Gulliver’s Travels: Exploring Gulliver’s Journey Essay

2337 words - 9 pages

Through metaphors in Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift showed that the self-indulgence of humanity will lead to their ultimate failure unless they learn to become kinder and more selfless. Each island in Gulliver’s Travels shows a different trait standing alone causing it to be just as bad as being self-indulgent. This type of failure will cause separation and isolation, which could lead to mental instability.
The book, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, starts off with a young surgeon who has been recently married. This young surgeon, Gulliver, is a family man who begins working as a surgeon on a ship. Gulliver at the beginning of the book is just like any other man during this era as seen in this quote from Gulliver’s Travels, “But, my good master Bates dying in two years after, and I having few friends, my business began to fail; for my conscience would not suffer me to imitate the bad practice of too many among my brethren. Having therefore consulted with my wife, and some of my acquaintance, I determined to go again to sea. I was surgeon [sic] successively in two ships, and made several voyages, for six years, to the East and West Indies, by which I got some addition to my fortune” (Swift 26). But throughout his journey, Gulliver loses track of himself and becomes someone completely different.
The first island travels to is Lilliput, but he visits the neighboring island, Blefuscu, after becoming disappointed in the people of Lilliput. The miniature people of Lilliput and Blefuscu were full of pride and were always fighting for the higher rank. In Lilliput, the government officials were elected through competitions to see who was better, as seen in this quote, “Sometimes the Emperor holds one end of the stick, and his first minister the other; sometimes the minister has it entirely to himself. Whoever performs his part with most agility, and holds out the longest in leaping and creeping, is rewarded with the blue-colored silk; the red is given to the next, and the green to the third, which they all wear girt twice round about the middle; and you see few great persons about this court who are not adorned with one of these girdles” (Swift 48). The unnecessary abundance of pride and competition causes war between these islands. If the war is unending, then it can result in destruction. Pride is a characteristic that could cause the downfall of humanity and of Gulliver.
Due to all this pride in Lilliput and Blefuscu, Gulliver begins to change. This is a shift that starts the buildup of negative emotions toward humanity. “Lilliput at first represents for Gulliver an unspoiled state whose diminutive inhabitants are unsurpassed in beauty and grace. He soon recognizes, however, that all Lilliputians are not superlatively event, and once he arrives at the court, his mood darkens. His ventures at the court reveal to Gulliver the seamy underside of Lilliput, and they also serve to expose the follies and vices of England” (Marshall 125). This quote...

Find Another Essay On Gulliver’s Travels: Exploring Gulliver’s Journey

Fiction in Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift


The Relevance of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels


Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ and Swifts’ ‘Gulliver’s Travels’

1794 words - 7 pages events in book three of Gulliver’s travels. Gulliver’s time in Laputa and Balnibarbi is used as criticism of the misuse of science and a warning of regression. The scientific kingdoms of Laputa and Balnibarbi are direct contrasts to reasoned Brobdingnag. The Laputans […] produce a world of death, and their results are purely destructive because their aims are so impossibly high and are unrelated to their conditions. […] Houses are ruined, land

Satire in the Book Gulliver’s Travels and The Movie Airplane

2172 words - 9 pages book, Gulliver’s Travels, and the movie, Airplane, by Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams. These satirical works most commonly targeted subjects from a range of areas such as present day social issues all the way to politics. Starting out, Swift was a man who used satire to convey his contempt for the human race. One of his most famous works conveyed this hatred and anger towards the human race. Such satire was expressed in his novel

Comparing Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels


Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels and the Painting Gin Lane by William Hogarth

1216 words - 5 pages image of human nature. Gulliver’s Travels is a parody of a travel journal written satirically. In that particular period, people were on voyages more often exploring new lands and islands, simultaneously writing travel journals. However, not everybody could afford to travel, therefore the people above average wealth shared their travel journals to the rest of people. Many people believe that the voyage to the Houyhnhnms is about human nature

Comparison of Gulliver’s Travels and Haroun and the Sea of Stories

614 words - 2 pages Haroun and the Sea of Stories is an allegory of the problem’s posed in the societies of the author’s days. It is similar to Gulliver’s Travels as both are allegories of our world, and both main characters are in similar situations; both find themselves in a new land, and are confronted with many unfamiliar problems. “Gulliver’s travels” is a story based upon England at the time when Jonathan swift lived. This was in the 17th century. Also, there

An Author’s Hidden Attack on Humanity: Structalist Criticism of Gulliver’s Travels

877 words - 4 pages ). Saussure wrote in his book, Course in General Linguistics, the importance of understanding seeing language as a living phenomenon as against thehistorical view, of studying speech, of analysing theunderlying system of a language in order to demonstrate anintegral structure, and of placing language firmly in the social world. Gulliver’s Travels at first glance appears to be an adventure tale of a man finding himself on strange islands after

Exploration of Values in Robinson Crusoe, Odyssey, Tempest and Gulliver’s Travels

1053 words - 4 pages Exploration of Values in Robinson Crusoe, The Odyssey, The Tempest and Gulliver’s Travels In the novels and epics of Robinson Crusoe, The Odyssey, The Tempest and Gulliver’s Travels the reader encounters an adventurer who ends up on an island for many years and then returns back home.  These four stories have another point in common: they are all unusually popular.  There is something very appealing to the popular imagination about such

Fine and Flawed Eyes in Gulliver’s Travels and Pride Prejudice: An Argument Relating Eyesight and Judgment

3445 words - 14 pages his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly” (Mark 8:25). Jonathan Swift and Jane Austen both had ties to the church, and their experiences influenced their texts. In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver notes the importance of his spectacles. Without them, he would not be able to see clearly, and he later mentions that his spectacles protect his eyes from the Lilliputians when they try to attack him. Throughout the text, however

Imperialistic Attitude Conveyed in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Voltaire’s Candide


Similar Essays

English Satire In Gulliver’s Travels Essay

1012 words - 4 pages Gulliver’s Travels is a satirical novel about a sailor’s adventures through strange lands; the author of Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift, uses these adventures to satirize the English society. The most prevalent satire is used as Gulliver travels through the lands of Lilliput, Brombdinag, and the Houyhnhnms. One example of satire against the English society in Gulliver’s Travels is the political affairs of the Lilliputians. The

Changing Perspective In Gulliver’s Travels Essay

673 words - 3 pages In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver learns that experiencing different lifestyles he thought were better than his own actually makes him appreciate his own life with a more meaningful disposition through his journeys to Lilliput, Brobdingnag, and the Country of the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver’s journey to Lilliput effectuated forlorn feelings of his home. Likewise, Gulliver’s trek to Brobdingnag assists in his realization that changing

Gulliver’s Travels By Jonathan Swift Essay

1561 words - 6 pages In today’s society, there are many who believe that humans have an innate sense of virtue and morality. They are confident that all human beings are born with a perception of what is right and what is wrong. However, there are others who take the traditional biblical stance, in which it is simply human nature to be sinful. In Gulliver’s Travels, the author, Jonathan Swift shows a strong inclination towards the latter thought: that all people are

Gulliver’s Travels, English Society And Utopia

1079 words - 5 pages everyday life of most residents of England was, however, very stark. It was the real disappointments in life that motivated a different use of the utopian ideal by Jonathan Swift. Swift borrows the perfect society as social satire of the England, in which he actually lived. As the author of A Modest Proposal, it is easy to understand that Jonathan Swift would use similar techniques in Gulliver’s Travels. One of those tools being social satire