![]() In Book I, he is primarily concerned with Whig politics and politicians rather than with the abstract politician in Book II, he elects to reprove immoral Englishmen rather than abstract immorality. In Books I and II, Swift directs his satire more toward individual targets than firing broadside at abstract concepts. If we reject them, we become even more conscious of an ordinary person's verminous morality. We cannot reject them simply because Gulliver describes them as physically gross. They are physically ugly when magnified, but they are morally beautiful. Yet they are, underneath, just men who labor under every disadvantage to which man is heir. Among the Brobdingnagians, there is goodwill and calm virtue. Their virtues are not impossible for us to attain, but because it takes so much maturing to reach the stature of a moral giant, few humans achieve it.Ä«robdingnag is a practical, moral utopia. They are superhumans, bound to us by flesh and blood, just bigger morally than we are. Swift praises the Brobdingnagians, but he does not intend for us to think that they are perfect humans. The English, he says, are "odious vermin." The Brobdingnagian king, however, is not fooled by Gulliver. What's more, he even lies to conceal what is despicable about them. ![]() Gulliver is revealed to be a very proud man and one who accepts the madness and malice of European politics, parties, and society as natural. Set against a moral background, Gulliver's "ordinariness" exposes many of its faults. ![]() Only children and the deformed are intentionally evil. They are not perfect, but they are consistently moral. Now, Gulliver remains an ordinary man, but the Brobdingnagians are moral men. Gulliver was an ordinary man compared to the amoral political midgets in Lilliput. Swift uses this difference to express a difference in morality. In Lilliput, Gulliver was a giant in Brobdingnag, Gulliver is a midget. In the second book of the Travels, Swift reverses the size relationship that he used in Book I. We are always aware of the difference between the imperfect (but normal) moral life of Gulliver, and the petty and stupid political life of emperors, prime ministers, and informers. Gulliver is utterly incapable of the stupidity of the Lilliputian politicians, and, therefore, he and the Lilliputians are ever-present contrasts for us. He is concerned with family and with his job, yet he is confronted by the pigmies that politics and political theorizing make of people. Within the broad scheme of Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver seems to be an average man in eighteenth-century England. His readers were eager to identify the various characters and discuss their discoveries, and, as a result, many of them saw politics and politicians from a new perspective. His book was popular because it was a compelling adventure tale and also a puzzle. The method, for example, which Gulliver must use to swear his allegiance to the Lilliputian emperor parallels the absurd difficulty that the Whigs created concerning the credentials of the Tory ambassadors who signed the Treaty of Utrecht. Using certain political events of 1714-18, he described in Gulliver's Travels many things that would remind his readers that Lilliputian folly was also English folly - and, particularly, Whig folly. Swift turned to the Tories for political allegiance and devoted his propaganda talents to their services. They refused, and Swift turned against them even though he had considered them his friends and had helped them while he worked for Sir William Temple. Representing the Irish bishops, Swift tried to get Queen Anne and the Whigs to grant some financial aid to the Irish church. Why, one might ask, did Swift have such a consuming contempt for the Whigs? This hatred began when Swift entered politics as the representative of the Irish church. And in using the fire in the Queen's chambers, the rope dancers, the bill of particulars drawn against Gulliver, and the inventory of Gulliver's pockets, he presents a series of allusions that were identifiable to his contemporaries as critical of Whig politics. By emphasizing the six-inch height of the Lilliputians, he graphically diminishes the stature of politicians and indeed the stature of all human nature. Behind the disguise of his narrative, he is satirizing the pettiness of human nature in general and attacking the Whigs in particular. Swift has at least two aims in Gulliver's Travels besides merely telling a good adventure story. ![]() Philosophical and Political Background of Gulliver's Travels.
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