Gulliver comes home in an English ship, making Brobdingnag part of
the real world and indicating that what the Brobdingnagians do can be done in
England as well.
3. Swift’s device in Lilliput and Brobdingnag is to take moral and intellectual
differences and project them in physical dimensions. From this simple change everything else follows. In Lilliput, Gulliver is a giant, both physically and morally.
Conversely, Gulliver is a Lilliputian - both morally and physically in Brobdingnag.
The King of Brobdingnag is high-minded, benevolent and, in Swift’s sense of the
word, rational; that is, he and his people think practically, not theoretically;
concretely, not metaphysically: simply, not intricately. Brobdingnag is a Swiftian
Utopia of common good sense and morality; and Gulliver, conditioned by the
corrupt society from which he comes, appears naive, blind, and insensitive to moral
values. Gulliver’s account of the history of England in the 17th century evokes the
King’s crushing retort; “it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders,
revolutions, banishments, and very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy,
perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice and ambition could
produce.”
Swift is at his satiric best in such passages. However, the Brobdingnagians are not all
saints: greed and cruelty exist among them but the best of them, those in a position to
represent their people, the King and Queen, show no such faults. And their government,
unlike that of Lilliput, has not suffered corruption caused by intrigues. Brobdingnag remains
a utopia, in spite of the presence of fallen human nature with its weaknesses and evil
propensities.
BOOK THREE: “A VOYAGE TO LAPUTA, BALNIBARBI,
LUGGNAGG, GLUBBDUBDRIB AND JAPAN”
Chapter One
In 1706, Gulliver set out on yet another voyage. Once again, his ship was blown off course in
a storm, and when the storm stopped, he was chased by two pirate ships. Gulliver’s ship was slow, being overladen with merchandise, and was soon overtaken by the pirates. The pirates
took control of Gulliver’s ship and he narrowly escaped death at the hands of a malicious
Dutch pirate. He was set adrift in a small canoe with eight days’ provisions. Gulliver sailed
towards a group of islands at some distance, which he had discovered with the help of his
pocket-glass. He reached the last island, which appeared to be a deserted one, and there he
got off his boat and spent the night in a dry cave. Next morning, he came out of the cave
when the day was far advanced. It was a hot sunny day and Gulliver had to keep his face
turned away from the sun, but suddenly it became dark, the sun having been eclipsed by a
huge opaque body in the air. Gulliver was startled to see an island floating in the air at a
height of about two miles above the island. Viewing it through his pocket glass, Gulliver saw
that there were a large number of people on the island, and it was divided up into several
levels. The island came down to about a hundred yards above the spot where Gulliver was
standing, and he was pulled up with the help of a chair tied to chains.
Critical Comments
1. The Dutch pirate is an evil man as compared to the Japanese pirate. Bias against the
Dutch people was common among the Tories. Though allied militarily against
France, Holland and England remained vigorous commercial rivals. Moreover, Swift
detested the Dutch policy of religious tolerance which undermined the concept of a
national church. And so here he makes his pirate a Dutch and anti-Christian.
2. Swift’s flying island is built on scientific principles in the manner of today’s science
fiction. It remains suspended on the principle of attraction and repulsion of magnetic
bodies.
Chapter Two
The people on the flying island looked alike: their heads were inclined either to the left or to
the right, one eye was turned inward and the other looked directly at the zenith. Their clothes
bore images of suns, moons, and stars, with figures of musical instruments like fiddles, flutes
and harps and so many others. Then Gulliver saw something quite amazing. There were
servants everywhere, carrying short sticks to which were attached bladders containing dried
peas or pebbles. With these, the servants would flap the mouth or ears of people nearby.
Gulliver learned that these people were so lost in thought that they had to be woken up
whenever there was an occasion for them to speak or listen.
Gulliver was taken to the royal palace at the top of the island but several times his
escort had to be reminded by the flapper, as to where he was going. Gulliver found the King absorbed in a problem, perhaps a mathematical problem, and he remained like that for more
than an hour before he paid any attention to his visitor. Gulliver could not communicate with
the King because he did not understand his language. He decided to learn the language of the
island. In the meantime, by the King’s order, Gulliver was provided with an apartment in the
King’s palace, two servants, and a language teacher.
Gulliver noticed that even the food; pieces of meat, ice-creams, puddings, and bread
were all shaped either like musical instruments or like geometrical or mathematical figures.
The tailor who was ordered to make clothes for him made such a fuss about taking his
measurements. The clothes he made were ill-fitting and quite out of shape, but no objections
were raised about that. On his second day on the island, Gulliver’s ears were deafened by the
crashing music performed by the entire court for three hours, without a break. Each person
played his own instrument to accompany the music of the spheres, which was audible on
certain occasions. Gulliver’s own knowledge of mathematics and science helped him a great
deal in quickly learning the language of the island. He learned that the island was called
Laputa which in their old obsolete language signified ‘high.’
Everything in Laputa was expressed, even the standards of good and beautiful, in
mathematical or musical terms. Gulliver found evidence in every field, of the same error of
calculation that the tailor had, obviously in making ill-fitting clothes for him, made in
everything. Laputans were abstract theoreticians; they despised practical geometry and there
was not a straight wall or an exact right angle in their buildings. Their theoretical bent of
mind made them great failures in all affairs of practical life. Even their vocabulary was
limited to the sciences of mathematics and music.
The people of Laputa were also keen students of astronomy. It caused them a lot of
trouble and fear. They dreaded changes in the position and movement of the celestial bodies
and all the time feared the destruction of the earth. Because of these fears they never had a
peaceful sleep and never enjoyed the simple joys of life. The King of the island questioned
Gulliver about the state of mathematics in England but showed no interest in English religion,
government, laws, history, or manners. How different he was, thought Gulliver, from the
King of Brobdingnag who showed a keen interest in such practical subjects and had great
clarity of thought about those subjects. The frequent need of the Laputan King to be brought
to attention by a flapper even during the conversation deepened the contrast.
The women of the island were vivacious but bored with their absent-minded
husbands. They were very fond of the strangers who came to the court from the continents
below. Though they were treated very well as wives or daughters they were unhappy as their men folk, being mostly lost in the world of abstraction, had no time for them. Their failure to
keep their women happy was yet another consequence of the impractical character of the men
of Laputa. Fun and satire are combined in the description of Laputa. Swift has a good laugh
at the eccentricities and impractical ways of those devoted to the pure sciences. Swift makes
them perfectly comical, both in appearance and action. Significantly, Swift says nothing here
about the applied sciences.
Chapter Three
The flying island was perfectly circular, its diameter about four miles and a half, its thickness
300 yards. It contained 10,000 acres. Its movement was controlled by a magnetic loadstone,
so perfectly poised that anyone could move it, in order to lift it towards the earth or away
from it.
Laputans had highly developed telescopes because of which their knowledge of
astronomy was much more advanced as compared to that of the European’s. The King of
Laputa was prevented from being an absolute tyrant because his ministers owned estates on
the mainland below and refused to support his efforts or designs to subject the entire country
to his will. The common people living on the land below the island were, in fact, many a
times saved from destruction because of the ministers, whose own interests were involved
with theirs. Gulliver learns about a revolt in Lindalino, second largest city in the kingdom,
about three years before his arrival.
Critical Comments
1. Swift gives a long and “philosophical account” of the structure and operation of the
great loadstone. He imitates the Royal Society’s learned papers, to make them look
ridiculous.
2. Laputa’s manner of government, which has little communication with the mainland,
suggests the absentee type of government from which Ireland suffered in the 18th
century. Its small landlords were far from London, but the controlling power of the
Irish government was in London. The country was miserable, being subject to a
government that was too far to be approached: Lindalino is Dublin, and the revolt
figuratively represents the uproar over the introduction of cheap money of small
denomination in Ireland and the granting of the patent for its manufacture to one
William Wood, an Englishman.
3. This chapter is an excellent piece of symbolic writing which can be read like an
allegory as well 4. Gulliver’s position in Laputa differs from his position in the first two books. Here he
takes no part in the activities of the life around him. He is a silent spectator, writing
his reports.
Chapter Four
Gulliver was bored in Laputa and so he decided to leave the island after two months. He
received permission to leave through the influence of a great lord, a close relation of the
King, but very different from him; less interested in mathematics and music, more interested
in listening to what others said, did not really need the flappers, and was generally a man of
honour and integrity.
