Gulliver travels As an allegory Assaignment

Name: Malek Hinaben Ibrahimbhai

Roll no: 12

Year: 2019-2020

Email ID: hinamalek21@gmail.com

Enrollment no: 2069 1084 2020 0026

Paper no: 2 Neo-classical Litreture

Topic: Gulliver’s Travels: As an allegory

Submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English

Gulliver’s Travels: As an allegory

     Gulliver’s Travels is a great novel written by Jonathan Swift. It is about voyages of Gulliver’s main character to different countries. Gulliver’s Travels is a political allegory of England at swift’s time. The word Allegory means a story based on two levels, “Apparent level and deeper”, simple that can be objects, characters, figures or colours used to represent an abstract idea or concepts. Swift’s polemical tour de force ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ is a multi-genre text working on many levels. Swift’s uses this novel to criticize the 18th century and to make a satire of the royal to make a satire of the royal court of George 1.

        It is at once a folk-myth, a delightful childran’s story, a wonderful travelogue, a neurotic fantasy and an unequivocal moral tale. Each of the four books-recounting four voyages to fictional exotic lands may have a different theme bus all are the attempts to deflate excessive human pride. Critics hail the work as a satire reflection on the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.

What is an allegory?

        An allegory is a literary genre which is structured in such a way that its meaning could be read on two levels and a secondary and more complex level. An allegory is defined as a narrative in which the characters, plot, setting and occasion, while making sense in themselves also signify a second layer of making where they point at another set of people, events and setting either from the writer’s mass, milieu or recent historical events. It is a figurative mode of representation where ideas are conveyed through symbolism and metaphor.

Colonialism in the novel:

       Colonialism refers to that after the age of discovery, some small countries, regions and the nation were enslaved and exploited by the capitalist countries, though military, political and economic means and were turned into their colony or semi colony. Gulliver’s Travels were written in the era of colonial development Swift himself was born in Ireland. Britain’s first colony and he himself took an active part in the political movement of Irish independence.

What is a satire? 

        Satire is a literary genre in which human vices, weaknesses, foibles and follies are held up to ridicule. Wit and humor are commonly used as instrument of satire. Swift uses satire as a vehicle to point out to the depraved state of human kind. Some Critics have observed that swift is a misanthropist because the points human nature as a whole in a sordid and gloom light, almost as if there are no redeeming features to humanity.

       Swifts seems to be holding up a mirror to society so that in viewing the gross humanity has a hope for the future. The allegory and satire, in a sense, are interwoven inextricably and deftly.

       The form and structure of the whole work enhances swift’s purpose. By using outlandish humans such as midgets and giants, Swifts allows us to examine the fallacies of mankind without being overly frightened. As Tuveson points out, “In Gulliver’s Travels there is a constant shuttling back and forth between real and unread, normal and absurd.” 

Part 1: A Voyage to Lilliput

        The First voyage in particular contains Swift’s the most memorable shots the political figures of his time. Flimnap’s dancing on the tight rope symbolizes Sir Robert Walpole’s tactics and political intrigues. This deals with Gulliver’s experiences in the land of the little people, who are no more than six-inches tall. It is on one level an absorbing tale of the adventures of the adventures of the giant Gulliver among the midgets of Lilliput and on another level rich in England. It is above all a scathing satire on the moral pettiness of human as seem in the behavior of the Lilliputians. Human beings are filled with importance and cannot view themselves and objectivity. Their pride and boastfulness are revealed as ridiculous when perceived from Gulliver’s great height.

           As we saw that the people of Lilliput are more than six-inches tall. All their acts and motives are on the same dwarfish, petty quarrels of these dwarfs, we are supposed to see the littleness and humanity. The statesmen who obtain place and favour by cutting monkey capers the tight rope before their sovereign and the two great parties, the little-endians and big-endians, who plugs the country into civil-war over the momentous question of whether an egg should be broken on its big or on politics of Swift’s own days and generations. 

