GULLIVER’S TRAVELS MARK-5
1Write a short note on the Lilliputs.
The Lilliputians symbolize humankind’s wildly excessive pride in its own puny existence. Swift fully intends the irony of representing the tiniest race visited by Gulliver as by far the most vainglorious and smug, both collectively and individually. There is surely no character more odious in all of Gulliver’s travels than the noxious Skyresh. There is more backbiting and conspiracy in Lilliput than anywhere else, and more of the pettiness of small minds who imagine themselves to be grand.
Gulliver is a naïve consumer of the Lilliputians’ grandiose imaginings: he is flattered by the attention of their royal family and cowed by their threats of punishment, forgetting that they have no real physical power over him. Their formally worded condemnation of Gulliver on grounds of treason is a model of pompous and self-important verbiage, but it works quite effectively on the naïve Gulliver.
The Lilliputians show off not only to Gulliver but to themselves as well. There is no mention of armies proudly marching in any of the other societies Gulliver visits-only in Lilliput and neighboring Blefuscu are the six-inch inhabitants possessed of the need to show off their patriotic glories with such displays. When the Lilliputian emperor requests that Gulliver serve as a kind of makeshift Arch of Triumph for the troops to pass under , it is a pathetic reminder that their grand parade-in full view of Gulliver’s nether regions is supremely silly, a basically absurd way to boost the collective ego of the nation.
Indeed, the war with Blefuscu is itself an absurdity springing from wounded vanity, since the cause is not a material concern like disputed territory but , rather, the proper interpretation of scripture by the emperor’s forebears and the hurt feelings resulting from the disagreement. All in all, the Lilliputians symbolize misplaced human pride, and point out Gulliver’s inability to diagnose it correctly.
2. How does the Book I open?
In this first chapter, Swift establishes Gulliver’s character. He does this primarily by the vast amount of details that he tells us about Gulliver. Clearly, Gulliver is of good and solid – but unimaginative English stock. Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, a sedate county without eccentricity. He attended Emmanuel College, a respected, but not dazzling, college. The neighborhoods that Gulliver lived in – Old Jury, Fetter Lane, and Wapping are all lower-middle-class sections. He is, in short, Mr. British middle class of his time.
Gulliver is also, as might be expected, “gullible.” He believes what he is told. He is an honest man, and he expects others to be honest. This expectation makes for humor and also for irony. We can be sure that what Gulliver tells us will be accurate. And we can also be fairly sure that Gulliver does not always understand the meaning of what he sees. The result is a series of astonishingly detailed, dead-pan scenes. For example, Gulliver gradually discovers, moving from one exact detail to another, that he is a prisoner of men six inches tall. Concerning the political application of this chapter, note that Gulliver is confined in a building that was emptied because a notorious murder was committed there. The building probably represents Westminster Hall, where Charles I was tried and sentenced to death.
3. What does the colonel do with the unfriendly soldiers?
Gulliver has been captured by the Lilliputians, and though he’s no longer tied down to the beach by ropes, he’s still restricted in his movements. For the moment, he’s being housed in a temple. His left leg is chained, and though his movements are restricted, he’s still able to stand upright and walk around: something he could never have done on the beach when he was first captured. As one can imagine, the giant Gulliver is an object of curiosity to the minuscule Lilliputians. After the Emperor and his courtiers have had a good look at this strange specimen, it’s time for the common folk of Lilliput to gather around and gawp at what appears to them to be a veritable walking, talking mountain.
The Lilliputian people in this mob are not very well-behaved, however, and some of them have the impudence to shoot arrows at the hapless Gulliver. Fortunately for him, a colonel of the guard is on hand to restore order. He punishes six of the ringleaders by having them bound and given to Gulliver. Gulliver puts five of the troublemakers in his pocket and scares the crowd by pretending to get ready to eat the other one. But Gulliver is just playing around. He cuts loose the terrified Lilliputian and gently sets him down on the ground, after which the poor little man runs off as fast as his legs would carry him. He does the same with the other men, greatly impressing the Lilliputians with his clemency.
4. Comment on the ending of the first Book.
Gulliver’s flight to Blefuscu recalls Bolingbroke’s flight from England to France to escape the charges of treason pressed by the Whigs. The suggestions in the previous chapter that Gulliver might have pelted and destroyed the Lilliputian capital relate to Bolingbroke also. Supporters argued that had Bolingbroke and Harley actually intended treason, they could have revolted successfully. The Lilliputians’ thirst for vengeance and their attempt to force the Blefuscudians to surrender Gulliver coincide with English protests against the Jacobites who found sanctuary in France.