Gulliver descended to Balnibarbi, the mainland and travelled to its capital city
Lagado. He was received there by a great Lord called Munodi. Making a tour of the town,
Gulliver saw men working on excellent soil with all kinds of tools and equipment but there
were no signs of harvest. The people appeared to be poor and miserable. Munodi’s estate just
next to this place presented a striking contrast, with its greenery and abundance. Munodi told
him the secret of his own prosperity and of his neighbour’s failure. He said that he avoided
the new agricultural methods of his neighbours and practiced the old, tested methods only.
Munodi informed Gulliver that, about forty years earlier, some men had gone up to
the floating island, acquired a smattering of mathematics and returned to build an academy of
projectors in Lagado. All the other towns had since built similar academies, which taught new
methods of agriculture and building. But as none of these projects had been perfected, the
country lay in miserable waste. By way of illustration, Munodi showed Gulliver an ancient
mill formerly on his property that had been turned into a ruin by the projectors. They had
planned to pump water up the hill to secure the advantage of falling water for turning the
mill, instead of using the river that already existed. But after a hundred men had worked on
the project for two years, it was abandoned and Munodi was blamed for its failure.
Critical Comments
1. Swift here tries to satirize the thoughtless and headlong dash into novelty and rash
meddling with established methods, as abstract speculation and practical application
of knowledge are two completely different things. Swift is not against scientific
innovations or scientific curiosity; he is against a wasteful and fanciful or
unscientific attitude to practical problems of life.
2. Munodi is either Swift’s friend Bolingbroke or Oxford, or perhaps a composite of
both.Chapter Five
Gulliver visited the Academy of Lagado, which contained 500 rooms. He saw a man working
on a project to extract sunshine from cucumbers so that man might warm the air on cold days.
In another room, a filthy-looking man was working on a project to reduce human excrement
back to its original food. Other researchers were trying to build a house from the roof
downward, as do spiders and the bees; to produce gunpowder by heating ice; to plough fields
by putting into the soil a huge quantity of acorns and chestnuts and other vegetables and
letting the hogs dig them up. In another part of the building, Gulliver met a projector in
speculative learning. He had invented a machine that would enable anyone to write great
books on philosophy and arts. At the school of languages, Gulliver met professors who were
trying to remove language barriers and make communicative processes simple and less
strenuous.
Critical Comments
1. This chapter is an example of Swift’s great capacity for inventing comical images
and fantastically comical details. Behind the hilariously comical images is hidden
bitter satire on the impracticality and wastefulness of research proposed to be
undertaken by learned societies of his time.
2. The “philosophical account” is Swift’s parody of the typical scientific papers
published in the Transactions of the Royal Society.
Chapter Six
Gulliver next visited the school of political projectors. The professors there appeared to him
wholly out of their senses for proposing to work out schemes for persuading the monarchs to
choose their favourites for their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; for the ministers to be able to
promote public good. He found the professors trying to devise schemes by which merit, great
abilities and eminent public services could be rewarded. And, according to Gulliver, they
were following “many other wild, impossible chimeras” that had never been conceived by
man.
One of the professors, however, was more practical as he understood the nature and
system of government and was engaged in finding effective remedies for all diseases and
corruptions to which public administration was subject. To correct the poor memories of
court favourites, for instance, he would have their associates activate their memories by
giving “a tweak by the nose or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns or lug him thrice by
both ears, or run a pin into his breach, or pinch his arm black and blue, to prevent
forgetfulness.” Senators, he advised, should be obliged to vote contrary to the way they argue, for that way of acting would ensure the public good. To end violent party divisions in
a state, he would take a hundred leaders from each party, cut their brains in half, and put
together for each man two halves of brains from different parties. This would bring
moderation and quiet in the state. Gulliver found two professors engaged in a warm debate
about how to extract taxes without “grieving” the taxpayers. One of them argued that each
man should be taxed for his vices and follies; the other that a man should be taxed according
to the qualities in him. The highest tax would be on the men who were greatest favourites of
the other sex. Women would be taxed according to their beauty and style of dressing; but
constancy, chastity, good sense, and good nature would not be considered, since they are too
rare and would not bear even the expenses for collecting the tax.
Gulliver was shown by another professor, a paper of instructions for discovering plots
and conspiracies against the government. His advice was to examine the diet of the suspects,
the times of their meals, their sleeping habits, the colour of their excrement, which is the key
to their thoughts and designs. Gulliver told him of Tribnia (Britain), also called Lengden
(England), where most of the people are spies, accusers, informers, prosecutors, perjurers,
false witnesses, and the like; all serving under ministers of state and very skillful in framing
whoever is required to be ruined. They employ artists who are very clever at deciphering
secret meanings in words and in finding what other sentences could be formed out of the
letters that they have.
Critical Comments
1. In this chapter, it is no longer irony but bitter satire, for here, the possibility of right
conduct in public affairs becomes an impossible chimera, something that could never
enter man’s head. Here Swift shows bitter contempt for the state of affairs in the
world and for his own kind. He despairs of any possibility of reform. According to
him the entire political system is so horribly diseased that it is beyond correction or
cure. Hence the best thing to do is to laugh at its expense. This is black humour:
black comedy that shows despair and still makes the reader laugh.
2. Gulliver’s critical comments on the political situation in his country surprise us. He
seems to have already revised his opinion about his “ideal country.” In the last few
passages, Swift is mimicking the methods employed by Whigs to investigate the
charges, mostly trumped up, against holy persons of Tory leanings and against some
politicians. Bolingbroke, for example, was Secretary of State in 1710, and a victim
of dirty Whig politics.Chapter Seven
Gulliver decided to visit the island of Luggnagg as it lay en route to his voyage back to
England, but because he could not find any ship bound for this island, he decided to take a
trip to the island of Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers and magicians where the entire
governing tribe practiced magic. The Governer was served by the dead, whom he had power
to command. On his way to the palace, Gulliver passed between two rows of guards dressed
in what he thought was a very antique manner and something in their countenance made his
flesh creep with horror. By the turn of his finger the Governer dismissed his servants, and to
the utter astonishment of Gulliver, they vanished in an instant “like visions in a dream when
we awake on a sudden.” A new set of ghosts served at the table. Gulliver saw so many ghosts
or spirits all day long that he became, in a day or two, perfectly used to the presence of
spirits. The Governer permitted Gulliver to call up from the underworld whatever spirits he
wished to speak to. Alexander and Hannibal appeared and cleared some misconceptions
about themselves. The senate of Rome looked like an “assembly of demigods, whereas
another assembly of somewhat later age,” seemed to be a “knot of pedlars, pickpockets,
highway men and bullies.” Gulliver enjoyed the conversation of noble men like Brutus,
Socrates, Cato, Thomas More and so on. Gulliver also admired the sight of the destroyers of
tyrants and usurpers and the restorers of liberty to nations.
Critical Comments
Swift presents the modern politicians in a satirical light by comparing them to the members
of the Roman Senate. Swift also debunks the stories that pass for history.
Chapter Eight
Gulliver, continuing the programme of meeting the spirits of the dead, summoned up
Aristotle and Homer, along with their commentators and was told that they had never even
heard about them. Aristotle, speaking about Descartes and Gassendi, said that their
philosophy and principles were based on conjectures and had proved wrong; same as, in time,
Newton’s theory of gravitation would be.
Summoning up the ghosts of noble families, he was disappointed to find that they had
short histories and could trace their lineage only a very few generations. Gulliver saw their
scandalous secrets laid bare and he ceased to wonder at the degeneration of nobility when he
saw their blood lines interrupted by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers,
players, captains, and pickpockets. Gulliver realized that it was what Polydor Virgil, a 16th
century Italian, who composed a history of England, says of certain great houses “Not a man
of them brave, not a woman pure.”Gulliver was chiefly disgusted with modern history for he discovered that the
prostitute writers had totally misrepresented the facts. These writers made heroes into
cowards and wise men into fools. Those who were known for heroic patriotism were
misrepresented as traitors. Known villains had been exalted to offices of high trust; the
virtuous had been executed through the devices of the wicked ministers. He discovered the
true causes of some great events; “how a whore can govern the back stairs, the back stairs a
council and the council a senate.” He discovered how some renowned figures of history had
secured high titles and great estates by perjury and fraud or by prostituting their wives and
daughters.
