Gulliver´s Travels. Travel to Lilliput: a Satire on Mankind and England

In Gulliver´s Travels, Swift attacks and criticizes humanity using irony. This novel would be considered a mordant satire on mankind told in terms of sarcasm. Firstly, Gulliver tells us his travel to Lilliput, a land where people are six inches tall and their houses and other things are accordingly small. They seem to be toys and dolls to Gulliver. However, these tiniest Lilliputians do not have a different behaviour from full-size men. These small beings embody Swift´s contemporaries as well as symbolizing a satirical nature of humanity. 'Thus the first book of Gulliver´s Travels throws ironical light on the smallness of the means, the vanity of the motives, the illusion of catchwords, through which kings retain their thrones and magistrate their office and from one end of the society to other the fearful influence of man upon man is exercised.'

The irony is especially patent in the description of the six inch tall emperor of Lilliput. 'GOLBASTO MOMAREN EVLAME GURDILO SHEFIN MULLY ULLY GUE, most Emperor of Lilliput, Delight and Terror of the Universe, whose Dominions extend five Thousand Blustrugs, (about twelve Miles in Circumfence) to the Extremities of the Globe: Monarch of all Monarchs: Taller than the Sons of Men; whose Feet press down to the Center, and whse Head strikes against the Sun: At whose Nod the Princes of the Earth shake their Knees;pleasant as the Sping, comfortable as the Summer, fruitful as Autums, dreadful as Winter.' He connects this satirical description not only to the English political life in his time but also the monarchy itself and everything that encloses it.

In Lilliput, to choose people who would hold the different jobs, they take in account good morals instead of great abilities. However, when there was a vacant, the candidates have to dance or leap over stick in front of the emperor and to please him. In this country, courtiers are only rewarded when they perform like clowns at the beck and call of the emperor. These prizes consist in red, green and blue ribbons just like Queen Anne in 1703, George I in 1725 and Walpole in 1726 instituted too.

The religious wars between Catholic France and Protestant England are represented by the fight the High-Heeled and the Low-Heeled maintain. Lilliput and Blefuscu simulate England and France, and the two parties represent the Whigs and Tories. While the people from Lilliput (England) betray Gulliver and behave with meanness towards him, those of Blefuscu (France) are pleasant, generous and give him the freedom to return his home. So, part I of Gulliver´s Travels can be interpreted as an attack on England, on the controlling Whig Party, and on the war with France, which saved Europe from being tyrannized over by a single reactionary power.

'Lemuel Gulliver´s voyage to Lilliput is full of topical allusions to the contemporary England, but they are transmuted into the symbolic allegorical caricature of the institutions of mankind and provides a mirror to a man with all his smallness, pettiness and hypocrisy, though some aspects of the life of the Lilliputians are good, for example, their system of education.

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Jan, K.M.; Firdaus, Shabnam. Perspectives on Gulliver´s Travels. Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2004.