Gulliver’s Travels · Chapter
Gulliver's Travels explained
The book recounts Lemuel Gulliver's voyages to fantastical lands, beginning with his shipwreck in Lilliput, where he is a giant among tiny people, and continuing to Brobdingnag, where he is a miniature among giants, then to Laputa and its a
What happens
The book recounts Lemuel Gulliver's voyages to fantastical lands, beginning with his shipwreck in Lilliput, where he is a giant among tiny people, and continuing to Brobdingnag, where he is a miniature among giants, then to Laputa and its absurd academy, and finally to the land of the Houyhnhnms, where rational horses rule over brutish humans. Through these adventures, Swift satirizes human pride, political corruption, and the follies of science and war.
Themes in this chapter
Satire of Politics and Government
Swift uses the petty disputes of Lilliput (e.g., high heels vs. low heels, big-endians vs. little-endians) to mock the triviality and corruption of European politics.
Satire of Science and Learning
The Grand Academy of Lagado, with its absurd experiments like extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, ridicules the pretensions of the Royal Society and misguided scientific inquiry.
Characters to notice
- Lemuel Gulliver
The narrator and protagonist, a ship's surgeon and captain who travels to extraordinary lands.
- Glumdalclitch
The young girl who cares for Gulliver in Brobdingnag, treating him with kindness.
- Reldresal
A Lilliputian statesman who befriends Gulliver and explains the political conflicts of Lilliput.
- Skyresh Bolgolam
The Lilliputian admiral who becomes Gulliver's enemy and accuses him of treason.
- Flimnap
The Lilliputian treasurer who is jealous of Gulliver and plots against him.
Key passages
“He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.”
A scientist spent eight years trying to extract sunlight from cucumbers to use as a heat source.
This absurd experiment at the Grand Academy of Lagado satirizes pointless scientific research.
“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
Gulliver concludes that humans are a harmful and contemptible species.
This reflects Gulliver's growing misanthropy after living among the rational Houyhnhnms.