Gulliver's Travels

By: Didimus Estanto T.

Gulliver's Travels

A story by Jonathan Swift

Summary of the Novel
In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver describes his two voyages. In the first voyage, he went to the south sea with a ship called the Antelope. His ship was struck a stone and broke. He is the only person to reach land after a shipwreck. He awakes to find himself tied down by tiny men; these are the Lilliputians. A Hurgo (official) supervises them. Gulliver agrees to cooperate, and is untied and taken to the capital where he meets Lilliput’s Emperor. He agrees to serve the Lilliputians, and is granted partial freedom in return. Gulliver prevents an invasion from Lilliput’s enemy, Blefuscu, by stealing the enemy’s ships and is given a high title of honor. He makes friends and enemies at court and learns details of Lilliputian society. After putting out a fire in the palace by urinating on it, he is accused of high treason through polluting the palace. He is sentenced to be blinded and starved. However, Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, finds a boat, sails out to sea, and is picked up by an English ship.

Two months after his return to England, Gulliver leaves on his second voyage. He went in the ship called the adventure. After a few month, there was a terrible storm with a strong wind, then they were lost. He lands in an unknown country to get water and is abandoned. He is in the country of the gigantic Brobdingnagians. A giant reaper picks him up  and takes him to a farmer, who wants him to be on exhibit as a freak. He fights a gigantic cat and other monstrous animals. Gulliver became the money machine for the farmer. Gullivere make some show and attracted some many people, so the farmer is getting rich immediately. The Queen of Brobdingnag buys Gulliver and presents him to the King. The farmer’s daughter, Glumdalclitch, who had befriended Gulliver, is hired by the King as Gulliver’s guardian and nurse. Gulliver quarrels with the King’s dwarf, but describes England in detail to the King. Gulliver is carried around in a box and tours the kingdom. He fights birds and animals and finds the King’s Maids of Honor, who undress before him, disgusting him because of their great size. In the moment of their rest, Gulliver’s box is picked up by a gigantic eagle and dropped into the sea; he is picked up by an English ship and returns to England. After a few month he arrived in England and meet his family.

Lemuel Gulliver Character

Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon, sea captain, traveler, and the narrator of these travel accounts, the purpose of which is to satirize the pretentions and follies of humans. Gulliver is an ordinary man, capable of close observation; his deceptively matter of fact reportage and a great accumulation of detail make believable and readable a scathing political and social satire. On his first voyage, he is shipwrecked at Lilliput, a country inhabited by people no more than ten centimeter tall, where pretentiousness, individual as well as political, is ridiculed. The second voyage ends in Brobdingnag, a land of giants. Human grossness is a target here. Moreover, Gulliver does not find it easy to make sense of English customs and politics in explaining them to a king twenty meter  high. The Gulliver also is a good man, he show his affectionate to his family. He is really a good man that missed his children and wife by his willingness to coming back home.

Setting of the novel

Theme of this story

Human Condition

This story tells us that everything in the world have condition to make the thing possible.

Setting of time

4^th of May 1699, two years, two month, one month

Setting of place

England, country of Lilliput, Mildendo, Blefuscu, Brobdingnagions, castle, sea, seashore, adventure ship, Antelope ship