        The phrase “one of the king’s cushions” refers to one of king George I’s mistresses who helped to restore Walpole after his fall in 1717. High Admiral skyresh Bogolam which turns out to be Gulliver’s ‘mortal enemy’ represents Earl of Nottingham while Reldresal may stand for Lord Townshend of Lord Carteret who was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by Walpole.

      In society, also, we see that type of people who shows littleness in their nature and also shows the narrow mind. All their actions and aims in life are at low level. They never try to come out from it. Their narrow and they live their life.

Part 2: A Voyage to Brobdingnag

In the second voyage of Gulliver, there is a general satire on humanity and human physiognomy. Much of this voyage is made is made up of lampooning British political history. After Gulliver trues to extol the virtues of his country –men, the king deduces that the history of Gulliver’s country “was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments” etc. When Gulliver tries to improve his condition by offering him the secret of gun-powder, the king is horrified and dismissively concludes that “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 is now marooned and dwarfed in the land of giants who are over forty feet tall. He now becomes the midget he had laughed at in Lilliput, observed through the microscopic eyes of Gulliver, the Brobdingnagians are hideous in size and stature and Gulliver realizes that he must have been just as hideous to the little people in Lilliput. 

       When Gulliver tells about his own people, their ambitions and comes and conquests, the giants can only wonder that such great venom could exist in such little insects. Swifts satires on the Brobdignagian’s voyage unpleasant and unattractively large body. In a way, there are lots of people in society who are huge at status but their thinking shows their narrowness.

      Also he satires on the ugliness of the Brobdignagians. It shows that the thinking of that time of people who has very ugly motif in their life to fulfill their wishes. We can see this, Brobdignagians, Type of people around us and also both we can see the physical grossness and ugliness in people. By this, we can know their aims of life. They just boast on their endeavor, conquest.

Part 3: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Language, Glubdubdrib, and Japan

     In the description Laputa, “Floating or Flying Island”, there is satirical allusion to the English constitution and British colonial policy. The revolt of Lindalino becomes an allegory of Irish revolt against England and England’s violent foreign and internal politics. Swift also takes shots on certain ‘high-minded’ intellectuals who literally have their heads in the clouds.

       In this Voyage, Swift satires on the Scientist and Philosophers of the age. The people of Laputa have extraordinary Physical Features- head turned at angle, one eye turned upward and the other inward. Through the people of Laputa, Swift ridicules the experiments of the royal society and allied institution of the time. The Philosophers who worked eight years to extract sunshine from cucumbers are typical of Swift’s satire treatment of all scientific problems.

Part 4: A voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms

      In the fourth and last voyage to the country of Houyhnhnms, Gulliver faces yet another inversion and there is a sharp-pointed satire on human moral shortcomings. Human being here are represented as Yahoos-filthy, mischievous, gluttonous, ugly monsters that cover for some ‘shining stones’.

    By contrast, the Houhnhnms are noble and benevolent animals governed by Nature and Reason and their “grand maxim, is to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it”. So it is a lether attack on the human race to be represented inferior to horses mentally and morally. Gulliver tells his master- Houyhnhnms of all the evils and vices that were prevailing in European countries. Gulliver also tells about the numerous deadly weapons and the wars in western countries which were fought due to the “ambitions of princes” and sometimes due to “corruption of the ministers”.

      The books for all its harsh satire and anger, instructs human to see themselves with humility and honesty and it condemns pride ego and myopic self-esteem. It urges every person to use reason to be a good Christian. Swift here tries to say that we have to live our life in away in which we can show the humanity.

Conclusion:

        Thus, Gulliver’s journey goes through different types of people, culture, customs, beliefs etc. They show the society of Swift’s time. Like, how they cure narrow minded also interested in petty things and unattractive appearances and ugliness of humanity etc. All these, proof of that time of people’s way of thinking and living.