Mans Capacity in an of Man and Part IV of Gullivers Travels - Essay Example

Man’s Capacity in An Essay of Man and Part IV of Gulliver’s TravelsThe importance and capacity of man have been a topic of concern for many years. Artists, poets and novelists have for all this time tried to express the position that man holds in the universe. While many agree that man is a very important creature, some tend to question the notion that man is the center of the universe. In the two pieces of art, ‘An Essay of Man’ and Gulliver’s Travels’ the position of man as the center of the universe is questioned.

In ‘An Essay on Man’, man’s pride is warned. According to Pope, man is not the center of everything. Although the essay does not get deep into the Christian teachings, a major assumption that the capacity of man is literary fallen is well articulated. Man’s pride and the search for greater knowledge than himself is worsened by his pretense of perfection and hence the cause of his error ad misery. In this essay further, Pope describes the moral and intellectual capacity. The author does not however condemn this wrongful perception and pride of man.

Rather, he seeks to establish the mentality in the reader that man is important in the creation but must learn to accept his position in the chain of being (Pope, v 34). In the first epistle of the essay, Pope describes that man has a position in nature and the universe. The second epistle gets us deeper into the man as an individual and that he is not necessarily the center of the universe. This is further described in the third epistle where the author relates man and the society.Man’s capacity in the universe is further expressed in Swift’s Gulliver Travels.

In this story, Gulliver’s experience throughout the journey and tales expresses similar opinions and beliefs to those of Pope. When one thinks of man and his pride, Gulliver’s experience as a person provide a different perspective (Swift, 234). Gulliver meets communities of people and creatures who are different. Despite the fact, that he was important to the fellow sailors, he finds himself a stranger and sometimes an intruder in different situations. In one environment, he finds that he is the biggest of the creatures, and he has to be tied down by the Lilliputians.

In a different situation, he finds himself the smallest of the creatures; he is enslaved by a Brobdingnag farmer and is amazed by the strange size of the insects in Brobdingnag. These experiences concur with the belief that neither the physical power nor the might of man dictates his capacity but his position in the universe in relation to the rest of the creatures (Swift, 231).However, these two stories differ in the way they express the capacity of man. Although both authors believe that the capacity is a product of the position of man in the universe, Swift expresses this situation using utopia and unreal situations that are fictitious.

This is rather different from Popes philosophical poem that gives deeper meanings to this position in a real world. The two stories, however, having been written at around the same time are complementary of one another one giving a taste of realism while the other figuratively using fiction to express the theme of man’s capacity.Works citedPope, Alexander. An Essay on Man. London: Methuen, 1950. Print.Swift, Jonathan, and Clement Hawes. Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings: Complete Text with Introduction, Historical Context, Critical Essays.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. Print.