1040 swift, Jonathan
employment and high favour at court.” Whenever
a government vacancy occurs, interested individuals
ask to entertain the emperor by dancing on a “slender
white thread, extended about two foot, and twelve
inches from the ground.” Whoever “jumps the high-
est without falling” obtains the position. However,
subjugation of the individual can best be seen in the
competition for “three fine silken threads.” In this
competition, candidates leap over or, perhaps more
significantly, crawl under a stick held horizontally
by the emperor. The winner—“whoever holds out
the longest in leaping and crawling”—earns a blue
thread. Second- and third-place winners earn red
and green threads. Gulliver observes that the most
important court officials wear these threads around
their middles.
Gulliver’s second adventure, the voyage to Brob-
dingnag, follows his escape from Lilliput and a
subsequent visit home. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver’s
physical role is reversed as he lands in a nation
of giants. Now diminutive, he finds himself once
more treated as a curiosity and, indeed, is pitted
against society. In this reversal of size relevance,
he instantly recognizes his vulnerability: He could
easily be squashed in the fist of one of the natives
or trampled underfoot at any time. Perhaps Swift
infers here that society—a giant—is at any moment
capable of squashing the individual. Gulliver, as he
is wont to do, does his best to conform and actually
seems successful. Eager to please, he adapts relatively
well as he learns the language to converse with the
residents, especially the king and queen. Also, in his
desire to entertain the royalty, he contrives a method
of playing a spinet-like instrument “near sixty foot
long,” with “each key being almost a foot wide.”
Interestingly enough, the narrator does not report
the king’s and queen’s reactions to this performance.
Gulliver’s departure from Brobdingnag, although
not of his own doing, leads to another visit with his
family and a subsequent voyage.
The next voyage, which results in his adventure
in Laputa, continues to support the theme of the
individual versus society. Again the traveler finds
himself one among many. Here, the king and his
court live on a floating island and use that island to
control individual inhabitants. For example, when-
ever his subjects, who live on the actual land, cause
problems, the king simply orders the floating island
“above the regions of clouds and vapors [to] prevent
the falling of dews and rains” and to create a drought.
He also sometimes orders the island perilously close
to the inhabitants below. Whichever move he makes
usually quells any efforts at individuality. Swift
makes his point effectively here.
Another sea voyage lands Gulliver in the land
of the Houyhnhnms—rational horses who rule the
land. Once again, he strives to fit into the society.
He learns the language; he also learns to admire
the rationality expressed by the Houyhnhnms.
He even recognizes his great resemblance to the
Yahoos, the disgustingly bestial “other” residents
of the land. However, in spite of his admiration
of the ruling horses, the Houyhnhnms, refusing
to accept Gulliver as an individual, refer to him as
a Yahoo and find it unbelievable that Yahoos not
only inhabit but also rule his land. In the end, all of
Gulliver’s willingness to shed his individuality can-
not prevent his being forced to leave. Once again,
society triumphs.
Shirley ShumanprIde in Gulliver’s Travels
Gulliver exhibits pride in his opening letter to his
Cousin Simpson. The narrator castigates the imagi-
nary cousin for having added to his story. Gulliver
especially objects to “a paragraph about Her Majesty,
the late Queen Anne.” He declares that, “although
[he] did reverence and esteem [Queen Anne] more
than any of human species, . . . it was not [his] incli-
nation” nor even “decent to praise any animal of our
composition.” Here Gulliver shows his loss of pride
as one of the “animals” to whom he refers.
Pride reappears among the Lilliputians. The
minute inhabitants of Lilliput are ruled by an
emperor who, upon removing Gulliver’s shackles,
expects Gulliver “to prove a useful servant, and well
deserve all the favours he had already conferred
upon [him].” Only one with tremendous self-pride
would make such a declaration to a man more than
12 times the speaker’s size.
Pride also instigates the feud among the Lillipu-
tians, a feud centered on a volatile disagreement over
which end of an egg one should break. Reldresal,
the secretary of private affairs, provides background,