Social satire in Swift's Gulliver's Travels
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III. Gulliver’s Travels
3.1 Plot Overview
Swift invented Gulliver and his adventures in fantastic countries in order to safely satirize political conditions in the England of the early 18th century. The author ignored exterior veracity and cultivated inner truthfulness, combined the real with the fantastic in a work which became unitary only by virtue of his genius. The author’s permanent insistence over the precision of the measurements (expressed numerically) reconciles the reader with the fantasy.
During his time in England Jonathan Swift was a prominent member the Martinus Scriblerus Club, which was founded in 1712 and included famous writers such as Alexander Pope, Henry St. John , John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Thomas Parnell. The Scriblerus Club was devoted to satirizing the faults of modern society, science and scholarship. An author by the name of Martinus Scriblerus was invented and a fictional autobiography of him was written. It was published in 1741 as The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus.
The aim of the Club members was to satirize the vices of society and the absurdities of science. Each member of the group was given a specific topic, and Swift was to satirize books describing voyages to foreign lands, which were numerous and very popular at that time. We might say that, somehow, this masterpiece developed out of an assignment. After ten years since the beginning of the Scriblerus project, Swift completed and published Gulliver’s Travels, a satiric work of art which become a classic book for children.
So, the book Gulliver’s Travels began as a group effort and not as the project of a single person. Although it was initially written as a Scriblerian endeavor of ridiculing contemporary science, the narratives of the journeys were composed entirely by Swift. It is known from Swift’s correspondence that he began the composition of the book at the end of 1720 and finished it the autumn of 1725.
Gulliver's Travels, which is regarded as his masterpiece, was published in 1726 anonymously. A great part of it was written at Woodbrook House in County Laois. It was an instant success, with a total of three printings that year and another one in early 1727, when French, German, and Dutch translations appeared and pirated copies were printed in Ireland.
At a first glance, the story looks like an ordinary children’s book. Actually, it is a multi-layered work in which every society encountered by Gulliver is a metaphorical image of the English society in the eighteenth century. The author chose to use allegory rather than to directly confront his contemporaries. He displays a charming humoristic approach which took his critics by surprise and consolidated his place in the history of world literature.
The book, which is known as one of the most controversial of Swift’s satires, was originally published under the title Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World with no author’s name under it. The story is told in Gulliver’s own perspective. The protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, embarks on several voyages throughout the four books. Each time he is shipwrecked or cast up on strange lands due to hazards. The action in the novel covers a period from 1699 to 1715.
Each chapter of the book is briefly advertised. Gulliver begins his story using typical patterns of the travel narratives of that time. He gives the reader much background information, such as his birthplace, schooling and his profession. The reader learns that Gulliver has a very ordinary life in the beginning. He is an average middle-class man, a practical-minded Englishman who has to work to support himself, an ordinary person whom the reader can relate to. In a first-person narrative which rarely, if ever, shows signs of self-reflection or emotional response, Gulliver tells the reader about the adventures he had been through.
The story begins with the protagonist describing his childhood and the event which made him want to pursue a career as a seaman. He tells the reader he is the third child of five siblings and he went to a Puritan college when he turned fourteen. After that he became the apprentice of a surgeon in London. During his apprenticeship he also studied navigation and mathematics in preparation for future sea voyages. Afterwards he studied medicine because he considered it “useful in long voyages”
Gulliver marries Mary Burton and begins his work as a surgeon, but when his business falls apart he embarks on trips to the sea for six years, during which he serves as a surgeon on two ships and travels to East and West Indies. Much of his time is spent observing other nations and learning their languages.
His troubles begin in 1699 when he sets sail on a trip which quickly takes a dangerous course. There are violent storms, the food is bad and the crew get weak, with twelve sailors dying. Gulliver and six of the ship members get into a boat and row until they are flipped over by a sudden flurry. Gulliver manages to swim until, almost exhausted, he comes across an island.
