“He had been eight Years upon a Project for extracting Sunbeams out of Cucumbers
...he did not doubt in eight Years more, he should be able to supply the Governor’s Gardens with Sunshine at a reasonable Rate.” (167-68)
All page numbers are from the Penguin Classics version.
This might be my favorite line of Swift’s 1726 satire. It’s from a scene wherein literature’s most worldly sycophant, Lemuel Gulliver, a.k.a. Quinbus Flestrin, ‘Man Mountain’, the erstwhile nanunculus Grildig (90), tours among Lagado’s Academy of earnest Projectors, all laboring on behalf of the Public Good. I laughed aloud through that whole section.
With the love of his country foremost at heart (not to be exceeded by his extreme Love of Truth), our most unfortunate Stranger records four remarkable Voyages: .
[None to be mistaken for his presumptive namesake’s, Jon Swift]
- To the isle of the diminutive Lilliputians
- To the kingdom of the giant Brobdingnagians
- To the floating island, Laputa, & lands beneath its roaming shadow
- To the Country of enlightened horse-like Houyhnhnms
This and the larger satire are written in the Juvenalian mood.
When our Traveller’s name bears an intentional similarity to “Gullible”, the satirical concerns for total Veracity & Empirical Observation are poignant. Even moreso in an era when travel narratives could be the only public source of information on a foreign place or people.
They become morally synonymous with journalism.
So when you discuss the stakes of this satire, consider how sharp & personal Swift’s barbs remain if you substituted, say, our contemporary international news culture for ‘travel narrative’.
The first barb is meant for writers; the 'Gullible' is for readers.
While we're at it, let’s give a nod to the 18th c. coining of Yahoo, thought to be a variation on the word HUMAN. Beware: for now you know that if hurled as an epithet, Yahoo! could be grounds for a duel.
Yet I, being studious of brevity, shall not belabor the point.
Rather, infused as we are with a modest Tincture of Learning & wholly within the pretense of Reason, acknowledging our many Prejudices & a certain Narrowness of Thinking, let us begin!
~ A. Campisi
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Discussion Questions & Suggestions
• The Stranger. A perfect book for our theme. In what way is he actually Stranger in each land? What does he learn from each People about his own Native Countrymen? How is he affected each time he returns?
• The Bigness of a .... Size matters: HOW?
• Rational. In the context of these Voyages, what does it mean to be a ‘rational creature’?
• Do you agree with Gulliver that the Houyhnhnms (pronounced “Hwinn-ems”) are the pinnacle of an enlightened, rational society?
• Can you compare Houyhnhnm social philosophy to any other political systems—fictional or historical, theoretical or actual?
• The first ‘yahoo’ he meets leaving the Houyhnhnms is an Aboriginal ‘savage’ who shoots him with an arrow. The second is the elaborately kind Portuguese captain Pedro de Mendez (263). What is this transition about? What are we being shown in the captain’s character?
• Compare & discuss in broad strokes the politics & values of each society he visits, according to its Bigness.
• More specifically: Compare the values of Lilliput’s justice system (p. 56) with those of Brobdingnag (p. 126) or the Houyhnhnms' (256). What social commentary arises from the descriptions of each?
• Were there any observations of society or human nature which struck you as still holding particularly true today? For example: “The Disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a Man incapable of holding any Public Station” (57)
• Honesty: “Nothing but an extreme Love of Truth could have hindered me from concealing this part of my Story.” (123). Gulliver is constantly concerned with questions of Truth & Honesty: in his records, in the falsehood of others, in the hypocrisy of historical leaders, in not being believed by his hosts or countrymen, in the purpose of narratives, in the cultures which depend on lies & those (Houyhnhnms) which don’t even have a word for them. What is this theme of Truth about?
• Empiricism. Related to this is the question of objective observation, prized in any ethnographer or historian. Discuss the methods, stakes & effect of ‘empirical observation’ as it comes up in specific instances of the book.
• The Author’s Love of his Native Country. Such titles almost always seem to follow a host’s opinion like this one, from the Giant King: “I cannot but conclude the Bulk of the Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.” (123)
A beautifully timed line, no?
