Gulliver, a tiny person in a land of giants, describes being a pampered prisoner in the land of Brobdingnag. He feels that he has lost honor and dignity because he is regarded as a toy. He feels powerless. As he nears the end of his third voyage, Gulliver explains why he decides to leave the country of Luggnagg. In every imaginary country, Gulliver boasts about enjoying the favors of the royal court.
But he also witnesses the cruelty and arbitrary power of the king of Luggnagg and knows he cannot expect justice in return for his obedience. On his last voyage, Gulliver commands a ship, but the sailors mutiny and make Gulliver a prisoner. He submits without a fight, as he has done during all his previous captivities.
Gulliver reveals himself to be not terribly bright, but he does have a strong sense of self-preservation. In this case, the sailors put him to sea in a small boat, which he manages to sail to the country of the Houyhnhnms.
Here, Gulliver sums up the lessons he has learned as he returns from his last voyage. He reveals that he now thinks of himself as a Houyhnhnm and of his family as intolerable Yahoos. The whole story of the Houyhnhnms functions as an elaborate joke on common sense. Their utopian society has captivated Gulliver to the point that he despises his own race. He sees human degeneracy when he looks in the mirror.
SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Themes Motifs Symbols. Quotes Lemuel Gulliver Quotes. The last of these voyages not proving very fortunate, I grew weary of the sea, and intended to stay at home with my wife and family. I removed from the Old Jewry to Fetter Lane, and from thence to Wapping, hoping to get business among the sailors; but it would not turn to account. After they were read, I was demanded to swear to the performance of them; first in the manner of my own country, and afterwards in the method prescribed by their laws; which was to hold my right foot in my left hand, to place the middle finger of my right hand on the crown of my head, and my thumb on the tip of my right ear.
A dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel of their liquor a reasonable draught. Their mutton yields to ours, but their beef is excellent. I have had a sirloin so large, that I have been forced to make three bites of it; but this is rare. My servants were astonished to see me eat it bones and all, as in our country we do the leg of a lark. Their geese and turkeys I usually ate at a mouthful, and I confess they far exceed ours.
Of their smaller fowl I could take up twenty or thirty at the end of my knife. I made all the sail I could, and in half an hour she spied me, then hung out her ancient, and discharged a gun. It was impossible for me to climb this stile, because every step was six-feet high, and the upper stone about twenty.
I was endeavouring to find some gap in the hedge, when I discovered one of the inhabitants in the next field, advancing towards the stile, of the same size with him whom I saw in the sea pursuing our boat.
He appeared as tall as an ordinary spire steeple, and took about ten yards at every stride, as near as I could guess. I was struck with the utmost fear and astonishment, and ran to hide myself in the corn, whence I saw him at the top of the stile looking back into the next field on the right hand, and heard him call in a voice many degrees louder than a speaking- trumpet: but the noise was so high in the air, that at first I certainly thought it was thunder.
Whereupon seven monsters, like himself, came towards him with reaping-hooks in their hands, each hook about the largeness of six scythes. These people were not so well clad as the first, whose servants or labourers they seemed to be; for, upon some words he spoke, they went to reap the corn in the field where I lay.
I kept from them at as great a distance as I could, but was forced to move with extreme difficulty, for the stalks of the corn were sometimes not above a foot distant, so that I could hardly squeeze my body betwixt them. However, I made a shift to go forward, till I came to a part of the field where the corn had been laid by the rain and wind.
Here it was impossible for me to advance a step; for the stalks were so interwoven, that I could not creep through, and the beards of the fallen ears so strong and pointed, that they pierced through my clothes into my flesh.
At the same time I heard the reapers not a hundred yards behind me. Being quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief and dispair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I might there end my days. I bemoaned my desolate widow and fatherless children. I lamented my own folly and wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage, against the advice of all my friends and relations.
In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other actions, which will be recorded for ever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by millions. I reflected what a mortification it must prove to me, to appear as inconsiderable in this nation, as one single Lilliputian would be among us.
But this I conceived was to be the least of my misfortunes; for, as human creatures are observed to be more savage and cruel in proportion to their bulk, what could I expect but to be a morsel in the mouth of the first among these enormous barbarians that should happen to seize me? Undoubtedly philosophers are in the right, when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison. It might have pleased fortune, to have let the Lilliputians find some nation, where the people were as diminutive with respect to them, as they were to me.
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