Sunday 7 November 2021

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS – JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)

 

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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