CONTRASTING CULTURES IN GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

NAME- URVI DAVE

CLASS- M.A.

SEM- 1

PAPER NO.- 2

TOPIC- CONTRASTING CULTURES IN GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

SUBMITTED TO- SMT. S.B. GARDI DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & M.K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

EMAIL ID- dave.urvi71@gmail.com

YEAR- 2014-16

Every land which Gulliver visits is a wonderful land, and Gulliver’s experiences in every land are strange or exciting, or amusing. In Lilliput, the people are diminutives or dwarfs, hardly six inches in height. The very idea that there are human beings so small is funny. But more amusing than that is the manner in which Gulliver is fed. Several ladders are applied by the Lilliputians to his sides, and about a hundred of them climb up those ladders in order to carry baskets full of meat and drink and put them close to his mouth. Similarly, it has taken nine hundred Lilliputians, three hours to raise Gulliver to the level of a huge carriage by which he is carried to the royal court. In the Metropolis, Gulliver becomes an object of curiosity, and people come from far and near to look at him. He is given the name “man-mountain”. Gulliver here lends his support to the king and the government of Lilliput against the island of Blefuscu, which has been hostile to Lilliput, and he cripples the enemy fleet, thus winning the appreciation and admiration of the Lilliputian king. One of the most amusing incidents is Gulliver’s extinguishing a fire in the Empresses’ apartment by urinating on it. The empress feels greatly annoyed with this action of Gulliver and moves from that apartment to a different location. Some of the customs of the Lilliputians are also a source of amusement. For instance, they bury their dead with the heads of the corpses directly downwards because they hold a belief that after eleven thousand moons, the dead would rise from their graves and that during this period the earth would upside down so that the dead would, on coming back to life, find themselves standing on their feet. another comic absurdity of the Lilliputians is their manner of writing which is very peculiar, being neither from the left to right, like that of the Europeans; nor form the right to the left like that of the Arabians; nor from up to down like that of the Chinese; nor from down to up like that of the Cascagians; but aslant from one corner of the paper to the other, “like the ladies in England.” Gulliver has to go through an ordeal when, on being informed that he will be shortly impreached on several charges, he finds it necessary to make good his escape from this country. The horses in this country were four inches high. Sheep was only an inch high and hens and geese looked like many coloured flies. The king was half an inch taller than any of his people and his face was strong and manly. The uniform he wore was very plain, but his headdress was made of gold and ornamented with jewels and feathers. Tightrope dancing was very popular and applicants for official posts had to prove their skills in this sport before they were accepted. Those who jumped highest on a white thread which was hung three feet above the ground were judged most successful in the examinations.

