Gulliver's Travels

At first, the Lilliputians assume that, because of his size, Gulliver will be violent and aggressive, so they treat him as an enemy. They tie him down, shoot him with arrows, and eventually...

Jonathan Swift's book Gulliver's Travels, begins with a letter from Gulliver to his cousin, and is then divided into four parts. Each part is named after the places he visits in that section. Parts...

Swift used the Lilliputians to satirize the English court of his day. In a broad sense, the rope-dancers in chapter three can be seen as a comic take on the work people in the English court would...

The war between Lilliput and Blefuscu erupted over the issue of the proper way of breaking an egg. When the Emperor of Lilliput decreed that eggs should (contrary to the old practice) be broken at...

Gulliver's various journeys can be seen as providing him with valuable experience of the wider world. A somewhat naive and insular young man at the start of his journeys, Gulliver becomes more...

Gulliver is an adventurous soul, possessed with an insatiable wanderlust that makes it impossible for him to settle down in any one place for too long. No sooner is he back in the bosom of his...

Irony occurs when there is some discrepancy between what we expect and what the reality is. We do not really expect Gulliver to end up in locations where human beings are so very different,...

Gulliver's large size is the biggest problem the Lilliputians have with him. When he falls asleep on their shores and they come across his huge body, they are naturally terrified. After all, if he...

One example of satire in part 2 of Gulliver’s Travels is the location of Brobdingnag. In the text of part 2, Jonathan Swift provides a map of the fictional country, which appears to reside in the...

In speaking with the King of Brobdingnag, Gulliver discovers that their culture is very different from his own; they are peaceful and moralistic, and Gulliver decides that although somewhat naive,...

Throughout the book, Lemuel Gulliver emphasizes his superiority to the people he encounters. One way he does so is by emphasizing his superior manners and well-reasoned behavior. Because the novel...

The unifying theme in Gulliver's Travels is size and how Gulliver encounters people much bigger than him (such as the Brobdingnagians) and much smaller (such as the Lilliputians). The way in which...

Much of the humor in Part I comes from the visual imagery of the contrast in size between Gulliver and the Lilliputians. The image of their hundred arrows shot into his hand that feel like the...

The first person point of view in Gulliver's Travels is important as it makes it much easier for the reader to identify with the story's protagonist. During his epic voyage, Gulliver encounters...

The tiny, six-inch Lilliputians are pretty in a doll-like way, but their small stature corresponds to their petty, cruel, "shrunken" morality. Their physical smallness reflects their...

Jonathan Swift was one of the leading satirists in English literature. In Gulliver's Travels, he satirizes many aspects of literature, politics, religion, and philosophy, even critiquing the "tall...

In chapter 7, Gulliver learns that Flimnap, Skyresh Bolgolam, and other politicians have drafted articles of impeachment for committing treason and other capital crimes against Lilliput. The...

When Gulliver encounters the Lilliputians, they are at war with the nearby island of Blefuscu over a ridiculous religious question involving soft-boiled eggs. He helps the Lilliputians by capturing...

When Gulliver first wakes up in Lilliput, he feels a desire to suddenly seize forty or fifty of the tiny Lilliputians and "dash them against the Ground." He doesn't act on this urge because he...

Lilliput and Blefuscu are satirical depictions of England and France. Like England and France, these two countries are at one another's throats politically and culturally. Their big dispute is...

Gulliver discovers he is going to be accused of high treason in Lilliput. He also learns that, due to the "great leniency" of the ruler, he will only have to submit to having his eyes put out by...

Gulliver describes his voyage to Brobdingnag in Part 2, Chapter 1 of Gulliver's Travels. He is essentially blown off course by a monsoon in the Indian Ocean, and stranded by his shipmates on the...

Many have pointed out how Swift uses Gulliver's Travels to satirize specific institutions of his day, be it the British parliament, political factions in government, the monarchy, or the Royal...

In general, it is clear that Swift's depiction of the societies his protagonist, Gulliver, encounters during his adventures suggests a cynical perspective. Swift's point of view is not positive or...

Gulliver sees the words "quinbus flestrin" on the inventory of his pockets which the Lilliputians took early in his stay in Lilliput. He says that he interprets the words to mean "great...

The first answer to this post thoroughly covered the allegorical connections in part I of Gulliver's Travels. Swift goes on to write three more parts to Gulliver's Travels. Each part takes him to...

One satirical element in Gulliver’s Travels can be found in Part I, in the two rival political parties of the fictional kingdom of Lilliput – the Tramecksan and the Slamecksan. The groups are...

In the classic fantasy Gulliver's Travels (or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World) by Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's first voyage is to the land of the Lilliputians, a race of tiny people...

Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels opens with a letter. The letter is fictional but purports to be from a real person named Richard Sympson, a man who claims to be an "ancient and...

Language is a recurring theme in Gulliver's Travels as he voyages to other nations that are vastly different and quite imaginary. In particular, when Gulliver travels to the land of the Houyhnhnms,...

In Liliput, Gulliver discovers that there's a bitter factional dispute raging between those who break open their eggs at the little end (Little-Endians) and those who choose the big end...

Allegorically, the Big-endians represent Roman Catholics and the Little-endians represent Protestants, and the war between them is representative of the religious struggles and persecution of these...

Gulliver's Travels is a political satire, and while it is true that human governance and society have evolved dramatically from the Early Modern culture and customs which Swift himself addressed,...

Ironically, although Gulliver is initially charmed by the attractive looks of the tiny Lilliputians, they end up treating him badly. They show themselves, much like Swift's idea of the British, to...

This quote comes from Gulliver's first experience in Brobdingnag, where he is frightened by the enormous people living there and hides in a cornfield. His thoughts turn, naturally, to Lilliput,...

Satire pokes fun at social problems and human weaknesses, often using exaggeration. In Gulliver's Travels, Swift pokes fun at the human tendency to equate physical beauty with moral beauty and...

Gulliver thinks that the king of Brobdingnag is pretty simple; he does not really understand the way the world works. Gulliver says, [The king] wondered to hear me talk of such chargeable and...

The king of Brobdingnag is completely horrified by Gulliver's account of English society and savagery, and, from this, we can infer that Brobdingnagian society is quite peace-loving and pacifistic....

A metaphor is a comparison of two unalike things, where one thing is said to be another. One of the most powerful metaphors in the book is spoken by the giant King of Brobdingnag while he speaks...

Swift presents Gulliver's Travels as a series of first-person travelogue journals. This is done to mimic the style of travelogue books, which were popular during the novel's time of publication....

After learning that Skyresh Bolgolam (the admiral), Flimnap (the treasurer), Limtoc (the general), Lalcon (the chamberlain), and Balmuff (the chief justice of Lilliput) have issued articles of...

Swift can be understood as a misanthrope through his comparison between the Yahoos and human beings in his novel Gulliver's Travels. When Gulliver first encounters Yahoos in the Country of the...

Gulliver becomes a misanthrope as a result of his adventures. At the start of the novel, he is an even-tempered, open-minded man with little in the way of strong passions or even much in the way of...

Each journey in this satirical work by Swift represents a specific "conflict". There are four journeys that Gulliver undertakes and each new society that he encounters causes him to take...

The Blefuscans have assembled a large navy with which they intend to invade Lilliput. The Lilliputians are in big trouble, as they have no comparable force with which to repel the invaders....

The two great empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu are historical rivals that disagree about what is considered to be the proper end of an egg to break. The current Lilliputian emperor's grandfather...