GULLIVER'S TRAVEL

The protagonist of the author’s masterpiece, Lemuel Gulliver, is the narrator. Four books were published for this series: in the first one Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon, was casted up on a strange land, Lilliput, where its inhabitants were small people; in the second part Gulliver was on Brobdingnag, an island where gigats live; on his third voyage the protagonist visited the land of Laputa: inhabitants were absent-minded people who devoted their lives to Music, Mathematics and abstract speculation; in the fourth one he discovered a land where the Yahoos (stupid and physically similar to humans) and Houyhnhnms (very intelligent horses) lived. At the end of the story Gulliver returned to England and he noticed that he couldn’t stand his society.

The main feature of the novel is the use of satire, that portrays, using distortion or exaggeration, very familiar situations, which in the book appear ridiculous, funny or disgusting. It also involves the reader to laugh at a defect or vice of human behaviour.

With his work Swift criticizes the European governments of the time, human corruption, and society in general. Visiting new world and new society gives Gulliver the opportunity to reconsider his governments’ and his society’s structure. Furthemore Swift suggests that human beings are no different from the Yahoos. Their apparent refinement is only a mask which hides their barbaric side.