Book I describes his voyage to Lilliput where his is taken as a giant prisoner by the six-inch-high natives. He is dubbed “the Man-Mountain” and brings himself into the good favours of the arrogant and vain Lilliputians by capturing the invading enemy fleet of the neighboring Blefuscu, whom the Lilliputians hate for doctrinal differences concerning the proper way to crack eggs.
At first, the emperor of Lilliput is entertained by Gulliver and Gulliver is flattered by the attention of royalty. He quickly falls into dislike when he puts out the fire which threatened the empress’s palace by urinating on it. He soon learns that several court members plot to charge him with treason and he is forced to escape from the island. Gulliver eventually is picked up by a merchant ship and taken home where he makes money by showing people the Lilliputian-sized livestock which he has carried home in his pockets.
Book II. After staying in England with his wife and family for two months, Gulliver undertakes his next sea voyage, which takes him to Brobdingnag, a place inhabited by giants. At first he is treated more like a little animal which is kept for amusement. Even though a nine year old girl named Glumdalclitch takes very good care of him, due to his tiny size he is constantly exposed to indignities, embarrassment and dangers such as being attacked by giant rats or getting caught in a baby’s mouth. Small physical imperfections of the giants’, such as large pores, are highly visible to him and he finds this very disturbing. He manages to return home by being accidentally picked up by an eagle and then dropped in the sea.
Book III. Gulliver’s third voyage is to the flying island of Laputa, which is a mysterious land inhabited by scientists and magicians engaged in abstract theorizing, who conduct ill-advised experiments, based on flawed calculations. Laputa’s distracted inhabitants are in constant danger of accidents because they are too preoccupied with deep speculations. The scientists he finds here seem totally insane and impractical as they are engaged in absurd studies such as reverting human excrements to original food, or extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers. They appear to be wholly out of touch with reality. Gulliver also visits the Academy of Lagado which is actually a metaphor for England’s Royal Society.
In Glubbdubdrib, another place which Gulliver visits, it is possible to summon the dead and to meet such figures as Aristotle and Julius Caesar. He also travels to Luggnagg, where he encounters the immortal Struldbrugs, who are condemned to live out their eternal existence trapped in feeble and decrepit bodies. They are senile immortals who prove that age does not necessarily bring wisdom. Then he goes to Japan and from there back to England.
Book IV. Gulliver sets out on his fourth journey as captain of a ship, but after the mutiny of his crew and a long confinement in his cabin, he arrives in an unknown land. He meets the virtuous and rational horses from the Utopian land of the Houyhnhnms. They treat him with courtesy and kindness and he is delighted and enlightened by exposure to their noble culture.
The island is inhabited by a second race called the Yahoos, looking very much like people. They are repulsive, vicious, physically disgusting, feral and brutish humanlike creatures who serve the Houyhnhnms. At first Gulliver pretends not to recognize them. He is reluctant to consider himself one of their own, but in the end he is forced to accept the Yahoos as human beings.
The ironic depth of the book and its sober air of reality make simplistic explanations impossible. The author uses the different races and societies encountered by Gulliver in his travels to satirize the many flaws and vices that human beings are inclined to. Even though he questions the whole idea of colonialism, Gulliver considers that the lands he had visited should rightly belong to England, as its colonies.
The Liliputians with their warrior-like personalities, always engaged in trivial disputes and the mad, impractical intellectuals and pedants from Book III are seen as imbalanced beings, lacking common sense and decency.
The Houyhnhms are the embodiment of reason and virtuous simplicity. At first Gulliver proudly identifies himself with them, but his subsequent contempt for his fellow human beings shows that he has become imbalanced as well, which seems to demonstrate that humans are simply incapable of such virtuous rationality.
Throughout his journeys, Gulliver’s inability to fit in is partly a matter of size, of being different, of being from elsewhere. He is the only giant in Lilliput, he is the only little man in Brobdingnag. The years spent with the Houyhnhnms, whom he considers better in every way than humanity, make him an outsider, a different person in England too, disgusted with everybody around, his own wife and children included.
IV.Satire