Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift - Book Report/Review Example

These lands give Swift a chance to show some of his great imagination and inventiveness, as well as to engage in a great amount of satire, which mostly deals with his views on human nature. Gulliver's Travels looks at the human conditions, rather the society with the pros and cons through a magnifying glass for which reason Swift was mistakenly considered a misanthrope. His varied views from the different lands illustrate the weaknesses of mankind and his own suggestions for the improvement of humanity in general.

In short, with the Lilliputians, he presents the animalistic nature. The same bestial characteristic is taken to an extreme level in the Yahoos. Human being's capacity to reason is significantly portrayed in the Brobdingnagians. However, the idealistic man is best represented through Houyhnhnms. This race of horses portrays the embodiment of all of the principles that Swift thinks would best help humanity. When Gulliver first wakes up on the island of Lilliput, he is actually shocked to find himself tied down.

When the culprits of this act show themselves, he shouts in surprise at their small size. "I was in utmost astonishment and roared so loud, that they all ran back in a fright," (56). But the response from the Lilliputians is cruel and prompt. "I felt above an hundred arrows discharged on my left hand, which pricked me like so many needles," (56). This shows an unreasonable, animalistic response of unnecessary force. Ironically, rather even more illogically, it doesn't give them the upper hand against Gulliver.

"I could easily free myself: and as for the inhabitants, I had reason to believe I might be a match for the greatest armies they could bring against me, if they were all of the same size with that I saw," (57). By these exact words from the book, we believe that the author conveys his dislike of power through force and likens their reaction as an animalistic response that does not really serve any purpose. Their actions are nothing but evidences to consider that man is an animal by nature.On the other hand, the Brobdingnagians apparently have the capacity to be more than just an animal.

They possess reason as well. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver is asked by the king to describe his own home of England. The king's commentary after the narration of Gulliver is noteworthy. "By what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wringed and extorted from you, I cannot 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".(173) The king acts like a man, listening, thinking, concluding and judging in the end.

He is a man, and hence he is an animal, but he is indeed capable of reason which is an extra feature we have with the Brobdingnagians. The society satirized here is the Europeans to simply show that they are far more reasonable than the others. The other instance on building weapons of mass destruction, the king refuses to oblige to Gulliver. He shows his ethics and says that he would rather lose half of his kingdom than build such terrible weapons. This balances the negative and the positive.

It shows that Swift approved of the things which are ethical in his own society. He deals not only with the demerits of the human