With the publication of “A Story of a Tub” (1704), “The Battle of the Books” (1704), Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and “A Modest Proposal” (1729), Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) presents himself as a bohemian who deals with politics, religion, society and ethics, all in a single world, sarcastically. He achieves with the publication of Gulliver’s Travels immense success – success of why he has created Lemuel Gulliver. Swift is resolute about his goal. Beginning with the first voyage in Lilliput up to the final voyage in Houyhnhnmland this quadruplet proves that Gulliver, the protagonist, continually but subconsciously fights against reality, tradition, phenomenon and himself – all under the mask of naivety. The afferent outcome is that Gulliver is garmented with inconsistency. This biting satire begins not with the voyage itself, but with a brief note – the antechamber – from the imaginary publisher Richard Sympson, who introduces Gulliver as an inhabitant of Nottinghampshire, “. . . where he now lives retired, yet in advantageous Esteem among his Neighbours” (VIII). Sympson says that Gulliver has shifted from Redriff to Newark, for he cannot endure people’s curiosity (VIII). His ancestral description is an attempt for authenticity. Swift uses this ploy for embedding the voyages in the readers’ mind.
At the beginning of the first voyage we come across a putative description of Gulliver’s background, which, by reverse computation, tells us that Gulliver was born in April 1661, and so obviously (as an embryo) he was made a being in 1660, the year of Restoration. Swift systematizes his Travels in such an articulating draw that almost all the dates, places, characters, or events – no matter how imaginary and trivial they are – find a firm basis in reality. Every moment of Gulliver is subject to some purposes. The birth-year of Gulliver is no less important than 1660, as Mukherjee says, “The Convention Parliament was dissolved in 1661 and was followed by the Cavalier Parliament . . . [which] . . . was Royalist in politics and strongly Anglican in religion. Its most important work was the settlement of the Church” (258-59). A Tory supporter and an Anglican, Swift intentionally wants his plaything to be born in this year. Again, Gulliver commences his first voyage in 1699, which commemorates the death of Sir William Temple, Swift’s patron.
Like “The Battle of the Books”, Gulliver’s Travels shows Swift’s interest for the ancients over the moderns. In the first voyage the moderns are embodied among the Lilliputians as they misinterpret the doctrine in the Brundrecal. Swift uses the terms “old-fashioned Constitution” (30) and “primitive Arrangement” (31) to save the originality of their political, religious and social ideology, and the term “exhibit Majesty’s Grandfather” (31) to confirm the degeneration of Lilliputian morality in every aspect of life. The next two voyages believe the same interest of Swift. Book II is an echo of Swift’s praise for the past. Brobdingnagian magnanimity widens further as Gulliver eyes the juxtaposition of the statues of the Gods and the former kings. Book III also shows the same motif when Gulliver visits Glubbdubdrib, where the dead souls are summoned at his question. Gulliver makes a decisive comparison between the ancient and the modern parliaments, “I desired that the Senate of Rome might appear before me in one colossal Chamber, and a modern Representative, in Counterview, in another. The first seemed to be an Assembly of Heroes and DemyGods; the other a Knot of Pedlars, Pick-pockets, Highwaymen and Bullies” (167). Eighteenth century English political ugliness, in this intention, becomes overt in Swift’s creation.
Gulliver, in a sense, becomes Swift’s puppet, and a mirror of his time. He feels chained and humiliated by the “invisible Silk” (38) of the Lilliputians, but fails to react accordingly. Even the alleged indictment of him about Flimnap’s wife fails to provoke a protest from Gulliver. This indictment has its relation in history, as Firth mentions, “This may be an ironical hit at Walpole, whose first wife, Catherine Shorter, was not above suspicion, while Walpole’s indifference to her levities was notorious” (78). Happenings like this are abundant in the opening voyage, where English politics, along with Irish and French intrigues are colossal in the guise of Lilliput, Blefuscu, the Kings, the Queens and other court people.
