Utopia in Gulliver's Travels

Utopia, as you all may know, is the representation of an ideal world, alternative to the real world. This perfect world is a kind of criticism of the real world, is a improvement of it. This term was applied by Thomas More in his work “ De Optimo Republicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia”, where utopia was a term given to a fictional community which politic, economic and cultural organization is far from the human societies of his time. Although Thomas More was the creator of the term, the concept was older. It belongs to the “Res Publicae” from Plato, which Thomas More mentioned in his work.

Related to Gulliver's Travels, I want to stand out that the concept of Utopia in the sense of perfect organization of a society can be seen in book IV, which says that Houyhnhnms have a strict familiar plan, which dictates that if a family has two males or two females, one of the sons must be changed with other family to be always male and female.

Another thing I want to stand out is that Houyhnhnms work altogether, they are perfectly educated and it doesn't mind their identities. Here, we can make a contract with Gulliver that is well showed in the fourth book. While Gulliver doesn't have any sense of belonging to a nation, because he doesn't agree with his nation's situation; the Houyhnhnms are fused. I also want to mention that Gulliver doesn't feel like a native because he has spent almost his entire life at sea as an individual. I think that's why Gulliver doesn't want to leave this society, because it is the first time he feels like part of a society and he likes it.

I think that what Swift is trying to show with that attempt of feeling integrated into a society is a kind of mockery of that concept of Utopia and he showed his opinion by demonstrating that utopia is not possible in the sense that if there is a new individual that wants to enter this utopia it cannot. I think Swift also includes the concept of alienation in the sense that if Gulliver wants to enter the Houyhnhnms' society, he has to change his mind. 

Lilliputians as a symbol in The Gulliver's Travels.

As you all know, Gulliver's Travels is a novel written by Jonathan Swift, an Irish writer that is a kind of satire on human nature and also a parody of the “traveler's tales” as a literary sub-genre. This novel is a classic of English Literature. The book became popular as soon as it was published.

I am going to deal with a theme treated in the first book, which we have already read. The theme is the Lilliputians as a symbol in that novel. Swift uses them to make a criticism of the politics of England.

Swift makes England physically tiny to introduce a new perspective on its politics and partisanship in the Lilliput chapters of Gulliver's Travels.

I think with that distinction Swift makes reference to the Tories and the Wigs, in his country, England. These are the most prominent political parties in the early eighteenth century. The Tories ere political conservatives and supported a consolidation of royal authority and the restriction of the power of English Parliament. The Whigs were liberal and wanted more power to go to the Parliament. After the 1689' Glorious Revolution, the Parliament installed a new king on the throne and the Whigs were really important. The king George was pro-Whig, and his parliament was entire dominated by the Whigs. The Whigs are represented by the Low Heels, the only ones that have power in the Lilliputian government.

As Jonathan Swift was a Tory, he had to return from England to Ireland when George I came to power. The emperor's son described as one Low Heel and one High Heel is referring to the Prince of Wales, the future George II and his political opposition during the reign of his father. During his own reign, he became a favorer of the Whigs as his father.

The other distinction that Swift makes in the novel is between the Big-Endians, for those who break boiled eggs on the larger end and Little-Endians for those who broke their eggs in the smaller end. This distinction reflects the quarrels over religion in England. Big-Endians represented the Catholics and the Little-Endians represented the Protestants. England has always been a Catholic country, but the reforms made by King Henry VIII and Queen Elisabeth I had converted most of the country to Protestantism. At that time, there were lots of conflicts between the different sectors of religion: between Catholics and Protestants and also between the different sectors of the Presbyterians.

To finish up, I think that Gulliver's Travels is a novel made in order to criticise the political situation that England was living at that time and because the party to which Swift is an opponent was governing. I think it is a kind of revolt.