Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World
Jonathan Swift
Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World
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A ship's surgeon makes four voyages and is wrecked on each. He is a giant among six-inch people at war over which end of an egg to break, a pet among giants, a visitor to an island of scholars who have abstracted themselves out of usefulness, and finally a guest of talking horses who find him disgusting — and by then he agrees with them.
About the book
Published anonymously in 1726 and presented as the memoir of a ship’s surgeon, Gulliver’s Travels is four voyages. In Lilliput he is a giant among six-inch people whose empire is at war over which end of an egg to break; in Brobdingnag he is a curiosity in a giant’s pocket, and the king, hearing an account of European government, concludes that Gulliver’s countrymen are the most pernicious race of vermin on earth. The third voyage visits a flying island and an academy of projectors extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. The fourth is the one that unsettles readers: a country of rational horses and of filthy human animals called Yahoos, where Gulliver comes to agree with his hosts and returns home unable to bear the smell of his own family. Swift wrote the whole thing as a satire on travel writing, party politics, science and the human claim to be a reasonable animal.
Characters
Lemuel Gulliver — Narrator
A ship’s surgeon, sober and exact, who is wrecked or marooned on all four voyages and learns the wrong lesson.
The Emperor of Lilliput — Ruler
Six inches high, taller than any of his subjects by a nail’s breadth, and at war over the breaking of eggs.
Reldresal — Lilliputian official
The friendly secretary who explains court politics, and who proposes blinding rather than execution.
The King of Brobdingnag — Ruler
A giant of good sense who hears out European history and is appalled by every part of it.
Glumdalclitch — Nurse
The farmer’s nine-year-old daughter who cares for Gulliver, makes his clothes, and grieves when he is sold.
The Houyhnhnms — Rational horses
A race of horses governed entirely by reason, with no word in their language for lying.
The Yahoos — Human animals
Filthy, greedy, quarrelsome creatures kept as livestock, and unmistakably human.
About the author
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, clergyman and pamphleteer, and Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin for the last thirty years of his life. He published Gulliver's Travels anonymously in 1726 as a genuine sailor's narrative, complete with maps, and it sold out in a week. His pamphlets defended Irish interests against English economic policy so effectively that a reward was offered for his name, and A Modest Proposal — which recommends that the Irish poor sell their children as food — remains the most savage piece of irony in English. He left his estate to found a hospital for the mentally ill.