The Lilliputians are men six inches in height but possessing all the pretension and self-importance of full-sized men. They are mean and nasty, vicious, morally corrupt, hypocritical and deceitful, jealous and envious, filled with greed and ingratitude — they are, in fact, completely human. Swift uses the Lilliputians to satirize […]
Read more Character Analysis The LilliputiansCharacter Analysis Lemuel Gulliver
Gulliver is the undistinguished third of five sons of a man of very modest means. He is of good and solid — but unimaginative — English stock. Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire, a sedate county without eccentricity. He attended Emmanuel College, a respected, but not dazzling, school. The neighborhoods that […]
Read more Character Analysis Lemuel GulliverSummary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 12
Summary Gulliver swears that all he has related is truthful, and he wishes that all travelers were forced to take an oath to tell the exact and literal truth. He hopes that the example of the Houyhnhnms will do the public some good; he intends only to make people wiser […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 12Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 11
Summary Gulliver sails to a nearby island where he is attacked by naked savages and forced to flee in his canoe back into the sea. Having nowhere else to go, he returns to another part of that same island. Coincidentally, a passing Portuguese ship sends a longboat to the island […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 11Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 10
Summary Gulliver grows more and more used to the Houyhnhnm way of life. He has a small room of his own with two chairs. He makes clothing of animal skins and shoes of Yahoo skins. He often dines on bread and honey. The conversation he listens to with the Houyhnhnms’ […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 10Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 9
Summary Gulliver’s master attends one of the Houyhnhnm assemblies, and, when he returns, he relates to Gulliver what happened. One horse, he says, contended that the filthy and vicious Yahoos should be exterminated because they are not native to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, they are instinctively hated, and they […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 9Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 8
Summary Gulliver visits the Yahoos but cannot reconcile himself to their vulgarity. They eat frogs and fish and kennel in holes. They stink, cannot be housebroken, and hurl excrement at one another. When Gulliver goes swimming, he is cornered by one of the amorous females who embraces his naked body […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 8Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 7
Summary Impressed by the virtues of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver decides to tell, freely and truthfully, as much as he can about Man. Gulliver has come to venerate the Houyhnhnms and hopes to be able to stay among them for the rest of his life. But Gulliver cannot be absolutely truthful; […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 7Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 6
Summary Gulliver discusses money and the difference between the poor and the rich. People lust for luxury, he says, but once they have it, it breeds sicknesses. And who treats the sick? Doctors — who can “magically” predict death because they can always kill their patients. Doctors, Gulliver laments, seldom […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 6Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 5
Summary Describing England to his master, Gulliver talks at length about the bloody wars fought for “religious reasons” — Europeans, he says, will kill over whether flesh is bread or whether blood is juice or wine. Likewise, they murder each other out of jealousy for a government post. An invading […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part IV: Chapter 5