Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a satirical masterpiece from cover to cover and is rife with allegorical meaning. The novel satirizes almost every aspect of human life – government, knowledge, human relationships, morals, technology, and even excrement! One could even take the view that the novel, in its entirety, is an allegory of the collapse of human values, and the various seemingly-exotic peoples that he encounters are actually allegories of various aspects of the human race.”
In the section describing Gulliver’s sojourn in Lilliput, Swift ridicules the empty rituals and meaningless courtesy of the court there. For example, the status of Liliputian ministers depends on how high they can jump over a rope – a totally irrelevant qualification for a government official! This is a not-so-subtle allegorical reference to the ostentatious formality among the British upper class and nobility and their obsession with etiquette, manners, rules, and regulations.
Swift also satirizes human obsession with appearance and its inability to look beyond it. Within this satire lies a deep allegorical lesson – that size has little to do with power. For example, even though Gulliver was a veritable giant among the Lilliputians, he was still petty in rank and status. On the other hand, even though he was no more than a cockroach, in terms of size, in Brobdingnag, one of its inhabitants, Glumdalclitch, actually takes care of him. Even the queen of Brobdingnag is kind toward him, even if she sees him as a source of entertainment.
In various parts of the book, Swift mocks humans for their obsession with power, and suggests that all human relations are based, not on virtue, but on power – on who exercises power, who is controlled by power, and who understand the dynamics and politics of power. Thus, we have the following account from Gulliver while he was in Lilliput:
In the concluding section, Gulliver hesitates to inform the King of his discovery of new realms because he fears the scourge of colonization that might follow. Consider the following quote from Gulliver:
During his stay at Brobdingnag, when Gulliver teaches the king the use of gunpowder, the king is flabbergasted at its destructive potential and at the people who invented it. The king declares that humans are “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” Brutal words, these, but a fair assessment of a people that seemed to take pride in their ability to engage in mass destruction.
Swift, writing during the period of Enlightenment, when Reason reigned supreme in all the land, does not hold back from satirizing even knowledge and mankind’s pride in his ability to pontificate and philosophize. This, he does through the descriptions of the lives of the inhabitants of Laputa, Lagado, and Balnibari – In Laputa, for example, the inhabitants are brilliant mathematicians; however, in their obsession to calculate when the sun will burn out and so on, they have ignored practical, everyday considerations such as building straight walls and square corners! Swift goes on in a similar vein about Lagado and Balnibari as well.
As a final piece of evidence of how Gulliver’s Travels works as an allegory, I’d like to discuss what some people call Swift’s “scatological vision.” Swift spends a lot of time describing bodily functions and how their produce might be processed after expulsion! Consider, for example, how the scientists in Lagado attempt to make food from excrement. In my opinion, this is just Swift’s allegorical way of telling us how ugly, in reality, the human body is and how sickening its functions are, no matter how we may have willed ourselves into believing otherwise.
In this manner, Swift, through scathing satire, provides insightful allegories to understand not just specific English customs and manners, but also the general human condition.
In the section describing Gulliver’s sojourn in Lilliput, Swift ridicules the empty rituals and meaningless courtesy of the court there. For example, the status of Liliputian ministers depends on how high they can jump over a rope – a totally irrelevant qualification for a government official! This is a not-so-subtle allegorical reference to the ostentatious formality among the British upper class and nobility and their obsession with etiquette, manners, rules, and regulations.
Swift also satirizes human obsession with appearance and its inability to look beyond it. Within this satire lies a deep allegorical lesson – that size has little to do with power. For example, even though Gulliver was a veritable giant among the Lilliputians, he was still petty in rank and status. On the other hand, even though he was no more than a cockroach, in terms of size, in Brobdingnag, one of its inhabitants, Glumdalclitch, actually takes care of him. Even the queen of Brobdingnag is kind toward him, even if she sees him as a source of entertainment.
In various parts of the book, Swift mocks humans for their obsession with power, and suggests that all human relations are based, not on virtue, but on power – on who exercises power, who is controlled by power, and who understand the dynamics and politics of power. Thus, we have the following account from Gulliver while he was in Lilliput:
Providence never intended to make the Management of publick Affairs a Mystery, to be comprehended only by a few Persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an Age.In this extract, Swift is actually lampooning the institution of Parliament that the English were so proud of, which, they felt set them apart from the barbaric and uncivilized natives. In reality, Swift charges that the whole parliamentary process is shrouded in unnecessary mystery and when the common man seeks to understand it, he is often dismissed for his supposed lack of training in the process! The only people who seem to perpetually benefit from such an arrangement are the people in power and the people who understand power – usually the rich and the powerful. Gulliver goes so far as to describe the English parliament as “a knot of pedlars, pickpockets, highwaymen and bullies”!
In the concluding section, Gulliver hesitates to inform the King of his discovery of new realms because he fears the scourge of colonization that might follow. Consider the following quote from Gulliver:
…they see an harmless people, are entertained with kindness, they give the country a new name, they take formal possession of it for the King, they set up a rotten plank or a stone for a memorial, they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more by force for a sample, return home and get their pardon…This is a devastating allegorical indictment of the history of European colonialism. In my opinion, a better and as-succinct-a summary of this shameful chapter in history is yet to be written.
During his stay at Brobdingnag, when Gulliver teaches the king the use of gunpowder, the king is flabbergasted at its destructive potential and at the people who invented it. The king declares that humans are “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” Brutal words, these, but a fair assessment of a people that seemed to take pride in their ability to engage in mass destruction.
Swift, writing during the period of Enlightenment, when Reason reigned supreme in all the land, does not hold back from satirizing even knowledge and mankind’s pride in his ability to pontificate and philosophize. This, he does through the descriptions of the lives of the inhabitants of Laputa, Lagado, and Balnibari – In Laputa, for example, the inhabitants are brilliant mathematicians; however, in their obsession to calculate when the sun will burn out and so on, they have ignored practical, everyday considerations such as building straight walls and square corners! Swift goes on in a similar vein about Lagado and Balnibari as well.
As a final piece of evidence of how Gulliver’s Travels works as an allegory, I’d like to discuss what some people call Swift’s “scatological vision.” Swift spends a lot of time describing bodily functions and how their produce might be processed after expulsion! Consider, for example, how the scientists in Lagado attempt to make food from excrement. In my opinion, this is just Swift’s allegorical way of telling us how ugly, in reality, the human body is and how sickening its functions are, no matter how we may have willed ourselves into believing otherwise.
In this manner, Swift, through scathing satire, provides insightful allegories to understand not just specific English customs and manners, but also the general human condition.
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