Critical Comments
Gulliver shows the blackest face of the so called noble, illustrious, and royal families. All
these had, barring a few exceptions, acquired great wealth and positions of power: either by
accident or by treachery, falsehood and cunning or by bribing those in power or by pandering
to their whims. To put it in short, those who rose to occupy high political positions were men
of dishonourable disposition. After saying all this, Gulliver says that he does not have his
own country in mind regarding what he has said on this occasion. Nobody is fooled by this
explanation, which only renders the irony more effective. The special target of satire here is
the pride of great houses in their ancestry and reputation.
Gulliver now laments, as did the philosophers of Brobdingnag, how much man has
degenerated in the last hundred years. Men had lost the vigour, valour, sense of justice, and
spirit of liberty of the English yeomen of the old stamp. Every journey adds to the education
of Gulliver.
Chapter Nine
In Luggnagg, Gulliver represented himself as a Hollander in the hope of getting to Japan, for
the Dutch alone were allowed to enter that country. He sent to the King of Luggnagg the
conventional request to have the honour of licking the dust before the royal footstool, but he
found the words to be more than mere form. He was commanded to crawl on his belly
towards the throne, licking the floor as he moved forward. Gulliver being a stranger, the floor
was cleaned for his approach; but he learnt that for those who had enemies at the court, extra
dirt was put on the floor and for those who were to be destroyed, a form of poison was
sprinkled on the floor.
Critical Comments
Swift’s travel books, with their stories of Oriental despotism seem to be reflected in
Gulliver’s encounter with the King of Luggnagg. That only Dutch could find entry into Japan is a fact of history. This reference to a real fact of history adds to the realism Swift has tried
to give to the book.
Chapter Ten
Gulliver found that the Luggnaggian people were polite and generous, although they were not
without some share of pride which is peculiar to all Eastern countries. Gulliver heard about
Struldbruggs, immortal men. He was told that to any family a child might be born, whose
forehead was marked with the red circular spot of immortality. “Happy people!” was
Gulliver’s first reaction. “Happy nation blessed with so much ancient wisdom for a guide,”
thought Gulliver. Then he fell into a long dream in which he was a Struldbrugg. But the
Luggnaggians laughed at his ignorance, for it was based on the supposition that the
Struldbrugg would remain young forever and not decay mentally or physically into old age.
But whenever a Struldbrugg saw a funeral, he wished he might have one, for after a certain
stage in old age, there set in a rapid decline of mental and physical faculties: they
remembered nothing at all, could not perform their natural functions properly, could not
converse with anyone, and generally became a ghastly sight.
Critical Comments
Here, Swift mocks at a pride which is peculiar to Eastern countries, as he says. Actually, this
is another one of man’s vain desires anywhere in the world. Swift’s purpose is to show that
man commonly desires what is bad for him and neglects his real good.
Chapter Eleven
The Japanese became suspicious about Gulliver’s claim to be a Dutchman because he asked
to be excused from the ceremony imposed on the Dutch, that of trampling over the crucifix.
The Emperor was almost sure that Gulliver was not a Hollander, that he was a Christian, But
he was so considerate as to give secret orders to the officer to allow Gulliver to quickly pass
out of the country and to be excused from the ceremony and then pretend that this had
happened not due to deliberate omission but as a result of forgetfulness. Gulliver then
reached the port of Nangasac after a very long and troublesome journey. He soon found there
a company of Dutch sailors belonging to a ship called Amboyna of Amsterdam; a stout ship
of 450 tons. Gulliver’s knowledge of Dutch language once more came very handy. He made
friends with the Dutch sailors and sailed home with them on the Amboyna. He finally reached
home after five and half years’ absence.
Critical Comments
The third voyage has always been considered the least successful, but none the less
interesting. Structurally it is loosely episodic, lacking unity of action and tone. Into it, Swift seems to have put all the material that he could not work into the other three voyages. It is
fantasia on two themes, which Swift treats under a single metaphor. The metaphor is science;
the themes are politics and the abuse of reason. In short, the voyage is a digression on
madness, on the divorce of man and good sense in the modern world.
Check Your Progress
1. Describe the inhabitants of Laputa.
2. Mention some of the experiments going on in the Academy of Lagado.
3. Who does Gulliver meet in Glubbdubdrib?
4. Who are the Struldbruggs? Why is Gulliver excited to hear about them?
BOOK IV: “A VOYAGE TO THE COUNTRY OF THE
HOUYHNHNMS”
Chapter One
Gulliver spent five months at home with his wife and children and set out on yet another
voyage. He was this time the captain of a merchant ship. In the West Indies he hired some
sailors to replace some of his men who had died of a tropical fever. The newly hired men
proved to be former pirates. They seized the ship and put Gulliver in chains. After sailing for
some weeks, as soon as an island was sighted the pirates got rid of Gulliver. They put him in
a boat and sailed away. In this desolate condition, Gulliver kept rowing till he got upon firm
ground He was tired in body and soul, so he rested for some time and then went up into the
country.
Soon he observed some repulsive animals, thickly hairy in some parts of their body.
They had no tails, but had long claws and climbed trees as nimbly as squirrels. Gulliver felt a
strong aversion for them. As he moved along a road, one of these beasts approached him,
stared at him, and raised one of its forepaws towards him. To fend him off, Gulliver gave him
a blow with the flat side of his sword, at which the animal drew back but roared so loudly that
a herd of at least forty came flocking around him from the next field. They howled and made
faces around Gulliver, who moved to defend himself with his back to a tree. Some of the
brutes leapt up into the tree, from where they began to discharge their excrements on his
head. Gulliver defended himself by waving his hanger but was quite stifled with the filth
falling all around him.
Suddenly all the beasts ran away. A horse had appeared. He looked with wonder at
Gulliver, examined his hands and feet and blocked him from leaving the spot, but all very
gently. Gulliver attempted to pet him, but the horse shook his head, removed his hand with
his forefoot and seemed to say something, neighing all the time. Another horse came up,
greeted the first ceremoniously and said to him something about Gulliver. The two again
examined Gulliver’s hands and feet with wonder. Their behaviour was so orderly and
intelligent that Gulliver believed them to be two magicians in the form of horses. He
addressed them as magicians, asking them to give him a ride up to a village or a house. The
horses again discussed the situation, frequently using the word Yahoo. As soon as the horses
were silent Gulliver boldly pronounced Yahoo in a loud voice, imitating as well as he could,
the neighing of a horse, at which both the horses were visibly surprised. They taught him the
exact pronunciation of that word and of another, Houyhnhnm (Whinnum). Gulliver’s learning
ability amazed the horses. At last, the horses parted, and Gulliver accompanied the first, a
Dapple grey.
Chapter Two
After walking for about three miles, Gulliver and the horse came to a kind of long building
made of straw and timber. Gulliver now began to feel a little comforted and began to take out
the toys and trinkets, such as travellers carry, as peace-offerings to whoever lived in that
building. The horse neighed with authority to three horses and two mares in a large room
with a smooth clay floor. Gulliver was to wait in the second room, where he again got ready
his trinkets for the master of the house. He heard the horses conversing in the next room.
Gulliver feared his mind was disturbed by his sufferings and misfortune. He pinched himself
to test whether he was dreaming and waited to be taken to the master of the house. Instead, he
was introduced to a lovely mare, a colt, and a foal sitting on well-made straw mats in a third
room. Gulliver was again examined, again heard the word Yahoo several times, and was then
taken outside to be compared with one of the filthy animals he had first met in that land.
Gulliver was absolutely horrified to notice in that abominable brute, a perfect human
figure - with the face flat and broad, the nose depressed, the lips large and the mouth wide.
Gulliver also noticed that the forefeet of the Yahoo differed from his hands in nothing else
but the length of the nails, the coarseness and the brownness of the palms, and hairiness on
the backs. There was the same resemblance between their feet, with the same difference
which only Gulliver knew because he was wearing shoes and stockings. To the eyes of the
horses, Gulliver’s clothes made his body unlike that of the beasts. The horses had no
conception that Gulliver was wearing clothes which were detachable from his body. The
horses offered their food to Gulliver, but he turned from it with loathing. He was offered a piece of root, a piece of ass’s flesh, hay and oats but Gulliver could eat none of those things.
He began to fear that he was doomed to starve to death if he did not get to meet some of his
own species. The master horse noticed that Gulliver simply detested the Yahoo and that he
badly needed food, but Gulliver did not know how to tell him what kind of food he could eat.
At that point Gulliver noticed a cow passing by and he pointed to her and expressed a desire
to go and milk her. At this he was led into the house where there was a large store of milk.
Gulliver was offered a large bowl of clean and cool milk which made him feel quite
refreshed.
