Gulliver’s Travels

Jonathan Swift

First published anonymously

Or, to give it its full name, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships. A mouthful, yes, that title, but it pretty much covers the basics: Lemuel Gulliver, travelling here, there and everywhere in the opening years of the 18^th century, has some really startling adventures, and documents these in the form of this narrative. Jonathan Swift had meant this as a satirical novel, a comment on the Tory-versus-Whig politics of his England, but we’ll come to that later; first, a quick summary, though Gulliver’s Travels is so well-known that I doubt if many people really need this.

After a brief (and rather pompous) introduction, Gulliver launches into his story: how, as a ship’s surgeon, he got shipwrecked in some lost corner of the world, and washed up on the island (hitherto unknown to him) of Lilliput. The Lilliputians are tiny, just a few inches tall; and Gulliver spends several years with them, initially taken prisoner, but later not just accepted, but celebrated—until his fall from grace, when he puts out a conflagration in the Lilliputian queen’s quarters by peeing on it.

For a man to end up meeting ‘people’ so different from himself would be quite a novelty; but Gulliver goes from one novelty to another: he can’t seem to set sail without meeting one odd lot of people after another. His second expedition takes him to the island of the Brobdingnagians, who are huge, each of them several feet high, their animals, birds, trees and all in proportion. In the third expedition, Gulliver ends up on the flying island of Laputa (which sounds rather like a sort of space station); and, finally, in the place which seems to have had the greatest effect on him, the island where the powers that be are the Houyhnhnms, highly intelligent horses that rule it over the smelly, foul, and utterly despicable Yahoos (whom Gulliver doesn’t take long to recognize as humans, even if covered all over with hair, and with long claws).

Thus, Gulliver’s travels.

While I was searching for the book online to get a cover image, I realized one rather odd thing: there seems to be many, many versions of Gulliver’s Travels around. There are abridged versions, there are special children’s editions. There are even picture books. I found this book listed somewhere as being ‘suitable for 8 years and above’.

Which just goes to show the gap between the superficial and the deep in Swift’s novel. At a surface level, Gulliver’s Travels is indeed the sort of thing that might appeal to a child: all those adventures. Those interesting people (creatures?) he encounters, the things he sees, the experiences he has. The strange lives of others, the humour Swift sometimes works into the narrative (that episode about Gulliver peeing on the Lilliputian palace to put out the fire would appeal to my little daughter’s sense of humour).

But the point is that the real truth of Gulliver’s Travels, the essence of it, lies hidden beneath that admittedly very creative surface adventure. Gulliver, in the time he spends (several years, mostly) with the Lilliputians, the Brobdingnagians, the people of Laputa and the Houyhnhnms, has long conversations with these new acquaintances. He describes their lives, their ideas of justice, administration, law, social norms, and so on. He describes life in England to them, and they draw comparisons.

Through each of these interactions, Swift makes some comment or the other, in a humorous sort of way, on the English (and Irish, given that Swift was Anglo-Irish, actually?). Lemuel Gulliver is all stiff and strong in his convictions, and his narrative is him being very serious, but I found myself laughing aloud as I read this:

(Gulliver is speaking with the Houyhnhnms, who are so morally upright, they have no concept of crime; Gulliver ends up having to explain what law is all about, and how lawyers function, ideas which the Houyhnhnms find difficult to grasp).

“In pleading, they studiously avoid entering into the merits of the cause; but are loud, violent, and tedious, in dwelling upon all circumstances which are not to the purpose. For instance, in the case already mentioned; they never desire to know what claim or title my adversary has to my cow; but whether the said cow were red or black; her horns long or short; whether the field I graze her in be round or square; whether she was milked at home or abroad; what diseases she is subject to, and the like; after which they consult precedents, adjourn the cause from time to time, and in ten, twenty, or thirty years, come to an issue.”

A lot of this, while it may have been Swift cocking a snook at England during his own times, is also so very pertinent at any space and any time. When he is in Lilliput, for instance, Gulliver observes the shenanigans at the royal court. Here he describes one of the ways aspiring courtiers try to impress the king: by doing rope-dancing. Literally that: stretch a rope and dance along it, on it.

“This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for great employments, and high favour at court. They are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth, or liberal education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office…”

My goodness. How many times, I thought when I came across this, have we seen this in real life (and not just in politics, either). People doing cartwheels in their efforts to perfect the art of sycophancy, all in order to flatter the powers that be into bestowing largesse.

There’s more, of course: the people of the flying island of Laputa, for example, are so devoted to mathematics and music and the pursuit of scientific discovery, they keep themselves busy with experiments such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. Or the Houyhnhnms, who impress Gulliver so deeply with their high morals that he eventually ends up associating himself with them, aspiring to shed his own Yahoo-ness, even once he’s back home in England.

There’s plenty online explaining the many and varied ways in which Swift used this novel to poke fun at various aspects of life during his times, so I won’t go into all of that. Suffice it to say that while I did enjoy this book for the creativity it shows, I also enjoyed the wit of it. The Laputa adventure was, for me, the least impressive—I found that somewhat forgettable—but, on the whole, a novel that deserves all the praise it’s received over the centuries since it was published.

Available pretty much everywhere, and (as I mentioned at the beginning of this post) in various formats. Project Gutenberg has one copy here, which is where I read it.