GULLIVER’S TRAVELS –
JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)
Jonathan
Swift, one of the greatest satirists in English literature, was born in 1677,
in miserable circumstances. He lost his
father before his birth. His mother
lived with him in Swift’s uncle’s house for some time and left him. His uncle died in 1688. He was a homeless child and throughout his
life he remained a homeless man. But,
however, he had taken his M.A. degree.
Then he wrote the religious allegory, ‘A Tale of a Tub’ and ‘The Battle
of The Books’. Though he had dealt with
three women, he never married. Marriage,
according to him was opposed to reason.
He started his ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ in 1721. In the manner of writing sometimes he might
definitely be indebted to Defoe and his Robinson Crusoe. But, everything that makes ‘Gulliver’s
Travels’ immortal, has its source in Swift and swift alone. We meet Gulliver in this novel as an average
man of forty with a wife and two children.
He is a doctor by profession and a sailor by choice, with a typical
sailor’s spirit of adventure and curiosity to see new lands and strange
peoples. Capt. Gulliver’s travels that
cover his sixteen years and seven months period of faithful records begins with
a letter written by Gulliver’s cousin, Mr. Simpson, who has published the book.
Gulliver’s
first voyage started from Bristol on the 4th May1699 in
‘Antelope’. It was caught in a violent
storm. However, he swam as long as he
could and came to a dry land. When he
woke up, he tried to get up but found that his whole body was tied to the ground.
He was wonder struck to see human creatures less than six inches high with bows
and arrows in their hands. The Emperor
of Lilliputians and his court came to meet Gulliver. Everyone was frightened when Gulliver took out
of his pocket knife, but he only cut the threads and set him free. Everyone was then highly impressed by this
kind gesture. Three hundred tailors were
asked to prepare cloths for him. Six
hundred beds were brought and a bed was made to him. Six scholars were asked to teach him their
language. His majesty asked him to
submit to a thorough search. Then they
found Gulliver’s sword was of the length of five men. The comb appeared to them to be an engine
from the back of which were extended twenty long poles. They found in his pocket a huge silver chest
containing a dust which made them sneeze.
This was actually Gulliver’s snuff box.
Gulliver gradually gained the goodwill of the court and the people.
From Reldresal, the principal
secretary for private affairs he came to know about the two political parties
of Lilliput, namely the high heels and low heels. Apart from Lilliput there was another one
kingdom with the name Blefuscu. When a
war took place, Gulliver helped Lilliputians defeat Blefuscu. But he didn’t want to make all of them slaves
to Lilliputs when he was asked by the Emperor.
However, Gulliver stayed in Lilliput for nine months and thirteen
days. Many advised the Emperor to
dismiss Gulliver as he is very costly.
One night, the emperor’s palace was on fire. Gulliver urinated, on the spot and within
three minutes the fire was extinguished.
These all created problem. When
he was about to face a trial he escaped to Blefuscu. However, from there he started his journey in
a boat and was saved by a British ship and reached England.
After two
months he started again in ‘the Adventure’ in 1702. They had to stay a long period as the captain
fell ill. Then they started their
journey and were attacked by a terrible storm.
On 1703, they saw land. Gulliver
and a few others went to the island in a boat to collect water. His friends left him and escaped on being
chased by a huge giant. So, Gulliver was
left on the island. It was a strange
island where the grass grew twenty feet high; the corn grew forty feet
high. Then he saw a monster coming
towards him and caught hold of him between his fore finger and thumb. That monster spoke in such a loud voice that
Gulliver thought it was thunder. Then he
took him to his house. The dish of meat was
about twenty four feet in diameter. The
table was about thirty feet height. He
was attacked by huge rats when he was alone in the house. However, he took out his sword and ripped
open the belly of one of them. The Brobdingnag
farmer’s nine year old daughter Glumdalclitch was very kind to Gulliver. Then the Queen of Brobdingnag purchased
Gulliver for a thousand guineas. On the
request of Gulliver, Queen allowed Glumdalclitch to stay with him. The queen’s dwarf and the giant flies were
actually very troublesome to Gulliver.
He also had a miraculous escape from a monkey.
