Classics Challenge: Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift

Gulliver’s Travels was the third book I read in my “classics challenge”. Here’s the main page of the challenge – it’s really fun to look through and see what everybody else is reading. Of course there is lots of overlap. The two books I have already read on my list of 5 were Frankenstein and Tale of 2 Cities.

I am pretty sure I read Gulliver’s Travels in high school. I know I read A Modest Proposal. And over the last 5 years or so, I’ve gotten very into Swift’s poetry (I put up some of it here in his birthday post – but there’s a lot more out there, of course, if you’re interested.) But I had never re-visited Gulliver’s Travels until now. It’s a lot of fun, ridiculous satire – (and like I said to Rob at one point – I wish the footnotes in my version of the book were more detailed about the political and social intricacies of the time – what Swift was satirizing and who. It was very topical. He does everything but name names. And you can tell he’s speaking of somebody very specific – but my notes did not explain who/what/why. Kind of a disappointment). But besides the satire – it’s just a great story, at times hysterically funny. I also think that Gulliver is a bit of a puff-puff. Meaning, he’s kind of a snooty know it all. I love how he is constantly reminding us of his credentials. Paraphrasing: “I speak 10 languages so I was well equipped to converse with the natives.” “I am highly skilled in all levels of surgery so the procedure was not difficult at all for one such as myself.” It’s kind of his version of the “I fancy myself” game I used to play with my boyfriend in days of yore. “I fancy myself something of a botanist and a linguist.” “I fancy myself a bit of a tailor and a tinker.” Like – Gulliver. You’re a human being. It’s okay if you don’t know everything. Obviously this is all deliberate on Swift’s part. It’s TYPES that seem to enrage him. Officious hierarchical TYPES and institutions. The human race as a group? Sucks.

In 1725 Swift wrote in a letter to his friend (and fellow poet) Alexander Pope:

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one: so with physicians – I will not speak of my own trade – soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years, but do not tell, and so I shall go on till I have done with them. I have got materials toward a treatise, proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it would be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of misanthropy, though not in Timon’s manner, the whole building of my Travels is erected; and I never will have peace of mind till all honest men are of my opinion. By consequence you are to embrace it immediately, and procure that all who deserve my esteem may do so too. The matter is so clear that it will admit of no dispute; nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point.

“Men are cruel, but man is kind” and all that.

Gulliver’s Travels – in 4 parts – builds slowly to the last part -Gulliver’s sojourns among the Yahoos and Houyhnhnms – where Swift really lets out all the hatred towards his own race. It’s brutal – the most brutal of all of the parts of the book. Gulliver, after his time with the horse Houyhnhnms – and the human Yahoos (whom he finds abhorrent and disgusting) – comes home forever changed. The ending of the book suggests that Gulliver did not bounce back from this particular trip. He walks into his house – and instead of seeing his dear wife and kids – he instead sees disgusting Yahoos. He can’t stand the sight or smell of them. He refuses to let them touch him, so gross does he find them. This is how the book ends. He throws in his lot with the horses, basically – seeing the rest of the human race as just another version of the nasty Yahoos (who he seems to describe as almost hyena-like – vultures – cackling horrible creatures who have never created anything, done anything of worth, who fight over trifles, who display their anuses – I’m tellin’ ya – I have never read a book outside of erotic stories or books where the word “anus” appears so frequently!) Swift has been hiding his cards a bit up until that last part. He still seems to see the race as perhaps redeemable. The giants of the land of Brobdingnag are kind with him (although they do trot him out as a freak show attraction which bums him out, and the giant ladies make him lie down on their naked bosoms which completely grosses him out) – there are the people on the Flying Island – contemplative mathematicians – the least practical people in the world – and yet benign, not menacing, not selfish at ALL. But it is the last journey, when he is forced to explain to the master Houyhnhnm who puts him up – how the human race (at least England) comports itself – when he fully realizes how disgusting people are.

And from that one journey, Gulliver does not fully return. The change is irrevocable. He turns his back on his own kind, because he finally sees them for what they are. He loses his puff-puff “I am a learned great person” attitude – and cringes at the fact that he is, in essence, a Yahoo. And for that he must forever hang his head in shame.

Swift (in the voice of Gulliver) writes:

My reconcilement to the Yahoo-kind in general might not be so difficult, if they would be content with those vices and follies only which nature hath entitled them to. I am not in the least provoked at the sight of a lawyer, a pickpocket, a colonel, a fool, a lord, a gamester, a politician, a whore-master, a physician, an evidence, a suborner, an attorney, a traitor, or the like; this is all according to the due course of things; but when I behold a lump of deformity and diseases both in body and mind, smitten with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience; neither shall I be ever able to comprehend how such an animal and such a vice could tally together.

Compare this to one of his many descriptions of the Lilliputians (who win his admiration even though they keep him tied up for ages!):

The reader may please to observe, that in the last article for the recovery of my liberty the Emperor stipulates to allow me a quantity of meat and drink sufficient for the support of 1728 Lilliputians. Some time after, asking a friend at court how they came to fix on that determinate number, he told me that his Majesty’s mathematicians, having taken the height of my body by the help of a quadrant, and finding it to exceed theirs in the proportion of twelve to one, they concluded from the similarity of their bodies, that mine must contain at least 1728 of theirs, and consequently would require as much food as was necessary to support that number of Lilliputians. By which the reader may conceive an idea of the ingenuity of that people, as well as the prudent and exact economy of so great a prince.

And here is the infamous urination scene – which ends up causing Gulliver so many problems later. He is banished from Lilliput – not JUST because of this, there are foreign policy issues as well with Blefescu (probably France, I would guess) – and they think Gulliver might be a spy or a traitor. When all he did was wade across the Channel and cut loose their boats! But anyway, later – when the Lilliputians have untied Gulliver (they still only allow him to take walks at certain times – mainly because the entire populace must be warned to stay indoors because an enormous giant will be walking about, and he might inadvertently crush them) – a fire breaks out in the Lilliputian Queen’s apartments.