Trevelyan says about the eighteenth century woolen manufacture, “. . . the Wiltshire and Cotswold uplands, that bred sheep for the western wool-clothiers, were a wonder to observe . . . within a six-mile radius of Dorchester . . . [where] . . . more than half a million sheep were feeding . . .” (315). Gulliver establishes a link between his voyage and Swift’s England, when, in 1702, he returns to his native land from Lilliput with cows and sheep as souvenir, “Since my last Return, I find the Breed is considerably increased, especially the Sheep; which I hope will reveal much to the Advantage of the Woollen Manufacture, by the Fineness of the Fleeces” (59). Even the intentionally misplaced anecdote about the Lilliputian societal structure in Chapter VI has a Gulliver-like revelation in Trevelyan’s description of women’s educational system in the society, “Women’s education was sadly to examine. . . . The daughters of the well-to-do had admittedly less education than their brothers. . . . Most ladies learnt from their mothers to read write, sew, and manage household . . .” (327). An arbitrary commentator, Swift satirizes the existing tradition and suggests innovations prudently as he hides behind his protagonist. The third voyage in this sense is the same, as Gulliver takes a closer look at the “Academy of Projectors” in Lagado, and Swift, at the Royal Society in England. Lord Munodi follows the obsolete expertise, and so remains successful. But the Academy’s experiments are illogical, and so, worth opposing. Swift wastes tiny time in revealing the absurdity of the projectors, or the Royal Society, as Trevelyan mentions, “The spirit of the scientific inquiry emanating from the regions of Royal Society into the walks of common life, was a constant stimulant but often a sore puzzle to the practical farmer. For the experts and modernizers were so seldom agreed” (315).
All the four voyages begin with Gulliver in multifarious conditions: in the first voyage he is cast away, next he is a leftover, in the third he is detoured, and in the final voyage he is marooned. Whatever the situation is, he shows apathy towards his companions in the ships. An indifferent comment about them leads the readers to the conclusion that Gulliver is passive, a recluse, or, tends to be so. That is why his honesty – which comes to question by the time the travelogue ends – shows that he is concerned with himself. Swift presents the Travels in an apparently conflicting pattern. After landing in an island in the southern hemisphere in the first voyage, Gulliver describes the land in a scheme, which kindles aesthetic awareness among the readers. The same description turns to an awe, rather a nightmare, with the leviathan images of the flora and fauna in Brobdingnag. The third voyage is beyond any idyllic arrive. The fourth voyage, which is the climax of Gulliver’s self-struggle for psychological survival, is full of disgust. The natives’ nature in all these places induces the innateness of Gulliver. Still, he remains inconclusive and unaffected.
The even-numbered voyages are Gulliver’s holistic approach to mankind and its nature. Gulliver finds himself alone in Lilliput. There is no direct or open-ended friend. Yet, he does not feel the loneliness great. Rather he manages well living in a microscopic reality. But in Brobdingnag the dwelling is different. Here he needs company. Fortunately for him, he is supported by Glumdalclitch. Many a time Gulliver shows that he needs her. He is not thinking of her, but of himself. Again, when he finds himself wonderful and sound, he forgets others. He simply gives in to his surrounding, the rescue-ships. He merely watches in the first three voyages, without ever being influenced. Swift creates environment for Gulliver intentionally. He comprehends that his writing will not go unchallenged. When Gulliver meets the souls of the dead people, they reveal to him history, which is actually distortedly presented in front of mankind. Swift also realizes that his creation might be misinterpreted. Yet, he leaves everything unto the “judicious reader”. Thus portraying Gulliver as centripetal, in the first trilogy, is a mechanism, which depicts him as defensive but escapist in the fourth voyage, the climax, which, according to many critics, is misanthropic. Swift anticipates this and shows his mastery in defense mechanism in a letter to Alexander Pope on September 29, 1725:
I have ever hated all Nations professions and Communityes and all my love is towards individuals for instance I hate the tribe of Lawyers, but I love Councellor such a one, Judge such a one for so with Physicians (I will not Speak of my own trade) Soldiers, English, Scotch, French; and the rest but principally I hate and loathe that animal called man, although I hartily like John, Peter, Thomas and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed my self many years (but do not tell) and so I shall go on till I have done with them I have got Materials Towards a Treatis proving the falsity of that Definition animal rationale; and to show it should be rationis capax. Upon this vast foundation of Misanthropy (though not Timons manner) The whole building of my Travells is erected: And I never will have peace of mind till all honest men are of my Notion . . .” (584-85)
This is Swift believing in individual capability, not relying on community. This is what Gulliver is: on the one hand he is a novice, an observer; on the other hand he is the teacher, the commentator.
