Gulliver`s Travels is esentially a book about human nature , its capacities and its limitations . The first voyage to Liliput is the most charming as it is used the play of proportions .Gulliver is a giant among the people so small that they look like"tiny animals ". The liliputans represent the weak creature who yet has much courage , inventedness and curiosity in the face of the danger . Their moral smalness suggest that nomatter the size , man is a political animal and at the same time the emptiness of public grandour of which swift laughs ironically.As an examle , the qualities required for officers in the state to obtain a social position:ballancing on the rope ; the desire of getting as many titles as possible . Gulliver became an embarassment because of his good consumption of food . His enemies wanted to put him to death . His punishment is changed to blinding . Their thinking is selfish . His carcasses will be smaller at his death and less likely to produce infections in the country ; by starving him he will be smaller . the idea is that where political action is in question , morality has nothing to do with the matter . - Lilliput shows the smallness in man , his pride in money , his political uselessness .
THE SECOND VOYAGE -Gulliver himself makes in his comments some links between the first and the second voyage . They are linked on the very device they are based: the relative size . The device is a satiric one . - the brobdingnags are large men and as a result of this we see clearly our phisical graceness . - Gulliver has to face different degrating physical adventures . - He is put in a cage like an animal . - Swift let us understand that physical size means moral largeness . Giants are generous , warm and human . The Brobningnag will remanin an ideal in this respect , as they are reffered to in the last chapter of the book . - B. is not a perfect state ; it has beggars and men who exploit others . The B. visited by Gulliver is fortunate in its monarch , who unlike the emperor in Liliput , is very good with his subjects . He refuses to accept Gulliver`s offer of the secret of the gunpowder ; he is an enlighted king who loves his people and wants to do his best for his subjects moral and physical state .
THE 3RD BOOK - it was in fact the last book to be written by swift . It is not so closely connected with the other two and thus it is less satisfactory . - presents the flying island of Laputa . - the island has a politcal reference . what is satirized is the abstract thinking . People are normal in size , but distorted in physical appearance . - they have no eye for the outworld ,for reality . - their human shape is distorted by their loss of human quality ; they live in a world of phantasy . - the capital prooduce a certain atmosphere in which man`s activity is replaced by the chance of a machine . - the excessive intellectualism of the flying island led to separation from the real world .
THE 4TH BOOK
- Guliver is in relation with the Yakoo`s bodies on one side and horses rational mind on the other side . The 4th voyage with its theme differing creatures is a synthesis of both reason and passion . Gulliver stresses strongly on the physical unpleasantness of the Yahoos and their habits , which are a version of all passion for jewel and gold . They are the corrupt passion entirely divorced from the reason . -