An old horse, drawn in a sledge by four Yahoos arrived for dinner, during which
Gulliver was discussed. Gulliver’s gloves perplexed the old horse who was very pleased
when Gulliver took them off. Pleased with his conduct, the horses taught him several new
words. He also got their permission to make barley bread which he ate with milk, herbs and
butter. He occasionally had rabbit or a bird. All this kept Gulliver in excellent health during
his three years among the horses. He slept in a separate building between the house and the
Yahoos’ stable.
Critical Comments
1. Gulliver asserts that he was a great lover of mankind, but he found the Yahoos, who
had a close resemblance to man, absolutely detestable. The point is that Gulliver is
beginning to think of man and Yahoo as belonging to the same species.
Chapter Three
Gulliver’s principal endeavour was to learn the Houyhnhnm tongue, which he thought was
very much like high Dutch or German. The master horse was convinced that Gulliver was a
Yahoo, but he was perplexed at his un-Yahoo-like qualities; his teachableness, civility,
cleanliness, and clothes. At the end of three months, Gulliver could begin to satisfy the
Houyhnhnm’s curiosity, but the master first doubted Gulliver’s story, sure that he must be
saying “the thing that was not,” in telling of people across the sea, and of wooden vessels
controlled by brute Yahoos.
The word Houyhnhnm means a horse and in its etymology, “the perfection of nature.”
All the Houyhnhnms of the neighbourhood came to see Gulliver, the wonderful Yahoo,
conversed with him and helped Gulliver so much that in five months he was able to master
their tongue. They could not think of him to be a Yahoo because of his clothes and some
other minor differences from the beasts. Gulliver took all possible care to never allow himself
to be seen without his clothes. But the secret of Gulliver’s clothes was discovered one morning when a servant horse happened to see him sleeping without them. The master
Houyhnhnm could not understand why anyone should hide some parts of the body that nature
had given; nevertheless, he allowed Gulliver to remain partly dressed while being examined
again. To him, Gulliver appeared a perfect Yahoo despite his smooth skin, the absence of hair
on his body or of long claws and his habit of walking upright on his hind legs. But the main
difference was his capacity for speech and reason. Gulliver begged the master not to call him
a Yahoo.
As the horse continued to doubt his story, Gulliver at last extracted a promise that he
would not be offended. Then he informed the horse that in all other known countries, men
like Gulliver are the presiding rational creatures and horses are brute animals; that Gulliver
had been as surprised to find rational and ruling horses as the Houyhnhnms had been to find a
rational Yahoo; and that if Gulliver ever told his own kind about the rational horses and their
control over a country, he would be accused of “saying the thing that was not.”
Critical Comments
The Houyhnhnms are ruled completely by reason and since lying is against the reasonable
and natural purpose of speech, they have no such word as ‘lying.’ They have no need of such
a word - hence the only expression that they have for lying is “the thing that was not.” That
reason has its limitations is proved by the fact that they cannot grasp conceptions outside
their own confined experience: countries other than their own, countries where horses do not
rule, and where there are ships that are managed and navigated by Yahoos.
Chapter Four
The horse was deeply distressed by Gulliver’s information. Being unused to doubting or not
believing, he did not know how to behave when doubts occurred; and he could not
understand Gulliver’s explanation of how men lie and misrepresent. On being questioned and
commanded by the master horse, Gulliver had no choice but to describe the care, the uses,
and abuses of horses in England. The master was quite upset to hear some parts of Gulliver’s
information; for example, to hear that the English horses were beaten, castrated, and trained
to serve the Yahoos, or that the Yahoos ride upon the backs of the horses. After some
expressions of indignation, the master wondered how a Yahoo dared to ride upon a
Houyhnhnm’s back for he was sure that the weakest servant in his house would be able to
shake off the strongest Yahoo. Nevertheless, the master found Gulliver different from the
Yahoos of Houyhnhnm land. Gulliver was cleaner and less deformed but had fewer real
advantages than the Yahoos. His nails were of no use, and his forefeet were of no use for
walking. Using only two feet for walking, he was always insecure while walking; his face was flat; the position of his eyes forced him to turn his head to see to the sides, and he could
not feed himself without using his forefoot.
Gulliver’s account of his voyage to the country of horses also greatly puzzled the
Houyhnhnm, especially the part that explained why pirates dared not return to their native
land. Neither could he understand why men committed evil acts like treason, murder, theft,
rape, sodomy, perjury, forgery, poisoning, and robbery. Gulliver’s explanation of these
crimes makes the horse lift his eyes with amazement and indignation, “like one whose
imagination was struck with something never seen or heard of before.”
Critical Comments
The Houyhnhnms are ruled by reason. They show very little passion; a little indignation here
and there, but never lust, envy, or anger in the violent sense; or covetousness and other vices
inspired by passion, by which men are carried away. Thus, the Houyhnhnm master cannot
understand man’s habit of lying, a vice which comes from passions. To him, lying is a
violation of the natural function of speech. Whatever is rational will be done easily and as a
matter of course by the creature ruled by reason.
Chapter Five
The Houyhnhnm master wished to hear from Gulliver an account of English history after
Gulliver had told him whatever he could about trade and industry, arts, and sciences in his
country. So, at his master’s command, Gulliver related to him the revolution under the Prince
of Orange: the long war with France, which was entered into by the said Prince, and renewed
by his successor, the present Queen. Giving a detailed account of the war, Gulliver informed
that several great countries of Europe were involved in it, that millions of people had been
killed by it, hundreds of cities had been captured and hundreds of ships had been sunk. On
being asked by the master, what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go
to war with another, Gulliver answered that these were innumerable: princely ambition for
wider power, corruption of ministers, religious disagreements, anticipation of attack from
another country, rivalry between neighbouring countries over some piece of territory,
opportunity to seize a country after having been called in to help defend it; and so many
others. Some beggarly princes of Europe also hired out their citizens to serve other princes
for large personal profits. Gulliver explained what a soldier was; a Yahoo hired to kill in cold
blood as many of his own species, who had never done anything to harm him, as he possibly
could.Upon hearing this account, the master’s comment was that the account of war had
very satisfactorily put before him the effects of that reason Gulliver’s race pretended to have.
But, still unaware of the artificial means by which wars were carried on, he found comfort in
thinking that nature had left men utterly incapable of doing much mischief for, he said, with
their mouths lying flat with their faces, they could hardly bite each other to cause deep injury.
Then as to the claws on their feet, before and behind, they were so short and tender that one
of his Yahoos could chase away dozens of Gulliver’s species before him. And, therefore, the
master concluded, Gulliver had lied to him about the numbers of those who had been killed in
the battles.
Gulliver, on his part, continued to educate the horse about man’s use of weapons. He
said man does not fight with his natural weapons nor is he satisfied with merely winning his
point, and so he told the master about firearms and swords: bayonets, bombardments, and
about the corrupting and dehumanizing effects of wars. The Houyhnhnm stopped him, afraid
that simply by hearing such things he would grow accustomed to them and become
corrupted.
Gulliver had told the master that some sailors left their country for the fear of laws.
He had explained the meaning of the word, but the master was puzzled over how a law,
framed to preserve everyone, could harm anyone. For the master, reason and nature were
sufficient to guide a rational animal, he therefore became curious about such terms as laws
and lawyers. Gulliver explained to him that lawyers were a kind of people who were brought
up from their youth in the art of proving, by words invented for that purpose; that “white was
black and black was white,” according to what they were paid to do. If a lawyer were to use
or devise words to uphold truth and justice, he would be a miserable failure, because this was
an animal who was from his very cradle trained to defend falsehood. Since lawyers also
enforce a rule that what has been done before may be done again, they carefully preserve
records of court action against justice and reason, so that such actions may be urged as
reasons for doing them again. The judges too favour the worst kind of precedents in their
decisions. Lawyers have a jargon of their own and keep on multiplying laws in this jargon, by
which the very essence of truth and falsehood is wholly confounded, and it takes thirty years
to decide a case. Gulliver concludes that lawyers are far from the brilliant creatures one might
suppose them to be, that they are in fact the most ignorant and stupid people in England.
Critical Comments
1. Dealing with the religious causes of wars, Swift ridicules the controversy over
Christ’s real presence in the consecrated objects, the controversy whether bread be flesh or wine be blood. This is Swift’s objectivity and a satirical comment on man’s
deformity which allows him to shed blood, even in the name of God.
2. What Gulliver says in this chapter shows that his attitude towards his own country is
no longer indulgent. He freely talks about the corruption in various parts of English
life; be it foreign policy, law courts or army action. He has lived long enough in the
land of the Houyhnhnms to be affected by their honesty and reason.
