Assignment

Q.2 : Write a critical note on the character of   Gulliver as a misanthropist?

 => Introduction :

        

       Gulliver's Travels,a misanthropic satire of humanity,was written in 1726 by Jonathan Swift, like many other authors, Swift uses a journey as the backdrop for his satire.He invents a second author, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, who narrates a speaks directly to the reader from his own experience.The original title of Swifts novel was "Travel into several Remote Nations of the world.In four parts by Lemuel Gulliver's.First Surgeon and then Captain of several ships."

        Jonathan Swift story, Gulliver's Travels, is a very clever story.It recounts the fictitious journey of fictitious man named Lemuel Gulliver, and his travel to the fantasy land of Lilliput.Brobdingnag, Laputta and Houyhnhnm land.When one first land, one may believe that they are reading humorous account of fairy - tale - like land that are intended to amused children when one reads this story in the light of it being a satire. The story are still humorous public statement about the affairs of England and of the human race as a whole. 

=> Gulliver's Role :

       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 Nottingham shire, a sedate county without eccentricity. He attended Emmanuel College, a respected, but not dazzling, school. The neighborhoods that Gulliver lived in — Old Jury, Fetter Lane, and Wapping — are all lower-middle-class sections. He is, in short, Mr. British middle class of his time.

        Gulliver is also, as might be expected, "gullible." He believes what he is told. He is an honest man, and he expects others to be honest. This expectation makes for humor — and also for irony. We can be sure that what Gulliver tells us will be accurate. And we can also be fairly sure that Gulliver does not always understand the meaning of what he sees. The result is a series of astonishingly detailed, dead-pan scenes. For example, when Gulliver awakens in Lilliput, he gradually discovers, moving from one exact detail to another, that he is a prisoner of men six inches tall.

        In Book I, Gulliver's possesses moral superiority to the petty — and tiny — Lilliputians, who show themselves to be a petty, cruel, vengeful, and self-serving race. Morally and politically, Gulliver is their superior. Here, Swift, through Gulliver, makes clear that the normal person is concerned with honor, gratitude, common sense, and kindness. The representative person (a Lilliputian) is a midget, figuratively and literally, compared with a moral person (Gulliver)

 => Gulliver as a misanthropist :

        “I hate and detest that animal called man…”  This is a portion of a sentence from a letter of the world famous satirist Jonathan Swift to Alexander Pope. “The Gulliver’s Travels” is Swift’s masterpiece, a universal satire satirizing the mankind as a whole. However, Book I of this satire is actually directed to the political circumstances and corruption of the then England. Yet, it is also applicable to general tendency of the political leaders of other countries alike. Again, the Book II shows the abuse of power. But Swift most violently attacks the human being and shows his utter hatred towards the whole mankind in the Book IV. For this reason, Swift is called a misanthrope, a hater of mankind. Now let us evaluate the point giving references from the text and comments of different critics.

At the very first travel, Gulliver, Swift’s mouthpiece, appears to such a land where lives an unbelievable ‘human creature not more than six inches high’ . Actually, Swift’s this presentation of an impossible physical smallness of the human race is desired to show the possible mental smallness.

At the second book of the travels, Swift introduces us with a dangerous ‘rope-dance’ among the political competitors, which may cause their serious physical injury, in performing their ‘dexterity and magnificence’ in front of the king to achieve his favour. Even, “Flimnap would have infallibly broke his neck if one of the King’s cushions that actually lay on the ground had not weakened his fall.”  This symbolical story ironically means Walpol’s (Flimnap’s) keeping his power ok by using one of the King’s mistresses (King’s cushions), with whom he had an illegal relationship. Though it seems a personal attack, it actually aims at the common human tendency to keep power by unfair means.

The human beings have an instinct to make quarrel and war. The long war between the ‘Lilliputians’ and the ‘Blefuscus’ on a trivial issue for a long time proves their love for war. They continue the war for many years on the point that which end of an egg to break, larger or smaller end.

Swift’s mouthpiece of misanthropy now is the king of Brobdingnags who having heard an account of Gulliver’s native people throws a pungent attack on the whole mankind-

“I can not but conclude the bulk of your natives, to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

 

=> To wind up :

       Throughout the book “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift, the character Gulliver changes many times. During and after part two and four of the book a noticeable change in Gulliver starts to occur. He himself may not see it but the reader sees it and ones attitude towards Gulliver might change due to Gulliver’s changes. Throughout these two parts, we see Gulliver as an adventurous man that wants to see everything that has been created in the world. During his second adventure Gulliver see the opposite side of the spectrum and has to fend for his life because of his small size, which causes him to lose his view of human size when he goes back to England. In addition, he starts to defend England in his talks, which are totally opposite of how he started. In part four we see the most change in Gulliver, he has lost a grip on reality and no longer wants to accept the fact that he is what he is and looks like a Yahoo. In part two and four of Gulliver’s Travels, we can say that Gulliver as a misanthropist also we can see changes within Gulliver.