Gulliver made a comb and a chair with the Majesty’s hair. Gulliver described the fine climate of Briton and fertility of his soil. He talked about the House of Lords and house of commons; the incidents that happened during the previous hundred years. However, the king said that the history of Europe was only ‘a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacre, revolutions and punishments. One day Gulliver told the king that he could easily make gun powder to destroy all against him. However, the king was struck with horror at the thought of destruction which the guns could cause. He ordered Gulliver never to mention that subject anymore. However, after two years staying with Brobdingnags, one day when Gulliever was taken by a page in a box to the sea-shore, a giant kite picked the box in its beak and carried it away. However, it fell down from its beak and floated in the sea for some time, it was picked up by the Captain of a ship. He took Gulliver to England.
Though
Gulliver’s wife insisted him not to go to sea again, he left England in August
1706 in the ship ‘Hope-well’. When
Gulliver went in a loop to the neighboring islands of Tonquin, he was arrested
by some pirates. However, Gulliver was
put in a small canoe and left with a few days food. During the day time he suddenly felt that
there was an opaque body between himself and the Sun. When he saw through his binoculars he could
see that it was a vast building in the air in which people were moving up and
down. It was a flying island and the
people there let down a chain with a seat in it and he was pulled up with the
help of pulleys. The people looked very
strange. Their heads were all reclined
either to the right or to the left. They
were so lost in thinking. He came to
know that it was ‘Laputa’ meant ‘Flying Island’. The island moved from place to place
according to the orders of the king. It
stopped over cities to get food and drink or to get petitions from the
people. The flying island had a diameter
of about four miles and a half. It was a
huge magnet. One side of it was
attracted by the magnetism of the earth and the other side was repelled by it. By moving it on its axle the island could be
taken high up in the air up to four miles or brought down close to the
earth. It could also be made stationary
at a place a little above the earth.
There were special astronomers who operated this magnet at the direction
of the king.
Gulliver
spent two months in the flying island.
Then he was taken to a capital city called Lagado by Lord Munodi. There was a Grand Academy with five hundred
rooms. In one room for eight years a
project of extracting sun beams from cucumbers was going on. In another room a scientist was trying to
convert human excretion into the original food.
Another was at work trying to convert ice into gun powder. Another was trying to get thin thread from
cobwebs and he was feeding the spiders on coloured flies so that they might
produce coloured thread. Then Gulliver
visited Glubbdubdrib, the island of magicians.
The governor could call up any spirit of the dead and ask him to serve
him for 24 hours. Gulliver met the ghost
of Alexander the Great, Caesar and Pompey, Brutus, Socrates, Homer and
Aristotle. Then he met a few struldbruggs
or immortals. They were horrible to look
at with all the usual deformities of old age.
Then he began to feel that people should not be afraid of death but
should regard it as a welcome relief from the tortures of life. However, he sailed in a ship to Japan and
then to Amsterdam. From there he came to
England and joined his family.
After five
months, he accepted an offer and became Captain of ‘Adventure’. Some sailors created a mutiny in the ship and
turned pirates. They arrested Gulliver and
left him in an unknown island. There he
found a few cows but many horses. He
also found a few creatures looked like deformed human beings. Then a few horses came near him examined his
hat, coat, stockings and shoes. They uttered
sounds like Yahoo and Houyhnhnm. They
were pleased when Gulliver uttered those sounds. They took him to their homes. He got milk and oats. He started learning the language of those Houyhnhnms. The word Houyhnhnm signified a horse and
meant ‘The perfect of nature’. In five
months time Gulliver had a complete command over their language. Then Gulliver gave a complete description of
the actions of the people of England. As
they did not have words for government, war, law, crime and punishment, he
couldn’t describe them properly to them.
His master in whose house he stayed felt that nature and seasons were
sufficient guides for every reasonable animal.
The Houyhnhnms knew nothing about meat, wines and diseases. Gulliver told the master that human beings
got the hundreds of diseases due to their wrong living.
Gulliver
gave truthful replies to all the questions that his master asked about his
countrymen. Gulliver also described the
British Constitution. Persons who were
most cunning and most corrupted become ministers and governed the land. Fellows who formed factions and bribed the
voters became members of the House of Commons and made laws. These were confirmed by the lord that who was
bred from their childhood in idleness and so became diseased and corrupt. But the principal virtues of Houyhnhnms were
friendship and benevolence. They had no
jealousy, fondness, quarrel and discontent.
