Gulliver’s Travels

What It's About

Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, recounts four voyages that leave him stranded in increasingly strange lands. He is a giant among the six-inch inhabitants of Lilliput, a tiny creature among the giants of Brobdingnag, a visitor to the floating island of Laputa and its impractical scientists, and finally a traveller among the Houyhnhnms, a race of rational, gentle horses who keep brutish human-like creatures called Yahoos as beasts of burden. Told in the plain, convincing voice of a travel memoir, it is both a comic adventure and a savage commentary on its age.

Key Concepts

Swift uses shifts in scale to expose human folly: from far above, the Lilliputians' petty wars and court intrigues look absurd, while among giants Gulliver's own society is made to seem small and corrupt. The book satirises party politics, the Church, colonial ambition, and the scientific projects of the Royal Society, and it keeps asking whether humans are truly rational or merely capable of reason. That question has made the final voyage the most debated part of the book. Some critics read Gulliver's disgust with humanity as Swift's own misanthropy, while others see Gulliver himself as the target of the satire, a narrator whose judgement we are not meant to trust entirely. The book has often been bowdlerised into a children's tale about Lilliput, leaving out much of its bite.

About the Author

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, satirist and Anglican clergyman, born in Dublin. He became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in the city and was known for his sharp wit, his political writing and his fierce commitment to the causes of Ireland.