GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
The book “Gulliver’s Travels” is divided into four different parts.
First journey
In the first one, the hero, ship’s surgeon Lemuel Gulliver, describes his shipwreck off the island of Lilliput. The Lilliputians, he discovers, are a tiny people, only six inches tall. During his stay on Lilliput he learns about the local traditions and culture, and about the country’s political system.
The diminutive Lilliputians, although a well-organized society, can be seen to represent cruelty, pettiness and provincialism (the way Swift sees the England of that time). Critics have suggested that the politicians of the government were modelled on leading political figures of Swift’s time.
Second journey
In the second one, Gulliver sets off to India but after a series of misadventures finds himself abandoned on the island of Brobdingnag, whose inhabitants are all giants. The first situation is reversed, as Gulliver finds himself regarded as something like a living doll for children to play with. He is sold to the queen and has some discussions with the king about the political situation in Europe, before returning to England.
The giants of Brobdingnag represent human vanity and self-love. Gulliver’s descriptions of their bodies (which to him are enormous) reveal a mixture of fascination for, and disgust and repulsion towards the human body, which may be seen as an obstacle to spiritual growth.
In both English and Italian literature, there have been writers and painters that used the horse as a protagonist. For example is the book “Gulliver’s Travels”, in particular in the fourth trip (the travel to the country of the Houyhnhnms), Gulliver finds himself on an island populated by talking horses, which he considers more intelligent than man. According to him, the horses are holders of a simple rationality, and thanks to it they have built a perfect community. They live a sinless life, disturbed only by the presence of another race in their island, the Yahoo, violent human beings. Gulliver, who has arrived on the island, quickly agrees with talking horses, and despises Yahoo. From that moment on, Gulliver considers all humans beings, including himself as a Yahoo. He wants to be like the talking horses and live with them.
Talking horses
Third journey
In the third one, sees Gulliver land on the flying island of Laputa with its capital Lagado, which is populated by philosophers and scientists, all involved in bizarre and futile scientific research and speculations. From here he journeys to another two islands, Glubbdubdrib and Luggnagg, each with their own absurdities.
The Laputans can be seen as a parody of the pretensions of abstract intellectual thinking, which has no connection to reality (the island flies above the ground), and also as a satire on Britain’s military and colonial ambitions. However, seen from a distance the world of the Laputans is also a world of lightness, where ideas are liberated from the constraints of reality.
Fourth journey
In the fourth one, Gulliver finds himself in a land ruled by intelligent horses who call themselves the Houyhnhnms, which is also the name of the island, and who are served by a bestial, subhuman race called the Yahoos. Again Gulliver spends his time trying to learn the language and ways of the Houyhnhnms, and assimilates them so well that when he returns home to his wife and children he finds himself disgusted by their humanness.
The land of the Houyhnhnms, where horses rule over a bestial sub-human race, is one of the best examples of Swiftian reversal. We see Gulliver from the perspective of the horses, who think at first Gulliver is a Yahoo. Gulliver tries to convince them that his own race is not at all like the Yahoos, but from the horses’ point of view, the picture he portrays of the violent and vicious society he comes from merely confirms that, underneath the masquerade of civilization, humans are indeed just like the Yahoos – only more sophisticated in their barbarism.
Gulliver records the marvels he sees with careful detailing, in the language of the traveller who speaks with great seriousness about what he has seen and wants to be believed.
However, the novel’s dense mixture of fantasy, political satire and morale fable, makes it a highly complex work and critics have regarded it as a vicious attack on the human race. The book’s defenders, on the other hand, say that the book is a satire of man’s hypocrisy, vanity, cruelty and absurd pretensions.