Gulliver’s Travels

Gulliver remarks about the Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians, Laputans, Houyhnhnms and Yahoos in a straightforward way, reporting on the cultures, rather than analyzing them. Swift disguises his allusions to the political and philosophical thought of his time, allowing the reader, not Gulliver, to discover them. One can view it as a simple adventure story and travelogue, as Gulliver intends, or as a complex satire on 18th century morals and thought, as Swift intends.

In each land that Gulliver visits, there is a different ironic comparison to English/European politics and philosophy. Lilliput is a rich satire of the English politics of Swift’s time. The small, but extremely immoral, Lilliputians represent the Whig party of England, whose vicious foreign policy and accusations of treason against members of the Tory party Swift despised. The small size of the Lilliputians is in inverse proportion to the amount of their corruption.

Similarly, the Brobdingnagians find Gulliver’s culture to be too violent for the size of its people, and Gulliver’s pride in describing the English is offset by his puniness. Swift characterizes the giants of Book II to