Critics in general, as Swift mentions in this letter to Pope, view Gulliver’s Travels as a text with misanthropic tone. When the first three voyages never raise such a question, the development of the final voyage is completely different. Gulliver is in Lilliput, as he is in Laputa, Balnibarbi. There are some parallel situations as well. His attempted, humiliating acquiescence to the most “puissant Emperor” of Lilliput in Chapter V and the forged, embarrassing dust-licking in front of the Luggnaggian King in Chapter IX offer Gulliver indifferent to these situations. Rather he enjoys it, “. . . on record of my being a Stranger, Care was taken to have it so clean that the Dust was not offensive” (175). He is not reluctant to follow the manners and traditions of any particular pace. In Luggnagg, his overwhelming praise for the immortals is uprooted by the appearance of the physically distorted and psychologically retarded immortals. This incident takes the readers back to the Lilliputian land where his understanding of the Royal Court is shattered by the vindictive appearance of the Emperor. In comparison, Gulliver is seen as a freak of nature in Brobdingnag, where his entire race is humiliated by the King’s bitter comment about the Europeans. Like in Lilliput and Laputa, here also England is demoralized, all because of Gulliver’s individual, proud appearance.
Gulliver the individual turns universal in the last voyage, where he faces the dilemma of identity: what he is. Parallel to Brobdingnag is Houyhnhnmland where Gulliver is almost ripped of his own reason by the stunning reasons of the natives. In both the places he stays willingly and leaves them reluctantly. And when he comes back to England, he tries to segregate himself, one way or other, from the rest of the society, being proud of his sense of reason, which is now much developed. In Brobdingnag, the non-human creatures chase and even threaten him. In Houyhnhnmland too, he is almost tempted by the inferiors, the human-like creatures, the Yahoos. Swift uses the rhyme in this travelogue in a zero-one-zero-one method. This is a parallelogram, where the diagonals bisect each other at the point Gulliver. He is thus visualized one type in one voyage, another, in another realm. The final stage is the place where Swift uses Gulliver for his ultimate goal. Gulliver, with his first appearance in Houyhnhnmland, is not attracted to the pseudo-presence of man and beast; it is normal for him. He hopes to meet people who are like him. However, the reality is quite the opposite. His apparent ignorance becomes a shock for him. These creatures are brutal in appearance. At least, he thinks so. One can hardly ignore his antipathy towards these creatures without any specific reason. Gulliver does not act like this anywhere before.
But this unveiling of leisurely abhorrence towards these human-like creatures is intentional: surprised in Lilliput, fearful in Brobdingnag, shocked in Laputa, and finally disgusted in Houyhnhnmland. Gulliver psychologically faces consecutive revelation. He is like Miranda, who needs shelter from the beast Caliban. Neither Prospero nor Arial can set him here. He is on his own. He finds his immediate shelter among the Houyhnhnms, who, on the contrary, identify him as an “abominable Animal” (199). These horses find Gulliver as an eccentric brute because of his appearance. He uses covers, because he is sensitive to weather and shame. Nevertheless, he is different from them because he uses sense; he can show his reason. For the horses, he is outwardly a perfect but “gentle Yahoo” (248), as it can be summed up that the Yahoos are all but gentle. Gulliver finds the living standard of the Houyhnhnms extraordinary; but so is the standard of the inferior creatures in Lilliput and Brobdingnag. The denominator here is not the society, but reason. The Lilliputian horses become accustomed to Gulliver. The birds or the bees in Brobdingnag have their reason for survival and they attack Gulliver for their cause, as the horses attack the Yahoos for their own defense. There is a touch of sensitivity among these paranormal horses. They find Gulliver as one who has some ability to practice reason. They are perfection of nature – nature that has created all these species: the Yahoos on the one extreme, the Houyhnhnms on the other, in between Gulliver, the person who has some faculty of reason and who, innately, is agreeable of using that reason. The Yahoos are brutes all right; but the Houyhnhnms are extreme, for though they are nature’s perfect, they act against nature by abolishing those ancient Yahoos who came here shipwrecked like Gulliver, and now these horses are planning to banish him from their land for fear of their security.
