Reading between the lines

Even though Gulliver's travels seems a children book with many adventures of mystery places to travel, Jonathan Swift has a lot to say within the countries, the characters and the travels in general.

Most of the book reflects the political experiences he had during his life. For those of you who do not know it,  Swift dedicated much of his life to politics.

I am going to analyse, from my point of view and with the help of some information I have found on the internet what do these four travels mean.

 

Lilliput

We can consider this first travel a critic to the Tories’ illegal peace treaty. He thinks they did a good act in a bad manner

Brobdingnag

These giant people symbolize a special part of the human being when you examine them carefully. Gulliver is forced to pay special attention to many things in the book. In this country Gulliver is more treated like a doll than like a human but he learns many values. He show as that inside a giant body there can be goowillness and nobility as the king and queen have.

Laputa

The way people from Laputa throw the rocks over the other cities, seem to be the first time that air bombing was consider as a war method.

He also considers the way of knowing so much about science, math and art and not putting it into a practice an absurd thing. With this he pretends to satirize the royal society and the carry out of its experiments

When Swift describes Gulliver talking to famous people’s ghosts, he is making a metaphor about the theme of young people against old people. Young writers often think that old writers are old fashioned and they have to improve themselves.

 Houyhnhnm

Unless Houyhnhnm have mistreated Gulliver and Portuguese people have rescued him, after meeting these wise horses, Gulliver think human being only think in basic instints and he underestimate them. This maybe can be written in this way because Swift was in a way, misanthropist.