Gulliver’s Travels


“ Want to know the world? Look it up close. Want to like it? Look it up from the distance. “
( Ion Luca Caragiale )


In Gulliver’s Travels , Swift and his character , Gulliver , have separate personalities . Swift does not express his views through Gulliver , but through the foreign societies and cultures that Gulliver sees ( though is unable to put into critical perspective ) .
As a seemingly wise and educated man , throughout the novel Gulliver’s Travels, the narrator cleverly gains the reader’s respect as a thinking and observant individual . With this position in mind , the comments and ideas that Gulliver inflicts upon those reading about his journeys certainly have their own identity as they coincide with his beliefs and statements on the state of humanity and civilization in particular . Everywhere Gulliver goes , he seems to comment on the good and bad points of the people he encounters . Sometimes , he finds a civilization that he can find virtues within , but he also encounters peoples and places which truly disgust him in their manner of operation and civility . Overall , Swift gives Gulliver a generally negative and cynical attitude towards the manner in which his current day English counterparts behaved cleverly disguised in the subtext of his encounters with other nations that either contrasted the way they lived , or mirrored unflatteringly his contemporaries lifestyles.
Gulliver remarks about the Lilliputians , Brobdingnagians,Laputans,Houyhnhnms and Yahoos in a straightforward way , reporting on the cultures , rather than analyzing them . Swift thus disguises his allusions to the political and philosophical thought of his time , allowing the reader , not Gulliver , to discover them . The book can be read as a simple adventure story and