Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels

Reviewing a Classic in a Modern Context

Jonathan Swift's classic novel Gulliver's Travels examines humankind's emphasis on reason, the importance of country, and the supremacy of self. If we look closely, we might recognize Gulliver, the narrator and traveler, in ourselves and his world as our own.

Egocentricity in Gulliver's Travels

Excessive pride in self is a classic sin worthy of ridicule. As the book opens, Gulliver tells the reader about his academic background, especially inappropriate since it was customary in Swift's time to begin literary works with apologies for one's lack of learning (as compared to the genius of Homer or Shakespeare).

There is also the egotistical, diminutive tyrant Gulliver meets in Lilliput, a pygmy emperor boldly proclaiming his power over Gulliver who is 12 times his size. Swift skewers the folly of undue concern for our own qualities and possessions.

Imagine our lives as seen through the wrong end of a telescope by a giant, and we cannot help but get a sense of our insignificance in the big picture.

Ethnocentricity in Gulliver's Travels

Excessive pride in country is a regrettable but recurring theme in world history and in literature, and this title is no different.

Here Gulliver relates the cause of the Great War in Lilliput: "It began upon the following occasion. It is allowed on all hands, that the primitive way of breaking eggs before we eat them, was upon the larger end: but his present Majesty's grandfather, while he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the Emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs.... It is computed, that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end."

Anthrocentricity in Gulliver's Travels

Life all around the planet suffers because we abuse nature in the name of human progress, finding justification for this by saying that, as the most rational of all living things, we are at the top of the great chain of being.

When Gulliver meets the intelligent `horses' and the filthy human Yahoos in Houyhnhnmland he is left feeling he would rather live with the former than the latter.

Remember that in Swift's time England was colonizing the First Nations in Canada and Native Americans in the US who were not considered fully human until a Spanish theologian, Franscisco de Vitoria, successfully argued that they were no less intelligent than `some Spanish peasants' and were therefore equally entitled to full legal rights.

The story here reminds us that attempts to judge an unknown culture frequently fail. Perhaps it is better to be as accepting as the animals than it is to lose our connection with humanity altogether in these misguided attempts to claim superiority.

Swift satirizes rationalistic and anthrocentric pride to show how puny and insignificant we are in a cosmic sense. He also reminds us of how much more of life can be found by embracing others than by holding on tight to our own worldviews.