NAME : VORA HIRVA P.
ROLL NO. : 13
M.A. SEM – I
SUB : THE NEO-CLASSICAL LITERATURE
TOPIC : A CRITIQUE ON GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
SUBMITTED TO : Department
of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji University
GUIDED BY : Dr. DILIP BARAD
HEENABA ZALA
A
Critique On Gulliver’s Travels
Gulliver
travels is a delightful fantastic story of adventure for children, a political
allegory and a serious satire on human nature and contemporary politics.
Jonathan swift criticizes on social institutions and manner of man. The book was
written in the form of a travelogue. The hero and narrator of the story is
lemuel Gulliver an English Phycian. In story there are many incidents. In these
four voyages swift has criticized a lot. In Lilliput Gulliver is giant among
those tiny people, Lilliputians. Swift criticizes on moral pettiness of humans
seen in the behavior of the Lilliputians. There is a criticism of human beings
who are filled with the sense of their own pride, grandeur, importance. They
cannot view themselves with their faults. Swift criticizes on four aspects of
man: The Physical, the political, the intellectual, and the moral. It expresses
follies, vices, and stupidities of men, and it shows an awareness of man’s
tragic insufficiency. Swift’s criticism was certainly written in anger,
contempt.
There are many occasions on
which we laugh in the course of reading the book. We are meant to laught at the
toy-kingdom of the Lilliputians; the acrobatic skill of the politicians and the
courtiers at the absurd jealousy of the dimmutive minister who suspects an
adulterous relationship between his wife and the giant Gulliver. We laugh at
the abstractness of the philosophers of Laputa, and at the mad experimenters of
Balnibarbi. The Houyhnhnms so limited and so positive in their knowledge and
opinions, so skilled in such improbable tasks as threading needles or carrying trays,
so complacent in their belief that they are “ the perfection of nature. ”
The surface of the book is
comic, at its centre is tragedy with perfect control of tone and pace, and with
perfect timing, he leads us into an awareness of human kind and corrupt human
nature. Swift forces us to look into the stupid, evil, brutal heart of
humanity.
Events which established the
tones of the four voyages. In the first voyage it is accident, which accounts
for the ship-wreck. In the second Gulliver is left alone in a strange land
through the cowardice of his shipmates. In the third he is captured and later
abandoned by pirates. In the fourth his crew of cutthroats molts, seize the
ship and leaves him to starve on a nearby island. In the first two voyages
Gulliver is made aware of the disproportion which pascal had found in man.
Gulliver in his voyage to Lilliput looks down the chain of being and finds
himself an awkward giant in that delicate kingdom. In the voyage to Brobdingnags
he looks up the chain and discovers a race of superior beings among whom his
pride melts on account of his humiliating knowledge of his own physical insignificance.
The emphasis in these two voyages is upon physical size, Lilliputians see
Gulliver’s kindness and gentleness, Brobdingnag brings out his moral and
physical courage. Man is comically and magically disproportioned, man has moral
virtues which he can exercise and which he does exercise.
The inhabitants of these two
strange lands Lilliput and brobdingnag
are also disproportioned from the beginning the Lilliputians arouse our
intrest and win our liking. Their fascinating little city capture our fancy.
But in the end they prove to be proud, rapacious, cruel, revengeful, jealous,
and hypocritical. Their social and political systems have become corrupt. They are governed by an
emperor who aims at destroying the neighbouring kingdom. The courtiers and
ministers here are chosen not for their fitness but for their skill in walking
on the tight rope and leaping over sticks or creeping under them. Their vices,
their appetites, their ambitions and their passions are too big for their small
stature.
Gulliver who seemed to be
lovable among the Lilliputians, appears disgraceful and morally insensitive in
contrast to the enlightened and benevolent people of this land. Since Gulliver
represent us (all human beings) his shame and ludicrousness are ours. In brobbingnag
Gulliver realizes that he appears as ridiculous to these people as the
Lilliputians had seemed to him.