These characteristics of the Houyhnhnms show the horses no more intelligent than the Lilliputian Emperor and his followers, no bigger than the Brobdingnagian dwarf, no more self-engrossed than the Laputians – all nothing but ego-centric. The Yahoos are primitive in nature, but the saviours of Gulliver are more primitive, for while the Yahoos have some logical practice of emotion, the horses do not understand why one laughs or cries. They are even untouched by death. Kathleen Williams says about these horses, “The Houyhnhnms have no shame, no temptations, no conception of sin: they are totally unable to comprehend the purpose of lying or other common temptations of man. They can live by reason because they have been created passionless” (251). If creatures like these are nature’s perfection, the nature itself is faulty. But that cannot be. Therefore, the Houyhnhnms are misguided. The Yahoos’ actions are not abnormal. One female Yahoo will be naturally erogenous towards a male Yahoo, who is in guise. In addition, the horses find Gulliver as a Yahoo. But what both the parties miss is that he is neither this nor that. Physically or psychologically, he cannot be compared with a horse. Nor can he be compared with a Yahoo, because unlike them he is able to use intellect, which the horses also lack. Intentionally for Swift, and unfortunately for Gulliver, he misses this vital information. What the Brobdingnagian King points at him, he finds it existent among the Yahoos. A little physical mismatch and the outward garment try to seal Gulliver as a Yahoo species. He is somewhere in between the two species, as he was somewhere between the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians.
This ambiguity makes him a Friday, who now needs one Robinson Crusoe to save him conceptually. He wants to believe that the horses are his liberators. He lacks the simple reasoning that he himself is Robinson Crusoe, who starts his sea-cruise willingly and passionately for becoming economically prosperous and ethically independent. Gulliver’s ambiguity is all the more visible when he fails to sort out his moral depravity in Brobdingnag as well as in Houyhnhnmland. His indigenous identity now disappears; he is now universalized. He does not have any clear knowledge about what he is. He also fails to locate the horses’ brutality towards the Yahoos, which were deprived of their own culture and tradition. Rather, his misinterpretation of the Houyhnhnm manner shows his degeneracy to an extent to question Gulliver’s person. Houyhnhnm apartheid towards Gulliver forces him to leave their land. He suffers from further setback. He desperately needs to know what he is. But once banished, he misses the last boat. This uncertainty of identity makes him cocooned. His snobbish attitude to remain serene from the so-called Yahoos makes him an escapist – from society, from human beings. He calls the stark naked people “Natives” (249) and the Portuguese sailors not “European or English Yahoos”, but “Seamen” and “honest” (250). Still, wait on in England, the English are all Yahoos. His detestation for the Yahoos is so deep that he even cannot bear his wife and children, who are hardly mentioned in his narrative. Being a so-called Yahoo, Gulliver’s abhorrence for the other Yahoos and devotion to the Houyhnhnm accelerate put him nowhere. “He has become inhuman,” Williams observes, “losing the specifically human virtues in his attempt to achieve something for which humanity is not fitted. He is ruined as a human being, and the failure of his fellows to attain his enjoy alien standards has made him abominate them” (254). The way he treats others is objectionable. But he seems to be callous. He is an amoebic character, confining himself within a cell from the rest of the world and trying hard to get accustomed to the pathway of his course. The horses are not responsible for this: he is the Captain of his own ship Pride. This quandary of adjustment is unlike the earlier voyages. In the first and the third voyages, after his return, he takes things normally. After returning from the second voyage, he is great caring about others. But after the final return, he is a different person, who has a high nose and suffers from personality. As a result, he remains alone, away from all human company. The horses banish him form their land; but he banishes himself from his family, form the rest of the society. He is alienated. The last voyage is thus unique with its characteristic of escape mechanism.