Chapter Six
On hearing from Gulliver, the tales of evil and injustice prevailing at the law courts in his
country, the Houyhnhnm master was wholly at a loss as to what could be the incentive for the
lawyers as to want to injure their fellow animals and what was meant by the word hire. At
this, Gulliver tried to explain to the master the use of money and how its possession permitted
an English Yahoo to obtain whatever he wanted - the choicest clothing, land, food, and
females. This power of money made the Yahoos accumulate as much of it as possible.
Indeed, they thought they could never have enough of it to spend or to save. Money was
power but the number of people who had it was small - one to a thousand and these thousands
laboured to generate money for the rich and yet themselves lived in misery and poverty. This
phenomenon was again incomprehensible to the master who believed that all animals had a
right to their share of the earth’s products. Gulliver’s description of trade: that “this whole
globe of earth must be at least three times gone round, before one of our better female
Yahoos could get her breakfast, or a cup to put it in,” referred to the English practice of
selling to countries all over the earth, its surplus food in exchange for items of luxury, which
brought diseases, folly, and vice.
Speaking of diseases and physicians, Gulliver explained the physical evils that follow
unwise eating and drinking. Being a physician, Gulliver says that since the basic cause of
disease is repletion (over-fulness) the first remedy is, therefore, evacuation - either upwards
or downwards. The English physicians, Gulliver said, were very skilled at prognosticating
death which they could not always bring about although they could not always keep it away.
They were very useful to those who wished to be rid of their mates, to eldest sons, to
government ministers and to princes. That Gulliver was being ironical, was evident.
Next, Gulliver described to the master, the nature of the English government and of
the English constitution. He began by speaking about the position of a first or Chief Minister
of state and said that this was a creature who had no other passion, except a violent desire for
wealth, power, and titles. This was Gulliver’s portrait of a politician. To secure the office of the chief minister, all kinds of means - murder, betrayal, hypocrisy - were used and were
justified.
The chief minister’s power is perpetuated by wholesale bribery, and his house is the
breeding ground for future chief ministers, pages, lackeys, and porters. They all learn, by
imitation; insolence, lying, and bribery. The first ministers are usually ruled by some
“decayed wench or footman,” who is the true ruler of the country and the channel of all
favours.
Being impressed by several qualities of Gulliver’s personality and intelligence, the
Houyhnhnm supposed him to from a noble family in his own country. Gulliver corrected the
horse’s notions of nobility which, in England, meant being bred in idleness and luxury; noble
blood is commonly known by a sickly appearance as a healthy nobleman is suspected to have
been fathered by a coachman or a groom. The minds of the nobility matched their feeble
bodies. But ironically the assembly of nobles is the court of highest appeal in England, and no
law could be enacted without its consent.
Chapter Seven
Gulliver explained why he could give an honest account of his own species among the
Houyhnhnms, who were naturally disposed to think the worst of mankind. The virtues of the
horses, contrasted with the corruption of mankind, had opened his eyes and sharpened his
understanding. He now saw man’s actions and passions in a new light and found man’s
honour unworthy and incapable of defence before the sharply intelligent Houyhnhnms.
Gulliver also decided never to go back to his kind but to live and die surrounded by the noble
horses.
The master Houyhnhnm concluded, after seriously considering Gulliver’s story, that
Gulliver’s people were animals who, having received a small pittance of reason, used it only
to increase their natural corruptions. They had cast away their natural advantages and lived a
totally artificial existence. Even Gulliver, he now decided, was inferior to the Yahoo in
natural strength, speed, agility, and other qualities, but in mental disposition his kind was
very much like the Yahoos who hated each other more than they did any other species. The
reason was not, as he had earlier thought it to be, the odiousness of their shapes, but like
Gulliver’s kind, they detested each other and all because each one wanted to “have all to
itself.” He described how the Yahoos would fight over food articles or shining stones that
they loved, though, because they lacked the weapons of the Europeans, they seldom killed
one another. The master told Gulliver that the most odious thing about the Yahoos was their
gluttony. They ate everything that came their way, and they enjoyed eating it more if they had got it through stealing or plunder. The Yahoos, Gulliver observed, were the only animals in
the country subject to any diseases, owing to their haste and greed. Of the European man’s
learning, government, arts, and industry, the Houyhnhnms found no parallel among the
Yahoos; unless it was the possession, by the ruling Yahoo, of a favourite whose office was to
lick his master’s feet and posteriors and drive the females to his kennel. The favourite, hated
by the whole herd, held office till a worse could be found and when he lost favour, was
covered entirely by the excrement of all the other Yahoos.
Critical Comments
In both the account of the first minister as well as of the toady, Swift attacks Robert Walpole.
Chapter Eight
Having a great desire to observe and study the nature of the Yahoos, Gulliver received
permission to walk among them, accompanied by a strong servant horse. He found them to be
the most unteachable of all animals. They were very nimble, but they were fit only to draw or
carry burdens, which is why the Houyhnhnms employed them as servants to draw their carts
and sledges. The Yahoos could swim like frogs from their infancy but generally their biggest
defect was their restive disposition. They were cunning, malicious, and revengeful. They
were strong and hardy but of a cowardly spirit and, by consequence, insolent, abject and
cruel. Gulliver had a horrible experience when a young Yahoo female leapt into the stream
where Gulliver was bathing and embraced him violently and let go her hold only with the
greatest reluctance when the horse escorting him came to his rescue. The horses were greatly
amused by the incident. Gulliver suffered horrible mortification for he feared now that he was
a real Yahoo too, since the female showed a natural inclination for him.
By sheer contrast to the Yahoos, the principal effort among the Houyhnhnms was to
cultivate reason. They had no idea what evil in a rational creature could be. For them, truth
was instantly and clearly obvious and so they had no conception of the meaning of opinion,
nor could they argue the plausibility of two sides of a case. The master horse laughed when
Gulliver presented to him several systems of European philosophy. There was one truth,
everything else was conjecture, the master believed. Friendship and Benevolence were the
two principal virtues among the Houyhnhnms, equally extended to a friend and a stranger.
They practiced decency and civility and did not care much for ceremony. They treated their
neighbour’s colts with the same affection that they had for their own. Nature, they believed,
taught them to love the whole species unless reason made a distinction of persons where there
was a superior degree of virtue. They produced two colts to a family. The servant class were
allowed to produce three children of each sex, to ensure a sufficient number of domestics for noble families. Their marriages were arranged very reasonably, with a care to choose colours
that would mix well. They had no ideas - nor words for love, courtship, presents, and
marriage settlements, but marriage they regarded as a necessity imposed by reason and
undertaken because family and friends approved of it. Among them marriage was never
violated, though each partner bore the same friendship and benevolence towards the others as
he did towards all the Houyhnhnms.
Young Houyhnhnms, both male and female, were taught lessons in “Temperance,
industry, exercise, and cleanliness.” Gulliver’s master thought it monstrous that English
females should receive a different kind of education from males and that too in nothing
except in some skills in domestic management; whereby, he observed, one half of their
natives were good for nothing but bringing children into the world and to trust the care of
their children to such useless animals he said was yet a greater instance of brutality.
The Houyhnhnms were very methodical not only about the education of their youth,
but also about managing their administration. Every fourth year, a representative council of
the country met to consider the problems of the land and remedy them.
Critical Comments
The Houyhnhnm’s life is appropriate for animals, for they lack man’s complexity. Therefore,
they cannot be taken literally as suggesting how man should live. But Houyhnhnms do stand
for reason or rationality, a capacity to think, to distinguish good from bad and this rational
faculty is supposed to distinguish man from beasts, same as it separates the Houyhnhnms
from the Yahoos. Swift seems to be saying that if man were rational, if he could truly be
ruled by reason, he would live as do the noble horses. The presentation of Houyhnhnm life
seems to be exhorting man to do some introspection, self-examination, self-judgment, and to
recognize the need for reform.
Chapter Nine
Just three months before Gulliver’s departure from the Houyhnhnm’s land, a great council of
horses gathered to debate the only great question they ever debated, whether and how to
exterminate the Yahoos. Having taken the tip from Gulliver’s account of how the horses were
tamed in England by castration, the master Houyhnhnm suggested that young Yahoos be
castrated so that after a generation or two they would cease to exist. He also suggested that
asses should be trained to carry out small services.
