SHORT SUMMARY OF GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
Gulliver's Voyage to Lilliput
Lemuel Gulliver, a physician,
sails as ship's doctor on the Antelope which departs from Bristol for the South
Seas in May of 1699. The Antelope is wrecked near Australia during a storm and
Gulliver, carried by wind and tide, finally reaches a low-lying shore where he
falls into exhausted sleep. Upon awakening he finds he is the prisoner of tiny
human beings, six inches tall. As captive he is carried into the capital city
on a special wagon drawn by fifteen hundred miniature horses and kept there
chained as an exhibit for the people of Lilliput. He soon learns their language
and gains favour at the royal court. Once assured that Gulliver means no harm,
the emperor allows him limited freedom and Gulliver tours Mildendo, the
capital, a city very similar to those in Europe.
Gulliver renders valuable
assistance to the Lilliputians when they are in danger of invasion by the
neighboring empire of Blefuscu by towing the Blefuscu fleet back eight hundred
yards to Lilliput. He becomes the acclaimed hero. However, in opposing the
Lilliputian emperor's effort to reduce the vanquished Blefuscudians to slave
status, and by arranging for more favorable peace terms, Gulliver falls into
disfavor at the court of Lilliput. He then visits Blefuscu where he is
graciously accepted by emperor and people.
In Blefuscu he finds a ship's
boat (washed up from a shipwreck) and, with the assistance of thousands of
Blefuscu artisans, he repairs the boat for a return to his own land.
Provisioned with a good supply of miniature cattle and sheep, Gulliver takes
off and is eventually picked up by an English ship.
Gulliver's Voyage to Brobdingnag
Gulliver's stay with his family
in England is short lived and he ships aboard the Adventure for India. The
vessel is blown off course by terrific winds and in the vicinity of Great
Tartary a landing party is sent ashore to forage for supplies. Gulliver &
wanders off and is left behind when a gigantic human figure pursues the sailors
back to the ship. Gulliver is caught in a field by giant threshers, becotnes
the property of a giant farmer, and special pet to the farmer's nine-year-old
daughter (not yet over forty feet high) who takes care of him. The partners
continued exploitation of Gulliver as a curiosity results in a cotnplete
collapse and when Gulliver is close to death the farmer sells hill) to the
queen. Restored to health in the court of Brobdingnag, Gulliver is now the miniature
freak in a world of giants, where rats are lion-sized, dwarfs measure thirty
feet, and wasps are the size of partridges. When questioned by the inquisitive
king about native land and institutions, Gulliver finds it most embarrassing to
answer truthfully. After a two-year sojourn in Brobdingnag, Gulliver is
delivered from captivity by a miracle : a large bird swoops off with, the box
in which Gulliver makes his home and drops it out at sea where it is found by a
ship bound for England. Soon Gulliver is back home where he finds it difficult
to acclimatize himself to a world of average dimensions.
Gulliver's Voyage to Laputa and Balnibarbi etc.
On his third voyage, Gulliver's
ship is attacked by pirates from a Chineseport and he is set adrift in a small
sailboat in which he manages to reach a rocky island. Here a floating mass
alights from the sky and Gulliver finds himself aboard the flying island of
Laputa, a land inhabited by intellectuals who think in terms of the abstract
and ignore the practical. When the floating island arrives above the continent
of Balnibarbi, Gulliver receives permission to visit the land. Following
the inspection of the Grand Academy
(where preposterous impracticalities are always under consideration), Gulliver
travels on to Glubbdubdrib, the island of sorcerers. where he interviews the apparitions
of historic personalities such as Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Pompey, and Sir
Thomas More, only to find that history books are unreliable sources of
information. He then journeys on to Luggnagg to meet the king and to see the
Luggnaggian immortals, the Stuldbruggs, creatures who never die. Not too
impressed with what he has seen of immortality, Gulliver continues on to Japan
where he takes passage for England after having been gone for more than three
years.
Gulliver's Voyage to the Land of Houyhnhnms
For the last time, in August of
1710, the restless Gulliver sets out as captain of a ship sailing from
Portsmouth for the South Seas. The crew mutinies. Gulliver is kept prisoner in
his cabin for four months, and then is cast adrift in a longboat to make his
way to a strange shore. There he is set upon by half-human apelike creatures
who flee in terror at the sight of a horse. Now Gulliver discovers that he is
in the land of the Houyhnhnms, the rational horses who are the masters of the
sub-human Yahoos who serve as beasts of burden. In spite of the diet of oaten
cakes and milk, and the evident condescension of the superior master horses,
Gulliver is intrigued by a society in which courts of law and war are unknown,
for the Huyhnhnms are rational beings to whom dispute is incomprehensible. Gulliver
learns to live with his hosts in complete contentment (although he cannot
communicate with his equine patrons about his native land and its customs
without appalling them over the depravities of man) until he is informed that the Grand Assembly has decreed
that he must be treated as another Yahoo or be released to return to his native
land.
Heartbroken over the peremptory
banishment, Gulliver builds a canoe and leaves the land. He is picked up by a
Portuguese vessel and from Lisbon he returns to England, where, remembering the
Yahoos, he lives out his lifetime detesting all mankind and favoring the only
friend he has on earth—the horses.
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