Thus Gulliver came to the conclusion that the Houyhnhnms were the most
perfect creatures on earth. He developed
a thorough hatred of all falsehood and other vices. He enjoyed perfect health of body and quality
of mind when he lived with the Houyhnhnms.
But a few Houyhnhnms objected Gulliver staying with them. So, his master reluctantly asked Gulliver to
go back to his country. He built a boat
and left. But he stayed in another
island and decided not to go to England.
But the Captain of a Portuguese ship took him in his ship. Gulliver reached home on 5th
Dec.1715. However, he lived in a
separate room for years and talked to the horses that he purchased, for four
hours daily for years.
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS – A
SATIRE
Jonathan
Swift’s satire is said to be a spontaneous overflow of powerful
indignation. His satire was highly
intellectual with his keen vision he saw the physical, intellectual and moral disease
of mankind. As he is a misanthrope in
all his satires man appears as an irrational, selfish and pervert creature,
ridden with dirt and all sorts of vice.
According to him man fell from his state of perfection as soon as Eve,
disobeying God, tasted the forbidden fruit and Adam broke the behest of the
Lord. Therefore man is not born
perfect. To him human history is not a
record of human progress but a human degeneration. His political satire is found in the first
two parts of Gulliver’s Travels where as his satire against science and
philosophy is found in the third book.
In the fourth book he satires against pride.
Gulliver
reaches the island Lilliput at the end of his first voyage. Lilliput was a small, but mighty empire ruled
over by a brave emperor. Its capital was
Milendo. The inhabitants of Lilliput
were pigmies under six inches of height.
Correspondingly all their things and belongings were small and tiny. The laws and customs in Lilliput were very
peculiar and bore no resemblance to those maintained in other countries. All crimes against the State were punished
with the utmost severity. The
description of the life style and social life of the Lilliputians is the most
interesting and entertaining part of Gulliver’s Travels. This is in sharp contrast with the country of
the giant humans, the Brobdingnags, as described in the second voyage of
Gulliver. The Brobdingnags were human
giants twelve times his size. The land
was situated in an unmapped region of North America. They were peasants holding huge reaping
hooks. Gulliver was taken to the house
of the master of some giant men. The
king had no regular palace. The natives
were very proficient in Mathematics, but they applied it wholly to the
improvement of agriculture and other mechanical arts useful in life. The laws of the land were a few and expressed
in the most plain and simple terms.
Gulliver appears as a weak and a hypocrite. He pretends to love his country but tells the
giant king in details about all the evils of the institutions in England. The giant king finally says, “I cannot but
conclude the bulk of your nation to be the most pernicious race of little
vermin”
The
political satire becomes very bitter when he came to the flying island on his
third voyage. In Laputa the main
interests of the people were mathematics and music. The grand academy of Lagado is a satire on
the royal society of England. The
scientists there were busy in absurd projects like attempts to extract sun
beams from cucumbers or make silk from cobwebs.
The astronomers of Laputa had catalogued ten thousand stars. Swift was not against science as such. He disliked scientists who were concerned
with pure abstractions. The scientists
must keep their feel on solid grounds. Then
he goes on to a satire on philosophers and historians. Finally he exposes the absurdity of our wish
for long life.
In the
fourth book, a satire is the only thing that matters and the story does not
matter at all. In Houyhnhnms land, the
yahoos have all the vice known to man and in addition, have lost our speech and
our cloths. They live as slaves under
the horses. They were mentally and
morally inferior to the horses. His very
concept of horses being superior to human beings shows the cynicism and
misanthropy. All the vices attributed to
the yahoos are precisely the vices afflicted mankind everywhere and in all
ages. The major portion of this chapter
is thus a satire on all mankind.
However, Gulliver was surprised to discover a much advanced sense of
reason, understanding and intelligence in the Houyhnhnms. The Houyhnhnms possessed many other
virtues. Their grand principles was to
cultivate reason and to be wholly governed by it. Friendship and benevolence were the two
principal virtues among Houyhnhnms. Thus,
in the fourth book of Gulliver’s Travels Swift shows man as much worse than
animals.
----Thulasidharan V
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