The Houyhnhnms have no letters, so all their knowledge is traditional, that is passed
orally from generation to generation. They had no history; no international or commercial relations, and the people were reasonable and orderly. They had no diseases and no
physicians, but they had effective herbs for dressing ordinary cuts and bruises. They
measured the year by the sun and the moon; knew of eclipses but knew little about
astronomy. In poetry, they excelled all other mortals according to Gulliver’s judgement.
Their buildings were rude and simple, being made of straw with their forefeet. They were
remarkably skillful at even such a minute task as threading a needle.
The Houyhnhnms died only of old age, and they died reasonably, that is without joy
or grief on their own part or of their relative’s. They normally lived to the age of seventy or
seventy-five. A few weeks before its death, the aged horse met his friends and relatives to
take a last farewell. The only term the Houyhnhnms had to devote deficiency was the word
Yahoo - which they added to the name of the defective thing.
Chapter Ten
Gulliver was beginning to feel quite comfortably settled in Houyhnhnm land, all his problems
of food, clothing, furniture and housing having been gradually solved, by his own efforts and
the friendly co-operation and support from the master. He enjoyed perfect health of body and
tranquillity of mind. He could breathe freely for he felt that at last his life was free from the
harassments and humiliations of a corrupt society: no treachery or inconsistency of a friend,
nor the injury of a secret or an open enemy. There was no occasion of bribing, flattering, or
pimping to procure the favours of any great man or his minion. He needed no safeguard
against fraud or oppression and neither did he need a physician or a lawyer. He was happy
that he had the advantage of listening to noble horses. He found that the master understood
Yahoos better than Gulliver himself did; “he went through all our vices and follies” Gulliver
reported.
Gulliver unhesitatingly confessed that all the little knowledge he had of any value was
acquired by the lectures from his master and from the discourses of his friends: to which he
was prouder to have listened to, than he would have been to the greatest and the wisest
assembly in Europe. To put it briefly, he was quite happy and reconciled to his situation in
the land of the Houyhnhnms. When he thought of his family and his countrymen or of the
human race in general, he considered them as they really were; Yahoos in shape and
disposition, perhaps a little more civilized and qualified with the gift of speech; but making
no other use of reason than to improve and multiply those vices of which their brothers in that
country had only the share that nature allotted them. Gulliver was so enamoured of the
Houyhnhnms that he even began to imitate their gait and gesture.Suddenly, when Gulliver was thus settled to a happy, carefree life among his new
friends, he received an agonizing message: the Houyhnhnm assembly had decreed that he
must leave. The representatives had taken offense at the grey horse’s keeping a Yahoo as if
he were a Houyhnhnm. Gulliver’s master was distressed too for having to lose Gulliver, but
the neighbours’ pressure was too much for him to withstand. Gulliver was miserable but
agreed to leave. In six weeks, with the help of a servant horse, Gulliver constructed a canoe
covered with Yahoo skins and a sail of the same material. He stocked his boat with boiled
rabbit flesh and other provisions, kissed the master’s foot and sailed towards an island he
could see about five leagues away.
Critical Comments
The unfeeling decision of the horses shows how far pure reason can go in successfully
managing human life. Gulliver, on the contrary, felt disturbed at the prospect of having to
leave. Yet, since he had lived among the Houyhnhnms, he had the good sense to agree with
the wisdom and justice of their action as they saw it; that is, Gulliver could control his
feelings and impulses by his rationality. Gulliver had also achieved a measure of humility.
Chapter Eleven
After a tender parting from his Houyhnhnm friends, Gulliver thought out his plans. He hoped
to find an uninhabited island on which he could support his life. Returning to civilization,
with its corruptions and its incitements to viciousness, was an intolerable idea to him. On the
island on which he landed he was pursued by savages and wounded in the knee but when he
saw a ship, he tried to avoid it. He was found by a party of men who had come to the shore in
search of water. They spoke to him in Portuguese and wondered at his strange clothes.
Meanwhile, Gulliver trembled in fear and hatred. The Portuguese captain, a very courteous
and a generous person, spoke to Gulliver in a very kind and civil manner, but Gulliver was
only amazed to find such civility in a Yahoo and remained silent and sullen. He was, in fact,
ready to faint at the very smell of him and his men. At last Gulliver wanted to eat something
out of his own canoe: but the captain ordered for him a chicken and some good wine and then
directed that he be put to bed in a very clean cabin. After remaining in the cabin for some
time Gulliver stole out of it when he thought nobody was looking and tried to leap overboard
but was prevented and was chained to his cabin. The captain, Pedro de Mendez was so polite
and showed such a moving concern for him that at last Gulliver decided to treat him as a
creature having some little portion of reason.
Bound by an oath not to destroy himself, Gulliver spent most of the voyage to Lisbon
shut up in his cabin, away from the crew. He shunned wearing clothes touched by Yahoos and, in Lisbon, he had himself led to the highest room at the back of the house. After
listening to Gulliver’s story, the captain patiently tried to persuade Gulliver to accept his own
kind again, and at last Gulliver was induced to walk in the street with his nose stopped up
with cotton or tobacco to keep out the Yahoo smell. He was also persuaded to return home
where the sight of his family revolted him. He fainted when his wife embraced him. For a
year, he could not bear the presence of his family; “to this hour” he said, “they dare not
presume to touch my bread,” nor would he permit them to take him by the hand. For five
years, he lived in the stable, talked with horses and of all men welcomed only the groom -
because he smelled of horses.
Critical Comments
Gulliver’s mind is seriously unhinged. He suffers from what the Greeks called hubris,
arrogance and excessive pride characterized by a man stepping out of his proper place in the
world. Gulliver’s position is that of a man, but he acts as though he were a Houyhnhnm or a
god - immeasurably above his own kind. The paradox about Gulliver’s life or situation is
that, in his complacently stupid pride, he violently denounces all men’s pride except his own.
He is arrogant with Captain Mendez. He reports that with the passage of time his terror of
men gradually lessened but his hatred and contempt increased. Even for his own family he
has nothing but hatred and contempt. His memory is “perpetually filled with virtues and ideas
of those exalted Houyhnhnms.” His pursuit of reason and virtues, divorced from feeling and
emotion, has resulted in madness and so he lives with horses and shuns his family.
Had Swift meant us to take seriously Gulliver’s “antipathy to humankind” he would
have made the captain, Don Pedro an unmistakable Yahoo. His emphasis on Don Pedro’s
virtues is clear indication that he wanted us to think of Gulliver, at this final stage, as a person
so infatuated with a false or one-sided theory of human nature that he is blind to any fact
which contradicts it.
This conclusion of Gulliver’s story in fact saves Swift from the old charge of morbid
misanthropy at the expense of the hero, who now becomes the vehicle of an argument which
does discourage us from thinking well of our fellow men but which, in its ultimate point, is
reassuring as to the capacity of at least some human beings for rising far above the Yahoo
level. Gulliver’s mind is infected by the complacency and pride of the Houyhnhnms, their
sense of superiority to the Yahoos, otherwise Gulliver was a good man. He had to be one to
be able to recognize and admire “virtue and ideas” superior to his.
The last voyage of Gulliver needs to be given, not the moral emphasis that it was
given in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, but it needs to be given intellectual emphasis.Gulliver’s reaction to mankind on his return is extravagant and violent, but it serves Swift’s
avowed end of vexing the world by shocking it violently, but wittily, out of its complacency
with itself; and it does this perfectly. Moreover, we must avoid, while reading Gulliver’s
Travels, identifying Swift with Gulliver.
Chapter Twelve
While taking leave of the reader, Gulliver insists on having been absolutely truthful in what
he had recorded, simply because his purpose was to inform, not to amuse. A traveller’s chief
purpose, he said, should be to make men wiser, not dazzle them with wonders and he wished
there were a law making it compulsory for the travellers to publish what is true. Particularly
after the Houyhnhnm experience, he could not be induced to write anything that was not
absolutely true. When Gulliver wrote the account of his voyages his sole intention had been
the public good. That intention is proved by his presentation of the virtues of the noble
Houyhnhnms, which will necessarily shame men in their vices. At this point, Gulliver
reminds us of the morality and wisdom of the Brobdingnagians, a different but noble model
for our conduct and institutions. The Brobdingnagians are real men, with passions like ours
but unlike the horses, they are models possible to imitate. It is Swift’s way of urging man to
be big; to think and to act like a giant, not like Lilliputians or Yahoos, nor should he madly
try to think of himself as a Houyhnhnm.