        After this voyage, we find Gulliver in a strange and wonderful land called Brobdingnag. This land is inhabited by monstrous-looking giants who are twelve times the height of Gulliver. By contrast with these huge-looking men, Gulliver himself to be as small as the Lilliputians was by contrast with him. Here too Gulliver becomes an object of curiosity for the inhabitants, though for the opposite reason. When Gulliver is first shown by his captor to his wife (who is as huge in size and proportions as her husband), she screams and runs away as a woman in England might do at the sight of a toad or a spider. In other words, Gulliver looks like an insect to the people here. The youngest son in the family of Gulliver’s captor lifts Gulliver by the legs and holds him so high in the air that Gulliver begins to tremble with fear. Then Gulliver sees a ct which is three times larger than an ox in England, and he feels greatly alarmed by its fierceness. When the lady of the house begins to suckle her child, Gulliver feels thoroughly disgusted on seeing the huge, monstrous breasts of the woman. When Gulliver wakes up from his sleep, he is attacked by a couple of rats which are of the size of a big dog. When Gulliver is afterwards bought by the queen, he becomes a favourite with her. As a consequence, the royal dwarf begins to feel jealous of Gulliver and plays much mischief with him. On one occasion, the dwarf makes Gulliver fall into a large bowl of cream. On another occasion, he thrusts Gulliver’s whole body into a bone from which the marrow has been taken out. Gulliver also feels uneasy for another reason. There are too many flies in Brobdingnag. The flies here are very large, like all other creatures, and Gulliver feels much troubled by them as they hum and buzz about his ears. He is also much tormented by the wasps which are as large as the partridges in England. Referring to the royal kitchen, Gulliver says that if he were to describe the size of the kitchen- grate and the size of the pots and kettles, nobody would believe and think that Gulliver is guilty of exaggeration. There are several mishaps during Gulliver’s stay in Brobdingnag. Once an apple, falling from a tree, hits Gulliver on his back and knocks him down flat on his face, because the apples here are also very large. On another occasion, when Gulliver is standing on a grassy plot, there is a sudden shower of hailstones which are nearly eighteen hundred times as large as those in Europe. Gulliver is badly injured by these hailstones. The royal maids of honour often play with Gulliver as if Gulliver were a toy. On one occasion, Gulliver is carried off by a monkey which is also very huge, and he is rescued with great difficulty. Eventually, Gulliver is carried off by a huge eagle which drops him into the sea from where he is picked up by a passing ship. This is Gulliver’s last adventure on his second voyage. In this country, farming is also done. The rich people were masters and were dressed well and the others who worked in the farmer’s field were called workmen. Their dinner plate was about 24 feet wide. Their table was 30 feet high. Their house was very huge, room as big as a church and bed as wide as a river and eight yards high. The king of Brobdingnag was fond of music and very often had musical parties. In this country, there were no guns or no gunpowder though there was always some conflict. In this country, no law is to be allowed to be more than twenty two words long. They make small laws because it could be easy and simple to understand. The biggest library in the kingdom had only thousand books. Their army is not made up of regular soldiers, but includes all the tradesman and farmers of the country who serve in town and without pay. 

               Laputa is a wonderful island which keeps flying at a height of about two miles from the earth over the continent of Balnibarbi. This is in itself is a miracle. The people of Laputa have strange shapes and faces. Their heads are all reclined either to the right or to the left, one of their eyes being turned inward and the other directly up to the zenith. Many of the Laputans are followed by flappers who carry in their hands blown bladders fastened to the ends of short sticks. The function of these flappers is to draw the attention of their masters to anything that might need their attention, because the minds of their masters are so occupied by intense speculations that they can neither speak nor listen to others without being roused by some external action. Another strange feature of life on Laputa is that mutton, beef, pudding and other eatables are given geometrical shapes or the shapes of musical instruments. When these people want to praise the beauty of a woman or another animal, they do so in geometrical or musical terms. The men on this island are so busy inn their cogitations that their wives feel compelled to make love to strangers instead of their husbands. When Gulliver goes to Lagado, he witnesses the many experiments which are in progress at the Academy of Projectors. There is a project for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, a project for restoring human excrement to its original food, a new method for building houses by beginning at the roof and working downwards to the foundation and so on. There are several schemes being developed at the school of political projects also. These are all very amusing and impractical schemes. Gulliver’s visit to the island of Glubbdubdrib is also very interesting because Gulliver finds himself in a place where ghosts and spirits are in attendance upon the governor and where Gulliver is enabled to hold conversations with the spirits of such great men of the past as Alexander, Hannibal, Aristotle, homer and Brutus. Gulliver also sees a group of immortal people in this place. These immortals are feeling wretched and miserable because they long for death which does not come to them. The country of the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms, is also a wonderland. This is a country in which human beings are no better than beasts, while the horses show themselves to be superior to human beings. The horse or the Houyhnhnm's are the noblest conceivable animals. They are wholly governed by reason; they have a language of their own which they are able even to teach to a human being like Gulliver; they have their own excellent customs and methods of government; they are guided mainly by the principles of benevolence and kindness. These strange or marvelous beings are free from all kinds of evil, so much so that there is no word in their language for lying or falsehood. They hold a periodical assembly to discuss their affairs and to take necessary action to rectify things which have gone wrong; they have their methods to control population. The Yahoos, who symbolize human beings, are on the contrary despicable creatures who arouse our disgust and abhorrence. Yahoos are a caricature of men, with all the good in human being left out. The Yahoos have a prime minister; they have court flirtations; they have acquisitive hoarders of shining stones; they become drunk and diseased; they even have a fashionable malady as the spleen. All the evils of civilization, and many of its professes glories, are caught in their elaborate behavior.