By the en of Book I, Swift has drawn a brilliant, concrete, and detailed contrast between the normal, if gullible, man and the diminutive but vicious politician; the politician is always a midget alongside Gulliver. Swift makes it clear that the normal person is concerned with honor, gratitude, common sense, and kindness. Swift, however, is not through with comparisons. The representative person is a midget compared with the truly moral person. Swift prepares to send gullible Gulliver off on a voyage to a realm where practical morality works. The inhabitants of this realm are as much bigger than normal people as normal people are bigger than politicians.
5. Write a short note on the Brobdingnags.
The Brobdingnagians symbolize the private, personal, and physical side of humans when examined up close and in great detail. The philosophical era of the Enlightenment tended to overlook the routines of everyday life and the sordid or tedious little facts of existence, but in Brobdingnag such facts become very important for Gulliver, sometimes matters of life and death. An eighteenth-century philosopher could afford to ignore the fly buzzing around his head or the skin pores on his servant girl, but in his shrunken state Gulliver is forced to pay great attention to such things. He is forced take the domestic sphere seriously as well.
In other lands it is difficult for Gulliver, being such an outsider, to get glimpses of family relations or private affairs, but in Brobdingnag he is treated as a doll or a plaything, and thus is made privy to the urination of housemaids and the sexual lives of women. The Brobdingnagians do not symbolize a solely negative human characteristic, as the Laputans do. They are not merely ridiculous-some aspects of them are disgusting, like their gigantic stench and the excrement left by their insects, but others are noble, like the queen’s goodwill toward Gulliver and the king’s common sense views of politics. More than anything else, the Brobdingnagians symbolize a dimension of human existence visible at close range, under close scrutiny.
Some After his return from Lilliput, Gulliver grows restless and soon desires to go on another sea voyage. This voyage, however, is plagued by problems—the crew discovers a leak in the ship, the captain becomes ill, and all must winter at the Cape of Good Hope. When they finally get underway again, crazy winds blow them off course, and they are beset by a terrible storm. This storm pushes them even further off course, and then they finally spotted land. They put in here so that some men can go ashore to refill their fresh water supply, and Gulliver goes with this group, in a smaller boat, so that he can investigate the place.
6. How did Gulliver land in the country of Lilliputians
Gulliver separates from the group, who must go farther inland to find water, and when he begins to tire of walking alone and finding nothing of interest, he heads back toward the beach. He sees that all of the men are back in the small boat and “rowing for life” to the ship. It is at this point that Gulliver sees a “huge creature” giving chase to the men and wading far out into the water after them, but the “monster” could not catch up with them due to the sharp rocks in his way (and the fact that they must have had a bit of a head start). Gulliver runs away as quickly as he can to escape this monster, and the ship sails away from the place, leaving him all alone.
7. What happens in the beginning of the book II?
In Book II, Gulliver travels to the land of Brobdingnag. When Gulliver finds himself in Brobdingnag, Swift first sets up the size ratio. Now the tables are turned: The Lilliputians were midgets one-twelfth Gulliver’s size. Now Gulliver is a midget, and the giants who inhabit Brobdingnag are twelve times Gulliver’s size. Besides the size change, notice too that Swift changes perspective in another way. When Gulliver was living among the Lilliputians, he described them as being like “little men.” The Brobdingnagians who capture Gulliver, however, do not think of Gulliver as a “little man” or as a “little Brobdingnagian.”
Some of his first Brobdingnagian acquaintances think of him as being weasel-like or like dangerous and repulsive vermin. Thus Gulliver, in retrospect, seems more humane than we might have realized. To him, the Lilliputians were never insects or vermin, no matter how odious they acted. The Brobdingnagians are a contrast; they like him, generally speaking, but he is never a man. He is a plaything, a rare pet, but never a man.
If the Brobdingnagians do not see Gulliver as a man, however, we cannot condemn them on this one count. They are a moral people, and, again and again, Gulliver will show us instances of their moral virtue. But, at the same time, he never lets us forget that they are also aliens. He admires their laws, but he cannot abide their display of vast areas of flesh. He records his disgust at their physical selves in detail because he cannot overlook, or dismiss, magnified pores and moles and stray hairs.
Our own flesh, however, would be repugnant even to us if we were to see it through the eyes of a doll-sized man. Yet they are flesh, and we are flesh, and it is this common bond that we, and Gulliver, share with the giant Brobdingnagians. They are a positive race of people, and even if we might not be able to attain their superior morality, we might profitably try to emulate certain of their standards………….FOR REMAINING 53 MORE QUESTIONS ANSWERS WHATS APP ME- 9476138533
**************
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS GULLIVER’S TRAVELS GULLIVER’S TRAVELS GULLIVER’S TRAVELS GULLIVER’S TRAVELS GULLIVER’S TRAVELS GULLIVER’S TRAVELS GULLIVER’S TRAVELS GULLIVER’S TRAVELS GULLIVER’S TRAVELS