Gulliver goes on to claim that what he wrote was without passion, prejudice, or illwill. It was solely for the information and instruction of mankind. Gulliver justifies his not
registering the countries he discovered for the crown of Great Britain by saying that Lilliput
is not worth subjugating and that other lands would be too dangerous to attack. He rather
wished that the Houyhnhnms sent out missionaries to civilize Europe by teaching it their
virtues. Besides he has had visions of the brutality and injustice by which new dominions are
acquired and modern colonies set up. England, of course, was innocent of all such barbarity.
(Swift/Gulliver is obviously being ironical here.)
Gulliver had come back to humanity, but he could not still bear their smell. Making a
strong statement he says; “I am not in the least provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gangster, a politician, a whore-monger, a physician . . . or
the like: this is all according to the due course of things: but when I behold a lump of
deformity and diseases, both of body, and mind, smitten with pride it immediately breaks all
the measures of my patience; neither shall I be ever able to comprehend how such an animal
and such a vice could tally together.” In his humility, Gulliver entreated those who had “any
tincture of this absurd vice” not to “presume to appear” in his sight Swift’s message is unmistakable. The worst vice or fault in man is pride. Gulliver
becomes a living example of what this vice can do to a man; alienate him and render him
ridiculous.
Check Your Progress
1. Write a brief note on the Houyhnhnms’ customs and traditions.
2. What observation does the Houyhnhnm master make about humans, after
listening to Gulliver’s account of the laws and institutions of England?
3. Why is Gulliver asked to leave Houyhnhnm land?
4. Describe Gulliver’s behaviour towards his family after returning home.
NARRATIVE STYLE IN GULLIVER’S TRAVELS
Swift’s most famous and most popular book was published anonymously at the end of
October 1726. It belongs to the years of his maturity and disillusionment. Its full title at the
time of its first publication was, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel
Gulliver, first a Surgeon, and then a captain of several ships. Gulliver’s Travels is perhaps
the only major work in all English literature that has continuously led a double life: the book
has been, from its first appearance, successful with children as well as with their elders,
“from the cabinet council to the nursery,” as Pope and Gray wrote to Swift. For children the
book is a collection of marvellous adventure stories, while for the elders the same stories are
pungent critiques of humanity, addressed to their mature imagination. The book is an
incredible amalgam of pleasantly exciting explorer’s tales and the disturbing satire behind it;
the child can rarely see behind the exciting facade and the adult reader can never cease seeing
what lurks behind it, however inconspicuously. These opposite readings of the book are
possible because there are times when Swift is entirely concerned with the façade - with the
elaboration of the details of the story for its own sake, for instance, in the military drill in
Book I, chapter 3, and the description of the floating island in Book III, chapter 3. The
presence of such passages allows the young reader to take the whole story at the simplest
level of meaning. Moreover, throughout Books I and II, there is the fascinating change of
perspective - from very small to very big. In Books III and IV the superficial charm is that of
the ‘Wonders of Science,’ mysterious phenomena and strangely shaped creatures. All this gives zest to the narrative without in any way coming in the way of its philosophical
interpretation.
Gulliver’s Travels has survived, in fact, grown in importance over almost three
centuries. There are several reasons for this. First, a careful reading of the text shows that
Swift is not casual about his material; rather he treats it with utmost seriousness. He makes
the narrator, Gulliver, an earnest, solid, trustworthy traveller, who is scrupulously careful in
reporting exactly what happened; he is far from being flippant or having the selfconsciousness of one who is engaged in an elaborate hoax. Swift takes great pains to invent a
multitude of such concrete facts that an honest voyager would record in his diary. Swift’s
technique of circumstantial realism makes the voyager’s record perfectly reliable.
Secondly, Swift is extremely diligent in establishing the inner consistency of the
strange worlds which Gulliver discovers: all aspects of life in Lilliput, Brobdingnag, and
Houyhnhnm Land are carefully worked out according to scale and pattern. For instance,
Lilliputians are six inches tall, and the same scale is maintained for everything and every
creature in their land. The same is true about the Land of the Brobdingnagians, whose
inhabitants are ten times the size of man. This gives order to something that lies outside our
usual sense of order; this combines the rational and the fantastic in such a way that it both
astonishes and convinces. This is superrealism. Thirdly and lastly, the most impressive
quality of the book is its narrative manner. Gulliver discovers all kinds of strange lands and
their strange inhabitants but never shows any amazement; he accepts their actuality. This is
reflected in his calm plainness of style - his simple vocabulary and orderly, simple sentences.
The ironic discrepancy between the matter-of-fact plain style and the deeper levels of
meaning of the story is one of the sources of the pleasure of reading this book.
It can perhaps be said that Gulliver’s simplicity, that is the simplicity of the character
who is created by Swift to narrate the fantastic discoveries, makes it a tale not for children but
for the perceptive reader, who is aware of the symbolic dimension of the narrative. The same
simplicity of style reveals Swift’s deadpan subtlety; a source of ambiguity and irony. For
instance, Gulliver tells us that Lilliputians cannot approach him “without license from court,
whereby the secretaries of State got considerable fees.” What Gulliver says, on one simple
plane, means that he was a very popular side show but what Swift actually means to tell us is
about the various ways in which the secretaries of state acquired their wealth. Gulliver
records that the giant farmer’s wife, on seeing him, “screamed and ran back, as women in
England do at the sight of a toad or a spider.” From Gulliver, this is a simple image supplied
by his memory; from Swift, it is an ironic comment on the smallness of Gulliver and hence of
humanity generally, and on the amusing timidity of women. Gulliver naively admires the destructiveness of modern weapons of warfare; the naive admiration of his narrator is Swift’s
ironic comment on the hollow and sinister achievements of civilization. Its only occasionally
that Swift forgets his role as an uninvolved creator and of Gulliver as an ordinary English
sailor and uses, for both of them, a single voice railing not only directly but violently against
the state of affairs in Europe. This happens most frequently in Book III, in which Swift fails
to keep Gulliver’s usual character as a mild, factual, patriotic, middle class-Englishman.
Gulliver’s Travels is a fabulous entertainer and, at the same time, a bitter criticism of
society. It has been interpreted to be hitting at a number of contemporary characters and
events; Lilliput is England, Blefuscu is France, Flimnap is Sir Robert Walpole; the leader of
the Whig party and the Secretary of War, from 1708-10, and so on. The historical references
and commentary on them are only a minor achievement of the book. Its real achievement and
its universality of appeal lies in the use of the method of fantasy for a profound concern: on
human nature, as it may be observed at all times and places. The littleness of the Lilliputians
symbolizes the moral and spiritual pettiness of which humanity is capable - its jealousy,
malice, infidelity, ingratitude, its lust for power and, above all, its hatred of greatness; and
conversely, its worship of mediocrity and pettiness. The hugeness of the Brobdingnagians is a
symbol of large-mindedness; so that, from their point of view, Gulliver’s normal humanity
seems, in both size and character, to be something vicious. In Book III, various symbolic
devices are used to suggest the unsocial behaviour, unimaginativeness, and pedantry of
various scientists and scholars. And in the final section of this book, is suggested the
fundamental error of human beings who want to live forever.
Swift is a strong critic of human folly, as is evident in the early books, but it needs to
be strongly emphasized that he is not a mere cynic, for he is as aware of moral potentiality as
of failure. His central theme, indeed, is the dual nature of man: man’s capacity for both good
and evil, and man’s potentiality for being both an angel and a beast. In Book I, for instance,
even the ordinary Englishman Gulliver, in contrast with the Lilliputians, comes to embody
the best human qualities and, in chapter 6, Swift paints a Utopian picture of certain aspects of
Lilliputian life. Similarly, the Brobdingnagians are both idealized and given human defects.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that Swift shows an uncompromising sense of man’s
potential for evil, and it has had the effect of making the readers overemphasize this part of
his world view. This has resulted in an unbalanced reading, especially of Book IV. Swift is
not just saying, as has often been thought, that mankind is only a tribe of Yahoos, that is
bestial creatures: rather, in creating Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, he is splitting man into certain
component elements - the animal and the rational. Yahoos are devoid of rationality and the
Houyhnhnms are rational beings, but their rationality is quite limited, dry, and devitalized; founded on the elimination of emotional aspects of life. Gulliver is so impressed by the
Houyhnhnms that he aspires to live by their rationality, stoicism and simple wisdom; and
being persuaded that he has attained them, he feeds his growing misanthropy on pride, which
alienates him not only from his remote kinsmen the Yahoos, but eventually from his brothers,
the human race. Deluded by his worship of pure reason, he commits the error of the
Houyhnhnms in equating human beings with the Yahoos. Captured by a Portuguese crew and
forced to return to humanity, he trembles with fear and hatred. The captain of the ship, like
Gulliver himself, shares the nature of the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos; and, like the Gulliver
of the first voyage, he is tolerant, sympathetic, kindly, patient, and charitable; but Gulliver
can no longer recognize these traits in a human being. With the myopic vision of the
Houyhnhnms, he perceives only the Yahoo and is repelled by Don Pedro’s clothes, food, and
odour. Gradually, however, he is nursed back to partial health, and is forced to admit that his
benefactor has a “very good human understanding.” Swift does not preach; he makes the
narrative conclusion of the last book itself point to the meaning of this brilliant travelogue.
