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Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift


About author 

                  Jonathan Swift was born in 1667 and died in 1745. He was an Anglo - Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer of the 18th century. Swift is remembered for works such as "A Tale of a Tub" (1704), "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity"(1712), "Gulliver's Travels" (1726), and "A Modest Proposal" (1729).    

                   He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff and anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the " Horatian " and "Juvenalian " style. In his novel "A Tale of Tub" he criticizes western christianity especially the leaders of the church. He wrote more other great satires in which Gulliver's Travels is one of them.

About novel 

                 "Gulliver's Travels" or "Travels into Several Remote Nations Of the World" is a novel in four parts by Lemuel Gulliver. He was first a surgeon and then a captain of several ships. It is a 1726 prose satire by the Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, who satires both human nature and traveller's tale literaray subgenre.
                 It is Swift's best known full length work and a classic of English literature. Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels " to vex the world rather than divert it ". The book was an immediate success, it was listed as a "satirical masterpiece".
          
Plot Summary 

                 Gulliver's Travels is an adventure story, involving several voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, who, because of a series of adventures goes to several unknown Islands,  living with people and animals of unusual sizes, behaviour and philosophies but who, after each adventure is somehow able to return to his home in England where he recovers from these unusual experiences and then sets out again on a new voyage. 

A Voyage to Lilliput 

               In his first Voyage Gulliver reaches on an Island named Lilliput after destroying his ship, where he awakes to find that he has been captured by Lilliputians, very small people approximately 6 inches in height. Where Gulliver is treated with compassion and concern in turn he helps them to solve some of there problems, especially in their conflict with their enemy, Blefuscu, an Island across the bay from them. However, Gulliver falls from favour, because he refuses to support the Emperor's desire to enslave the Blefuscuians and also because " he makes water " to put out a palace fire. Gulliver flees to Blefuscu, where he converts a large war ship to his own use and sets sail from Blefuscu to his home in England. 

A Voyage to Brobdingnag 

              Gulliver's second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag, which is inhabited by a race of giants. In this voyage people are much bigger than Gulliver and Gulliver looks like a Lilliput in front of them. A farm worker finds Gulliver and delivers him to the farm owner. The farmer begins exhibiting Gulliver for money, and the farmer's daughter, Glumdalclitch takes care of him. 
             One day the queen orders the farmer to bring Gulliver to her and she purchases Gulliver. He becomes favorite at court, though the king reacts with contempt when Gulliver recounts the splendid achievements of his own civilization. Gulliver offers the king to make gunpowder and cannon but the king is horrified by the thought of such weaponry. Eventually, Gulliver is picked up by an eagle and then rescued at sea by the people of his own size and reaches his home in England. 

A Voyage to Laputa

             On Gulliver's third voyage he is set adrift by pirates and eventually ends up on the flying Island of Laputa. The people of Laputa all have one eye pointing inward and the other upward and they are so lost in their thought that they must be reminded to pay attention to the world around them.
              From Laputa Gulliver is permitted to visit Lagado, the capital city of Balnibarbi. He finds the farm fields in ruin and the people living in apparent squalor. Later, Gulliver visits Glubbdubdrib, the Island of sorcerers and there he speaks with great men of past and learns from them the lies of history. After that he goes to Luggnagg from where he is able to sail to Japan and hence back to England. 

A Voyage to Houyhnhnms 
 
            In the extremely, bitter fourth part, Gulliver visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, where he finds a race of intelligent horses, who are cleaner, much rational, communal and benevolent than the brutish, filthy, greedy and degenerate humanoid race called Yahoos.
              The Houyhnhnms are very curious about Gulliver, who seems to be both a Yahoo and civilized but after Gulliver describes his country and it's history to the master Houyhnhnms then the Houyhnhnms conclude that the people of England are not more reasonable than the Yahoos. At last, it is decided that Gulliver must leave the Houyhnhnms. 
             Gulliver then returns to England so disgusted with humanity that he avoids his family and buys horses and converses with them instead. 
             


               
                   

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