When can political satire be really engaging? Well, when it is put into a fantastically adept story! In Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, a young sailor named Gulliver goes on many adventures across the ocean. He visits a plethora of strange countries dominated by some silly societies. Along the way, he learns about certain ironies that mirror his own world. In this post, we are going to be looking at the four-part novel Gulliver’s Travels.

The Story Overview

The Lilliputians

Surgeon and sea captain Lemuel Gulliver survives a shipwreck and finds himself a captive of Lilliput, which has very small inhabitants that stand about about six inches in height. Gulliver learns all about their strange customs and the odd way they go about politics, including rope dancing and deciding one’s party affiliation based upon the type of shoes one wears. After defending the Lilliputions from an invading Blefuscu fleet, Gulliver turns down further military conquest. Oddly enough, Gulliver did not understand why they warred over how an egg should be cracked. So, Gulliver turns down the option to invade and enslave the Blefuscu nation. He flees from the Lilliputians and finds a human-sized boat that allows him to sail back to England.

The Brobdingnags

Venturing out once again as a ship’s surgeon, Gulliver finds himself in Brobdingnag, where there lives a race of giant people. After a giant discovers Gulliver, the massive people sell the young naive to the Queen of the Brobdingnags. Yet, he does well by impressing the court with his antics. However, after Gulliver describes his homeland, the king comes to the conclusion that England is a disgusting place to live filled with disgusting people. Moreover, the king of Brobdingnag becomes disturbed by Gulliver after he claims to be able to make cannons and gunpowder because it would enable unnecessary violence. Later, while Gulliver looks out over the sea from his portable room, an eagle picks him up. The bird drops him into the sea where a ship spots him and rescues him, thus ending his second voyage.

Laputa

While on route to Levant, Pirates attack Gulliver’s ship, and they leave him in a small boat to survive on his own. Here, set adrift, Gulliver discovers Laputa. Strange people dominate this country that is a flying island. They have one eye looking inwards and one eye looking upwards. While they are excellent at science and math, they become sidetracked. What they lack is practical application of these skills. The Laputans also have flappers that have to keep them focused on the present.

Gulliver then travels to Lagado, the capital city of Balnibarbri and finds the people living in ruin—the reason for this is because the most learned of them use science for the most inane practical application. He then travels to Glubbdubdrib, and learns the real history of the world from conjured historians of his own civilization and then he travels to Luggnagg where he meets the Struldbrugs, who are people who have attained immortality but are despondent because they age as mortals, which adds a certain amount of distress to their lives. He leaves for England the way of Japan to end his third journey.

Houyhnhnms

For Gullivers fourth and final voyage, he travels to Houyhnhnm after pirates and a mutinous crew strand him once again. There, Yahoos discover him, and they attack him. After he is saved by a horse creature, a Houyhnhnm, he realizes that they are indeed very kind. The Yahoos, Gulliver finds, stand in contrast, as they are wanton degenerates. The Houyhnhnms act as the masters of the Yahoos, who do their bidding as a horse would in Gulliver’s world (pulling carriages, etc.).

The Houyhnhnms eventually discover that Gulliver must be a Yahoo because of how disgusting humans are and their similarities to the Yahoos. Gulliver is sent away, venturing home in a canoe and is again discovered by another ship. Having experienced a great deal of revelations and upset throughout his journeys, Gulliver realizes that he can’t stand to be around the Yahoos anymore. Instead, he finds them disgusting and instead chooses to buy and care for some horses. His new life away from grossly immoral human creatures ends the book.

Conclusion

Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels helped kick off the novel craze during the Neoclassical Era. It’s also a heavy satire piece that mocks customs, laws, knowledge, opinions, and culture. Each travel deals with a different part of society, from the inane arguments of politicians, to the way we as humans view ourselves in the scope of intellectual thought. It can be a vicious, pessimistic look at humanity, but it’s also very imaginative. In this way, Gulliver’s Travels remains an endearing classic that was contemporary then and is contemporary now.