Gulliver's Travels
A satirical voyage through strange societies, where scale, reason, pride, and political absurdity expose the weaknesses of human civilization.
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The book
Gulliver's Travels follows Lemuel Gulliver across a sequence of extraordinary journeys, each bringing him into contact with unfamiliar worlds that reflect human society in distorted form. In Lilliput, petty rivalries and ceremonial politics are reduced to miniature absurdity. In Brobdingnag, the human body and human ambition are made grotesquely large. In Laputa and related lands, abstract intellect and impractical theory are pushed to comic extremes. In the land of the Houyhnhnms, rational order stands in severe contrast to the degraded impulses represented by the Yahoos. Across these episodes, Jonathan Swift turns the travel narrative into a sharp instrument of satire, forcing readers to confront vanity, cruelty, self-deception, and the fragile dignity of civilized life.
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Significance
Jonathan Swift’s novel remains one of the defining works of satirical prose in English literature. It moves beyond adventure fiction by using fantasy and exaggeration to critique politics, empire, reason, class, and the human tendency toward self-importance. Its lasting power lies in the way it balances comic invention with deep pessimism about human behavior. Gulliver's Travels continues to matter because it can be read both as a lively imaginative journey and as a devastating moral and political critique of modern society.
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Fragments from this book
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He soon conjectured, by my countenance, that I was a European, and therefore repeated his majesty’s commands in Low Dutch, which he spoke perfectly well. I answered, as …
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When I was at some distance from the pirates, I discovered, by my pocket-glass, several islands to the south-east. I set up my sail, the wind being fair, with a design t…
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However, I once caught a young male of three years old, and endeavoured, by all marks of tenderness, to make it quiet; but the little imp fell a squalling and scratching…
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That the life I had since led was laborious enough to kill an animal of ten times my strength. That my health was much impaired, by the continual drudgery of entertainin…
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But my choice and constant companions should be a set of my own immortal brotherhood; among whom, I would elect a dozen from the most ancient, down to my own contemporar…
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I once prevailed on the barber to give me some of the suds or lather, out of which I picked forty or fifty of the strongest stumps of hair. I then took a piece of fine w…
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Content note · this fragment may contain distressing material.
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We compute the _Tramecksan_, or high heels, to exceed us in number; but the power is wholly on our side. We apprehend his imperial highness, the heir to the crown, to ha…
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He said, “that new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those, who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles, …
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I cannot tell whether I were more pleased or mortified to observe, in those solitary walks, that the smaller birds did not appear to be at all afraid of me, but would ho…
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Of the inhabitants of Lilliput; their learning, laws, and customs; the manner of educating their children. Although I intend to leave the description of this empire to a…
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These considerations moved me to hasten my departure somewhat sooner than I intended; to which the court, impatient to have me gone, very readily contributed. Five hundr…