Gulliver is humiliated by the
king of brobdinganag but he is still blind to the defects of European society.
When he is questioned by the king about England, he describes everything with
enthusiasm, the class system, the constitution, the lands, the military glory,
and the history of that country. In king’s questions, there is voice of
morality condemning the institutions of the modern world. The king is
high-minded, benevolent, rational. The king and his people think practically
not theorically, concretely not metaphysically; and simply brobdingnag is
swift’s utopia of common good sense and morality but Gulliver conditioned by the
corrupt society from which he comes, appears to be blind to moral value. So by
showing the utopia of common good sense swift criticizes Gulliver’s corrupt
society.
When Gulliver offers to the
king a complete control over his subjects by teaching him to manufacture gunpowder,
the king is horrified. Gulliver speaks as an European, feels surprise and
contempt. King rejects Gulliver’s offer as a strange effect of “ narrow
principles and short views.” The king is baffled by the concept of political
scence. He cannot understand how the art of government can be reduced to a
science. The learning of the brobdingnagians is simple and practical, consists
of morality, history, poetry and mathematics. Swift omits metaphysics,
theoretical science, from the category of useful knowledge.
Swift criticizes on human
pride ourselves in the Lilliputians, and also in Gulliver when he arrives in
brobdingnag, swift wants us to become aware of our own pettiness, aware of the
disproportion of the human race and shocking difference between what we profess
and what we are philosophers of the time were never tired of admiring the
beautiful perfection of the human body, its intricateness, perfect power of
speech and expression, but how does this glorious human body appear to inferior
creatures like insects ? Swift wants us to understand the answer by making us
share Gulliver disgust at the cancerous breasts, lousy bodies of the beggars
and at the blotched colour. Human beauty is only apparent while human
disproportion is real.
Swifts criticizes a lot on
Gulliver’s visit to Laputa or the flying island, to glubbdubdrib, to luggnagg,
and to Japan. It is the funniest account in the whole book. The third voyage is
a kind of fantasia which swift treats under a single metaphor. The metaphor is
science and the themes are politics and the abuse of reason.
Swifts criticizes on the
comic obsessions of the people of Laputa. They are obsessed with only two
branches of knowledge namel mathematics and music. People’s manner is awkward
and clumsy so far as the common actions and behavior of life are concerned.
They are bad reasoners and imagination, fancy, and invention are alien to them.
The way of the tailor, who is ordered to make a suit of clothes for Gulliver,
first takes Gulliver’s attitude with a quadrant and then with the compasses,
sketches, the dimensions and outlines of Gulliver’s whole body on a sheet of
paper. The suit is criticized by swift which is very badly made because the
tailor had made a mistake in his calculations. The obsession of music makes people think that they can hear the music of
the spheres. Beside, these people are in a state of constant fear because of
the changer which they think would take place in heavenly bodies. They believed
that the earth would in course of time be swallowed up by the sun or the face
of the sun would by degrees become dark and therefore give no more light to the
world. The astronomers on this island have been able to make discoveries beyond
those made by European astronomers. The scientists leave their work incomplete.
Most of the country is wasted. Houses are in rain. Laggnagg has been criticized
a lot by swift. He finds there immortal people. A child born with a red mark on
his or her forehead is destined to be immortal. People suffer loss of memory, unemployed become ugly and
handicapped and are considered dead at eighty. Gulliver loses his desire for
immortality after seeing the miserable state of the immortals. Swift criticizes
mostly on the ways of living of these people.
Swift’s satire on new agricultural
methods prevailing in Logado shows his level of criticizing and satirizing. One
such project is that all the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at
whatever season people think fit to choose.
The scientists are involved
in various experiments including extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, A clever
architect is trying to built houses starting from the roof. A blind man was
mixing colours by feeling and smelling them. There are strange experiments
being conducted in mathematical school.