… I made a shift to get to the Palace without trampling on any of the people. I found they had already applied ladders to the walls of the apartment, and were well provided with buckets, but the water was at some distance. These buckets were about the size of a large thimble, and the poor people supplied me with them as fast as they could; but the flame was so violent that they did little good. I might easily have stifled it with my coat, which I unfortunately left behind me for haste, and came away only in my leathern jerkin. The case seemed wholly desperate and deplorable; and this magnificent palace would have infallibly been burnt to the ground, if, by a presence of mind, unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an expedient. I had the evening before drunk plentifully of a most delicious wine, called glimigrim (the Blefuscudians call it flunec, but ours is esteemed the better sort) which is very diuretic. By the luckiest chance in the world, I had not discharged myself of any part of it. The heat I had contracted by coming very near the flames, and by labouring to quench them, made the white wine begin to operate by urine; which I voided in such a quantity, and applied so well to the proper places, that in three minutes the fire was wholly extinguished, and the rest of that noble pile, which had cost so many ages in erecting, preserved from destruction.

Ew.

But more than “ew” – of all of the angry passages in the book (openly angry, I mean, more obviously angry) – this one, to me, seems the angriest. It’s not even angry. It’s raging.

For me, I like it when the book gets angry. I do like all of his adventures, and I love Swift’s imagination – but I’m in it for the satire, I’m in it for the rage.

Of all of his travels, I most enjoyed Gulliver’s sojourn on the Flying Island (Laputa) with all of the contemplative moony-eyed astronomers – who are so distracted by celestial thoughts and calculations that they cannot carry on their end of a conversation and so need to have servants bop them on the head on occasion, in order to signal, “Your turn to speak!” It is such a common problem – this total distraction of the residents – that there are actually gadgets designed just for this bopping-on-head purpose!

I observed here and there many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder fastened like a flail to the end of a short stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried pease, or little pebbles (as I was afterwards informed). With these bladders they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the meaning; it seems 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 roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original term is climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics, nor ever walk abroad or make visits without him.

I love how eventually Gulliver becomes so used to this whole flapping thing that he mentions it quite casually. It’s hysterical.

I also loved Swift’s description of the huge magnet in the bottom of the flying island, and how it was used as a steering device. It was fantastical – and yet so well described that I knew exactly what he was talking about.

But when Swift takes the gloves off – that’s when I get excited. I love anger. I love subversive literature. I love those who despise the status quo, those who are uppity trouble-makers. There’s a lot of trouble to be made. There are a lot of things which are just assumed to be true by the majority of people … and anyone who comes out and says, “I HATE this” is held in suspicion. Swift was one of those people (even though in many ways he was part of the establishment). But he couldn’t help but see, with his laser eye, how horrible politics were, how stupid everybody was (for the most part), and really how awful people were – just look at how we treat each other. It is indefensible. Swift does not defend that which is indefensible. Love that about him.

One of the centerpieces of the book is when Gulliver sits down with the King of the giants – and tries to answer all of the King’s questions about law/politics/society of the rest of the world. Swift is brilliant here. His pen is a sword. But it’s swift, sure, and cunning. Sometimes you can’t even tell that he IS cutting something. His enemy might never have known he has mortally wounded until his arm fell off – the slicing is that smooth and perfect. Swift often uses terms of praise and approbation – but in a way where you can tell he means the exact opposite. It’s brutal.

For example:

When I had put an end to these long discourses, his Majesty in a sixth audience, consulting his notes, proposed many doubts, queries and objections, upon every article. He asked what methods were used to cultivate the minds and bodies of our young nobility, and in what kind of business they commonly spent the first and teachable part of their lives. What course was taken to supply that assembly when any noble family became extinct. What qualifications were necessary in those who were to be created new lords. Whether the humour of the prince, a sum of money to a court lady, or a prime minister, or a design of strengthening a party opposite to the public interest, ever happened to be motives in those advancements. What share of knowledge these lords had in the laws of their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide what properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort. Whether they were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want, that a bribe, or some other sinister view, could have no place among them. Whether those holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in religious matters, and the sanctity of their lives, had never been compliers with the time while they were common priests, or slavish prostitute chaplains to some nobleman, whose opinions they continued servilely to follow after they were admitted into that assembly.

Heh heh. Swift shows the absurdity of all of this by putting it all into the questions from the King. One can imagine contemporaries of Swift howling with laughter at the thought of trying to answer those questions in the affirmative (“Were those holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in religious matters?” “HELL NO!” etc.) … and through that now-you-see-it now-you-don’t literary maneuver, Swift stabs his opponent in the heart. The thing is: you could hear some pompous blowhard (who had been pricked, naturally, by the implications of the satire) try to defend himself – and say, ‘Well, but yes, it is always more complicated than you would think …” and it is THAT kind of person that Swift finds most disgusting. The ones with pride. The ones who have something to lose, the ones who choose to defend the indefensible. The rot goes to the deepest levels of society. If you try to deny it, you are Swift’s enemy.

More from the observant (and yet baffled – that’s Swift’s genius here – the bafflement) giant king:

He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century, protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice or ambition could produce.

hahahaha He puts it all into the mouth of the king. Not Gulliver. Perfect.

And I loved this bit:

He said, he knew no reason, why those who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public, should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials.

Really fun book. A feast for the mind, you know? That’s how it felt. Also, funny funny funny.

This entry was posted in Books and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to Classics Challenge: Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift

  1. Randy says:

    What a great review and essay! You’ve inspired me to finally try to finish this.

Comments are closed.