If Gulliver is able to identify the naked people as natives, if he is able to differentiate between the English Yahoos and the Portuguese sailors, it means he is also able to use his reason, merely being a human being. Swift attributes alienation upon Gulliver to show that human being is not a creature that has reason, but a creature that can use that reason if he opts. Human being is “rationis capax.” When he understands and applies that reason properly, he becomes a perfect person. Otherwise, he is either a Yahoo, or a Houyhnhnm. Gulliver has become a victim so that his perspective can be founded on a logical conclusion. His failure in doing so, and the consequence he arranges for himself proves him a misanthrope, Swift’s objective. It is again Pope to whom Swift writes for the veracity of his point on November 26, 1725, “. . . I tell you after all that I do not hate mankind, it is vous autres who hate them because you would have them reasonable Animals, and are Angry for being disappointed” (586).
Gulliver’s superimposing escapade from people, and from himself, contrasting his reliance on human products of fragrance to avoid the odoriferous English Yahoos makes him more miserable. He is diadromous. The whole Travels itself is a mirage. Gulliver is a miscast between reality and fantasy. He starts every voyage from the accurate land and ends up in an imaginary land. After experiencing and suffering a lot, he returns to the real land, but always in a changed stature. He is a double entandre, who suffers from multiple personality. In his letter to his Cousin Sympson he mentions that his Yahoo natures have returned in him. Thus, he becomes incoherent. Swift accentuates self-contradiction in his character. Decoding this ambivalence can unveil Swift’s intention of organizing Gulliver’s Travels. It is the organizing, as he mentions on January 19, 1724 to Charles Ford that the fourth voyage is a creation completed prior to the third voyage (583).
Apart from the overt political rhetoric in Lilliput, Swift has Gulliver in a diabolic condition under the malevolence of the Emperor there. In the second journey, he himself is devilish by trying to be over-smart, which he is not, and cannot be. Moreover, he feels too accustomed here to thinking of his family back in England. The return is like the first adventure. His individual achievement is not satisfactory. The penultimate voyage, which was the final part and inserted in this sequel, is a bitter satire on human understanding of knowledge. Here, as in Book I, he seems to show something to the readers. Book IV, prequel of Book III, is like the second one so much so that both criticize human beings and their follies and vices in general. Swift, as mentioned in his letters, recapitulates his anthropocentric ingenuity. He presents Gulliver not as a reformer, but as an antihero, who goes through much psychological trauma and eventually fails to recover from that oppression. Swift’s incorporation is like this: Gulliver is big, cramped, large and dinky. His failure is not a byproduct; it is well organized. Swift knows what he is going to do with Gulliver. He indicates that Gulliver’s Travels has been written not only for one age but also for the worlds to come, as he writes to the French publisher of the Travels L’Abbe des Fontaines, “. . . the author who writes only for a city, a province, a kingdom, or even an age, warrants so little to be translated, that he deserves not even to be read. The partisans of Gulliver – they number a gracious many amongst us – maintain that his book will endure as long as our language . . .” (591). Swift’s universal appeal in Gulliver’s Travels is discerned not in the third voyage, but in the finale where he reveals Gulliver’s penumbral individuality, supported by his valediction in his letter to the publisher. The character of Gulliver helps the readers view the world askance and realize the shortcomings of human conduct. Swift does not want to mend the existing conundrum of civilization; he wants the world to solve it. Gulliver, with his multitasking vainglory, fulfills Swift’s aspiration.
Works Cited
Firth, C. H. “The Political Significance of Gulliver’s Travels.” Swift: Gulliver’s Travels. Ed. Richard Gravil. London: McMillan, 1974.
Mukherjee, L. A Scrutinize of English History. Kolkata: Mondal, n.d.
Swift, Jonathan. The Writings of Jonathan Swift. Ed. Robert A. Greenberg, and William B. Piper. Recent York: Norton, 1973.
Trevelyan, G. M. English Social History: A Survey of Six Centuries. Unusual York: Penguin, 1942.
Williams, Kathleen M. “Gulliver’s Voyage to the Houyhnhnms.” Swift: Modern Judgements. Ed. A. Norman Jeffares. London: McMillan, 1969.
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