Tuesday, January 24, 2012

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. 

4 comments:

  1. Nice picture.
    The thing with Gulliver is that we expect it to be a novel, but is actually a political satire as you said. That's the reason why the second half of the book is often ignored,; in the last two chapters the satire is far more important than the plot and the characters and that completely lost me as a reader. Well, not lost, cause I finished the book, but I was completely frustrated with it when I finished.

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  2. COMMENT:

    This is pretty good. However, and since you are speaking about symbols, you could have made a more extended comment on the issue of size.
    Where did you find that picture? I love it.

    COMMENT:

    Whigs
    The Tories ere: are
    After the 1689' Glorious Revolution: 1688
    his parliament was entire dominated by the Whigs; entirely
    The emperor's son described as one Low Heel and one High Heel is referring to the Prince of Wales: this is not too clear. I know what you mean, but it is not well explained
    a revolt against whom?
    novel: see Starla's comment on this. I think it's rather pertinent.

    GRADE 4

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