Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature.

The book presents itself as a simple traveller's narrative with the disingenuous title Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, its authorship assigned only to "Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, then a captain of several ships". The text is presented as a first-person narrative by the supposed author, and the name "Gulliver" appears nowhere in the book other than the title page. The unabridged publications of the text begin with a fictional letter entitled "The Publisher to the Reader" and "A letter from Captain Gulliver to his cousin Sympson" which present the fact that the original account has been edited and published without the permission of Lemuel Gulliver. The book proper then is divided into four parts.


Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput:

On his first voyage, Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck and awakes to find himself a prisoner of a race of people one-twelfth the size of normal human beings, less than 6 inches high, who are inhabitants of the neighbouring and rival countries of Lilliput and Blefuscu. After giving assurances of his good behaviour, he is given a residence in Lilliput and becomes a favourite of the court.

Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag

When the sailing ship Adventure is steered off course by storms and forced to go in to land for want of fresh water, Gulliver is abandoned by his companions and found by a farmer who is 72 feet tall. He brings Gulliver home and his daughter cares for Gulliver. The farmer treats him as a curiosity and exhibits him for money.

Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan

After Gulliver's ship is attacked by pirates, he is marooned close to a desolate rocky island, near India. Fortunately he is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, a kingdom devoted to the arts of music and mathematics but unable to use them for practical ends. Laputa's method of throwing rocks at rebellious surface cities also seems the first time that aerial bombardment was conceived as a method of warfare. While there, he tours the country as the guest of a low-ranking courtier and sees the ruin brought about by blind pursuit of science without practical results, in a satire on the Royal Society and its experiments.

Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms

Despite his earlier intention of remaining at home, Gulliver returns to sea as the captain of a merchantman as he is bored with his employment as a surgeon. On this voyage he is forced to find new additions to his crew who he believes to have turned the rest of the crew against him. His pirates then mutiny and after keeping him contained for some time resolve to leave him on the first piece of land they come across and continue as pirates.