Swift’s satire on politicians
in Logado is an excellent one. So far as politics is concerned, swift makes us
laugh at the foolishness and selfishness of favorites of monarchs and others
engaged in the game of politics. The academy of Logado is criticized and swift
ironically tells us that the professor at this school have a scheme for
persuading kings to choose favorites on the basis of wisdom, capacity, virtue,
for teaching ministers of the government to be guided by the public good; for
rewarding merit and ability; choosing employment persons who are properly
qualified. One in genius professor has proposed that every legislator should be
given certain medicine which will keep him and his mental condition so that should
not talk any nonsense during the whole session of the legislative assembly.
Another professor has suggested that the favorites of kings should be given
suitable medicine to keep them awake and stimulate their memories to make them
aware so that they should not forget their promises to the public. One of the
professors has devised ways and means for discovering plots and conspiracies
against the government. To include suspected persons, their times of eating,
upon which side they lie in bed.
Many incidents and part’s
activities show that swift tries to criticize them.
In this book ‘Gulliver’s
Travels’ we have a criticism of historians and historical researches.
Alexander, Hamm bal, for instance give to Gulliver versions of events from the
book found history. The commentators and critics of Homer and Aristotle are
ridiculed for having grossly misrepresented these two great authors to the
world. Swift criticizes and mocks at men and women of great familiar who had
married persons of the lowest classes, thus injecting inferior blood into their
families. Those who have risen to worldly greatness by adopting shameful
methods are also the object of swift’s critical attack. There is the grim and
corrosive satire on the human longing for immortality which is symbolized by
the struldbrugs.
The fourth voyage in
Gulliver’s Travels has provoked violent attacks on some aspects. The meaning of
this part of the book is that man is utterly wicked desperate, and weak, his
passions are monstrous, his ignorance is better than his vaunted reason, his
boastness. The view that swift was a savage, mad, embittered misanthrope is
based upon misinterpretation of the last voyage. The account of the last voyage
is the work of a christian – humanist and a moralist.
There are many reasons to
attack on the account of the fourth voyage. The intensity and violent rhetoric
of the voyages are overwhelming and may paralyze the critical faculty of
readers. Gulliver becomes the victim of swift irony as he grows to hate the
human race. The houyhnhnms have been regarded as swift’s ideal for man, and the
yahoos have been identified as his representation of what men are in actual
facts. Neither of these opinions seems to be correct.
In the first two voyages
Gulliver is shown uncomfortably situated on the isthmus of middle state between
the very small Lilliput and the very large Brobdingnag. In the fourth voyage
the isthmus exists between the purely rational the purely sensual between
houyhnhnms and yahoo neither of these symbols can stand for men because
Gulliver is himself the symbol of mankind. Swift simply isolates the two
elements that combine in the duality of man in order to allow Gulliver to
contemplate each in its essence.
Swift does not recommend that
Gulliver should try to become a houyhnhnm. Houyhnhnm land is a rationalistic
paradise. The hoyhnhnms are the embodiment of pure reason. They know neither
love nor grief nor lust nor ambition. They cannot lie, and they do not
understand the meaning of opinion. Their society is an aristocracy based upon
the slave labour of the yahoos and work of a specially – bared servant class.
They face the processes of life, such as marriage, child-birth, accident. Their
society is a planned society that has achieved the mild anarchy which many utopian
dreamers have aspired to. They practice eugenics and they control the size of
their population. Children are educated by the state. The agrarian economy is
supervised by a democratic council. The government is conduct by periodic
assemblies. The houyhnhnms feel natural human affection for one another but
they love everyone equally. The picture is admirable but it is remote from the
possibilities of human life.
Swift does not intend us to
accept the way in which houynhnms live and spend their lives as an ideal way of
life swift was opposed to stoicism and he records his adverb view of it
elsewhere in his work. “ The stoical shame of supplying our wants by looping
off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes. ” Swift has
written it. It is Gulliver, not swift, who is greatly impressed by the
houyhnhnms who aspires to rise above the human condition and to become pure
intelligent as these horses are. Swift criticizes at the houyhnhnms way of life
and their beliefs, thoughts.
