A Look at Society Through Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels

The royalty of England in the early 1700's are characterized by powdered wigs, rich textiles, and heavy ornamentation. They are also associated with excessive fanfare, mental illness, and wildly nonsensical decrees. Gulliver, whose story takes place during this glittering period, is a traveler whose journeys take him to unknown, bizarre lands. Each place Gulliver visits is inhabited by a curious, flourishing monarchy, with flaws parallel to those of his native England. The ridiculousness of each of these countries is the heart of the story, which is a rather unforgiving satiric analysis of the often less-than-glamorous English royal court. The exaggerated, zany lands Gulliver visits in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels satirize the pompous, ridiculous nature of 18^th century English royal courtiers.

The beginning of the story follows Gulliver to his shipwreck off the small island of Lilliput, where he is kept captive by a population of human-shaped beings who stand no taller than six inches high. He sets to work learning as much as he can about the society of his gentle captors, and quickly becomes acquainted with the workings of their government. Though Gulliver reports it in an analytical, thoroughly stoic way, his account of the Lilliputian political succession is a sharp jab at the often nepotistic and meritless political hierarchy of England: "When a great office is vacant ... candidates petition the Emperor to entertain his Majesty and the court with a dance on a rope, and whoever jumps the highest without falling, succeeds in the office" (28). An absurd ritual to be sure, but the antics of the Lilliputian government act as a mocking mirror to England's political senselessness and corruption. The comment Swift makes is that the way the system works, no thought is given to who might make the best leader, or who, based on personal merit, might be most deserving of the job. The political selection system of Lilliput has no devices for choosing an honorable, or even competent, leader. It is as though choosing the leader of a country is an unimportant decision - to be treated lightly, like a game. In England, the succession of leadership was based on heredity, with no safeguards against the King's eldest son being a political failure.

Just like England, Lilliput's illustrious history contains many culturally defining events, the greatest of which being the Emperor's grandfather's accidental cutting of himself while cracking an egg. To paraphrase Gulliver's extensive recounting of this historical event and its current ramifications, the Emperor's grandfather, then a young boy, went about cracking an egg on the larger end, which has, since ancient times, been considered the easier end from which to crack an egg. The boy cut himself on the shell, and so his father, the current Emperor, declared that nobody in Lilliput should ever crack an egg from the larger end ever again. This decree was so objectionable to many Lilliputians that wars were fought over it, and the whole populace split into factions over who would and would not crack eggs from the larger side. The issue was so contentious that, as Gulliver states: "It is computed that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end" (41). The absolute hilarity and preposterousness of the Emperor's egg decree and the subsequent social unrest that it causes is a literary poke in the eye with the sharp stick that is Swift's comic genius. After contemplating the Lilliputian monarch's blatant abuse of power after being affronted by an egg, one worries what he might have done if he found himself offended by an actual person. Thus scrutiny returns to England's monarchy, and their own use of power for personal gain and satisfaction. Swift's point here is that monarchs don't always wield their powers in responsible ways, and instead of being held accountable for their ludicrous actions, they are supported by sections of the public, opposed by the rest, and civil unrest becomes the apparent result of their pointless, self-serving decisions.

Gulliver's second voyage serves mostly as a foil to the first, but his third, while no less ridiculous, is a refreshingly different take on the political satire. Gulliver once again encounters peril at sea, and finds himself on the floating island of Laputa, which is inhabited by an intensely intellectual, deeply contemplative race of people. The royalty of Laputa, naturally, have more time than ordinary citizens to be deeply contemplative, and often get so lost in their thoughts that they can no longer function socially. To remedy this, Laputians of quality hire servants to slap them in the face with noisemakers to re-awaken them to natural social delicacies like speech, hearing, and sight. Gulliver observes this unusual occupation amongst the Laputian nobility with polite interest: "The minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being rouzed by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing" (161). At first glance, one might interpret Swift's analysis of the Laputians as a roundabout jest at the affectation of English royals - always cultivating a garden of antisocial intellectuals to raise their own philosophical status by association. However, it might be more correct to notice that the Laputians are so caught up in their own ruminative brilliance as to be unable to be bothered by the needs and feelings of others. For a Laputian deep thought is not a discipline, it is practically a necessity of life, one that they indulge in to the point that they are incapacitated. This then, paints a picture not of pretentious introspection, but of gluttony, which in Swift's time was by far the graver ill. Indeed, these people spend so little of their energy on anything outside their own minds that Gulliver proclaims that he, "Never met with such disagreeable companions," primarily because, "They are so abstracted and involved in speculation," that he felt constantly neglected while on the island (177). The implications go deeper than the fact that the Laputians are poor hosts, Swift suggests that people of high society are generally self-centered, too focused on their leisure time and idle entertainments to be bothered by the needs of the public.

Though Gulliver was worried by the social neglect he encountered in Laputa, his final journey would see him to an even worse part of the world: one where he was simply not welcome. Gulliver's fourth expedition is to a land with no name, where horses comprise the leadership and humans are incoherent, ill-treated animals known as Yahoos. Gulliver, despite acting like a perfectly peaceful, unobtrusive citizen, is banished from the island because he looks like a Yahoo. The sick twist is that Gulliver's admiration of the Houyhnhnms, the horses, is so great, that he listens to and respects the reasoning behind their hatred of the Yahoos, and sadly agrees to his Banishment. He respects their decision so much that he leaves the island full of self-hatred, certain of his own worthlessness: "[I] was a poor Yahoo, seeking some desolate place where to pass the remainder of this unfortunate life" (300). He has been brainwashed so thoroughly by the Houyhnhnms that when he returns home he feels ashamed of his whole species. Swift's aim in creating this unnamed nation was to dissect the inherited superiority complex of royalty by simplifying it in terms of species. The Houyhnhnms have no claim to their superior position in society but the fact that they were born as horses, which were already established as leaders. Conversely, the humble Yahoos don't deserve their ill treatment in society for any reason other than that they were born human. For the 18^th century, Swift's assertion is actually quite radical; he suggests that the nobility is no better than the peasantry, and that social standing is based on nothing more than prejudice and luck.

Gulliver's travels take him throughout the world to some of the strangest societies and most puzzling creatures. Each civilization he encounters is politically and socially convoluted and bizarre, and all are exaggerated in some aspect, so as to serve as a satire for Gulliver's native country, England. England's government in the 18^th century was somewhat flawed, and Swift leaves no flaw unexploited, mocking everything from the succession of leaders, to royal gluttony, to the perceived supremacy of people born into royal roles. It seems that no matter how distant and abstract Gulliver's travels are, he finds issues in those foreign lands that hit rather close to home.

Works Cited

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. New York: Signet Classics, 1999.