Talk about Gulliver’s Pride in his country and the comparative impression he has in each Voyage. Why do his panegyrics always seem to backfire?
• Scat. Among the pivotal images that fail to appear in all cinematic renditions & children’s versions—(such as “A frolicsome Girl of sixteen, who would sometimes set me astride one of her Nipples” (111))—is Swift’s hilarious devotion to scatological detail. Like it or not, it is a significant theme.
Talk scat.
Here are some examples:
- G. ‘Discharged the Necessities of Nature” inside the old temple where he’s chained (an allusion to Westminster Hall), which must be removed by wheelbarrow trains daily (30)
- Discreetly defecating in the sorrel garden
- Plagued by giant fly excrement
- The heroic / treasonous piss extinguishing the tower fire (54) which earns him a sentence of death commuted to a mere blinding.
- “The Operation to reduce human Excrement to its original Food” (168)
- And: perceiving that “Men are never so Serious, Thoughtful, and Intent, as when they are at Stool” the Professor would profoundly investigate the Ordure of great Statesmen suspected of Conspiracy against the Government, which was brought to him in barrels. (178)
- Shat upon by Yahoos (208)
- “The Cure prescribed is a Mixture of their own Dung & Urine forcibly put down the Yahoo’s throats” which Gulliver then “freely recommend[s] to my Countrymen for the public Good, as an admirable Specific against all Diseases produced by Repletion.” [ie: eating too much; gluttony] (241)
• Talk about the Isle of the Ancient Dead, magicians who can call up honest ‘ghosts’ of any named hero of the past. A lot of pages go to this angry screed. What does he learn?
• What did you think of the Struldbrugs (Immortals)—and Gulliver’s speculative ambitions for immortality as compared with the unhappier truth?
• What's the analogy of the floating island?
• My favorite images of the book are all in the 3rd Voyage, beginning with the Flappers & zeroing in on the Projectors.
The Laputian Flappers, their masters the cuckolded snobs of mathematics & music, all living in terror of the sun’s mortality, which “will by Degrees be encrusted with its own Effluvia” (153)
“Persons who are able to afford it always keep a Flapper...the Business of this Officer is, when two or three more Persons are in Company, gently to strike with his Bladder [affixed like a Flail to the end of a short stick] the Mouth of him who is to speak, and the Right Ear of him or them to whom the Speaker addresseth himself. This Flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his Master in his Walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft Flap on his Eyes, because he is always so wrapped up in Cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every Precipice...” (148)
→How it is that a race of such impractical intellectuals commands such control over those below? What are the larger connections & comments on social hierarchy here?
• The Anagrammatic Method (179) & plays on words. Talk about the made up words of the book, beginning with Gulliver’s names (for himself & for others). Then there are the alleged variations on London England (Mildendo; Lorbrulgrun; Lagado; Fladona Gagnole; Luggnagg) & Dublin (Lindalino; Glubbdubdrib) Tories & Whigs (Tramesksan & Slamecksan); and the more blatant: Laputa (in Spanish: the whore; or the English put = a stupid fellow (as perhaps in Lilliput)).
• Some claim Swift is simply a misanthrope, but I think the opposite is at least as likely. What do you think?
• Pride. The book ends on this note: Gulliver's exhortation against Pride. Discuss this move.
A comment:
As an occasional Traveller oft pretending to lofty Aims of Public Interest, even the faint hope to “make Men wiser and better, and to improve their Minds by the bad as well as good Example of what [I] deliver concerning foreign Places” (266), I might cynically suggest the greatest fiction in this book lies in the universally deep & inexhaustible CURIOSITY that Gulliver finds aimed at his travels and country of origin wherever he goes.
For in mild sympathy for Dampier & his justly mocked ilk, there is–as there always has been—a Carnal Appetite out there for any narrative in which “Authors [have] less consulted Truth than their own Vanity or Interest, or the Diversion of ignorant Readers.’ (137)
It's all Stories, after all, even the Truth.
Not an excuse; only marking an enduring dilemma for any writer.