Swift’s representation of the
yahoos, it is a symbolic of the bestial element in human nature. The yahoos do
not represent swift’s view of man; they rather represent swift’s view of the
bestial element in man, the unenlightened, unregenerate, irrational element in
human nature. These all things show swift’s satire. That is the reason why the
houyhnhnms classify Gulliver with the yahoos. That is why the female yahoos
wishes to copulate with him. That is why, despite his instinctive shrinking
from them. Gulliver has to admit with shame and horror that he is more like the
yahoos than like the houyhnhnms. Beacause of his neglect or misuse of human
reason. The European man has sunk nearer to the yahoos pole of his nature than
he has risen toward the houyhnhnms pole. The seeds of human society and of
human depravity, as they exist in Europe, are clearly found in the society of
the yahoos. Gulliver looks into an ugly human nature, the frail light of reason
and of morality.
It is Gullivers, not swift
who sees and identifies the yahoos with men, so he not swift turns a
misanthrope. Since he does not want to be a yahoo, he seeks to become a
houyhnhnm as nearly as possible. But he can do so only by denying his place in
and responsibility to the human condition by aspiring above the middle link,
which is man to the next higher link which is that of the purely rational. The
houyhnhnms are given a terrifying account of European man and society concludes
that the corruption of reason is worse than brutality itself and that man is
more dangerous than the yahoo.
Swift criticizes at
Gulliver’s alienation from the human race. Although the houyhnhnms never
acknowledge that Gulliver is more than an unusually gifted yahoo, he aspires to
their rationality, stoicism and simple attained these qualities he feeds his
growing misanthropy on pride, which alienates him not only from his remote
kinsmen, the yahoos but eventually from the human race.
Swift’s satire on Gulliver as
a changed man at the end is an excellent one. Gulliver is banished in despair
sets sail from houyhnhnms land, his pride, his misanthropy, and his madness
become apparent. Deceived by his worship of pure reason he commits the error of
the houyhnhnms in equating human beings with the yahoos. When he is captured by
a Portuguese crew and forced to return from sullen solitude to humanity, he
trembles between fear and hatred. The captain of the ship, Don pedro de hendez,
like Gulliver himself, shares the nature of the houynhnhnms and the yahoo, and
like the Gulliver of the first voyage he is tolerant, sympathetic, kind, and
charitable. But Gulliver can no longer recognize these virtues in a human
being. Gulliver is repelled by Don pedro’s clothes, food and odour. Gulliver is
compelled to admit in the very tones of his admired horses, that his benefactor
has a “very good human understand but the Gulliver who writes this book is
still under the control of his obsession. He prefers the smell to the company
of his wife and children. The end swift directs his savage, come his straight
at Gulliver and his pretensions: “ My reconcilement to the yahoo kind in
general might not be so difficult if they would be content with those vices and
follies only which nature has entitled them to. I am not in the least provoked
at the sight of a lawyer, a pick – pocket, a colonel, a fool, a whore monger, a
physian, an evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a trailor, or the like. This is
all according to the due course of things. But when I behold a lump of
deformity and diseases both of body and mind, smitten with pride, it
immediately breaks all the measures of my patience; neither shall I ever be
able to comprehend how such an animal and such a vice could tally together. ”
Thus swift attacks on the
vice and pride. Gulliver here tells us that he could reconcile himself to most
of the vices and follies of human beings if they had been free from the vice of
pride. The houyhnhnms he points out, live under the Government of reason and
are not at all proud of the good dualities they posses.
According to one critic, Gulliver by his technique
of narration does not create a sense of reality about himself Gulliver is not a
character in the sense in which Tom Jones, for example, is a character, says
this critic. He is in fact, abstraction, manipulated in the service of satire
and criticism. Gulliver strikes us as a real, living personality. There was no
need for swift to subject Gulliver to any kind of psycho – analysis.