Interestingly, the use of fantasy for serious statement has come back into vogue in our
times after having been eliminated by almost two centuries of emphasis upon social realism
that documents and catalogues.
IRONY, SATIRE, AND THE COMIC SPIRIT
Irony denotes a rhetorical figure and a manner of discourse in which, for the most part,
meaning is contrary to words. With its double-edginess, its contradiction between the
meaning and the words, irony becomes a very fine instrument for expressing the comic-spirit.
Irony, in fact, strikes a balance between the serious and the comic and springs from a
perception of the absurdity of life, its being both tragic and comic. According to one
definition, irony, in the widest sense, begins with the contemplation of the fate of the world,
where the artist becomes a kind of god, viewing creation with a detached ironical smile. The
human condition as such is, therefore, to be regarded as potentially absurd, deserving an
ironical response and treatment. An ironical response depends on the perception or awareness
of a discrepancy or incongruity between words and their meaning, or between actions and
their results or between appearance and reality. In all cases there may be an element of the
absurd and the paradoxical.
The two basic kinds of irony are verbal irony and irony of situation, also described as
structural irony. Verbal irony simply means saying what one does not mean. The literary
works that exhibit structural irony are not totally ironic. In such works, irony is not just an occasional verbal feature, but irony or duplicity of meaning is sustained by the very structure
and situation of the work. One common device of this sort of irony is the invention of a naive
hero or else a naive narrator or spokesman, whose simplicity makes him interpret situations
and actions in such a way that a perceptive reader would not accept his views literally or
uncritically. The hero/narrator of Gulliver’s Travels is an example. Gulliver is not Swift.
Gulliver is in fact a contrast to Swift and an instrument for projecting an ironical view of
human frailty, folly and vices.
Irony has several functions. It is often the witting and unwitting instrument of truth. It
chides, deflates, and scorns. It is not surprising, therefore, that irony is the most efficient
weapon of the satirist.
The satirist is made of sterner stuff. He is not contented with just eliciting an amused
smile at the absurdity of life or its policies. He is outspoken and hard hitting. He comes down
heavily on human follies. He censures, ridicules, and directly attacks and denounces the
follies and vices of society and thus brings contempt and derision upon aberrations from
moral and social norms. Satire is a kind of protest born out of anger and indignation and the
satirist is a kind of therapist whose function is to destroy the fundamental causes of sickness
of the human spirit, such as hypocrisy, pride, and greed. The satirist does not necessarily
confine himself to such moral disorders. Swift, for example, apart from attacking hypocrisy,
pride and cruelty, attacks lust for power and money. Gulliver’s Travels attacks corruption in
law courts, rivalry and intrigue in royal courts, incompetence of physicians, unjust economic
systems that perpetuate inequality, and irresponsible scientists.
Gulliver’s Travels is a bitter attack on Swift’s contemporary 18th century England
and, at the same time, an attack on mankind in general. The voyage to Lilliput is especially an
ingenious political satire of great interest and enjoyment for a student of 18th century history
of England. He can relate the events of the story to the actual historical controversies and
personalities of Swift’s time. But Gulliver’s Travels has a universal appeal. It’s a classic
because it exists outside space and time. It’s the story of man and has continued to be
enjoyable and relevant to a man who knows nothing about 18th century England. Human
nature is as corrupt today as it had been at the time when Gulliver’s Travels was written.
Gulliver’s Travels is a complex book. Its complexity lies not only in the multiple levels at
which it can be read but also in the variety of stylistic devices by which this complexity is
produced. It is a straight narrative, a comedy, a comic satire, a bitter satire, and there is the
double voice of irony. There are quick shifts in technique, and a variety of techniques interpenetrating with absolute ease and comfort The book opens with an apparently factual and straightforward narrative and we
readily accept Gulliver as a representative Englishman who falls into the hands of the little
men in the toy-kingdom of the Lilliputians. In passages of sheer comedy, we laugh at the
acrobatic skill of the politicians and courtiers, at the absurd jealousy of the diminutive
minister who suspects an adulterous relationship between his wife and the giant Gulliver. The
comedy turns into irony when we gradually realize that the six-inch midgets, in fact, are
ourselves and Gulliver is only an outsider, an observer. Irony is part of the entire structure of
the book, so that the deeper meaning is seen obliquely. Gulliver boasts about “our noble
country, the Mistress of Arts and Arms, the scourge of France” and at the same time he
betrays every available scandalous fact about the country he professes to love. Comedy turns
into comic satire in the passages concerning the High-Heels and Low-Heels, and the BigEndians and the Small-Endians. Gradually, with perfect ease and timing, we are led to see the
most evil and brutal aspect of humanity. The funny and the comical, with which the first book
opened, turns into contempt and derision as Swift shows the limits of the hypocrisy,
ingratitude, and treachery of the Lilliputian court. Gulliver, who has deserved the highest
gratitude from the Lilliputians is impeached for capital offenses; ironically, for making water
within the precincts of the burning royal palace, “under cover of extinguishing the fire” and
refusing to bring the empire of Blefuscu under the domination of Lilliput and put to death all
the Big-Endian exiles. The court’s debate on how to dispose of Gulliver turns into bitter
satire. In the Lilliputian episode, the object of satire is human pettiness, especially moral
pettiness and the triviality of the forms, titles, customs, and pretences by which men assert
their dignity and about which they carry on their quarrels. Characteristically, the vices
Gulliver meets with in this country are those of little men: pomposity, intrigue, and motive.
In Brobdingnag, we laugh at the plight of Gulliver, the “giant” of Lilliput. He is
frightened by a puppy, rendered ludicrous by the tricks of a monkey, stands in awe of a
dwarf, embarrassed by the lewd antics of the maids of honour and contented to be fondled
and nursed by a little nine-year old girl. All this continues till Gulliver relates to the King the
history of England and recommends to him the use of gunpowder. The King becomes the
spokesman for Swift when he makes a scathing comment on the Europeans “as the most
pernicious race of little vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the face of the earth.”
The King has nothing but contempt for the destructive and utterly cruel ways of men.
Gulliver is all disapproval for the King’s refusal to use gunpowder. He dismisses it as “a nice
unnecessary scruple” and a sign of backwardness. We have no doubt about who is on the side
of the good and of the evil. We also know that Swift’s opinion is quite opposite to Gulliver’s and that the irony lies in Gulliver, the hero, being quite naive and absolutely wrong. He is
small, petty, and stupid in his thinking as well as in his physical appearance.
To take another example of the quick transition from one technique to another in
Gulliver’s Travels we consider some episodes from Book III. The professors at Balnibarbi are
presented as progressive scientists, but we quickly find that they are devoid of commonsense, and that unless we want to approve of such extravagant projects, such as “softening
marble for pincushions,” we have to dismiss them entirely. Significantly, the people at work
in it are described as ‘projectors,’ that is, people not engaged in disinterested research but are
merely on the look-out for gadgets which will save labour and bring in money. As we move
on to the School of Political Projectors, we are told that Gulliver was ill-entertained there and
the professors appeared to him “wholly out of their senses” and bitter satire takes over from
this point. Swift tells us that these unhappy people were following, “wild, impossible
chimeras.” They were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favourites
“upon the score of their wisdom, capacity and virtue . . . of rewarding merit, great abilities
and eminent services.” The remedies suggested for curing people of corrupt ways are highly
comical. But they make you laugh and cry at the same time, because here only the surface is
comical. At its centre is tragedy, transformed through style and tone into icy irony. Those
who try to devise means of correcting mankind are busy in the pursuit of chimeras because
human nature is beyond correction. Gulliver’s Travels shows the dark and the grim truth
about man. Irony and humour make this truth palatable.
