A Brief Synopsis of Jonathon Swift’s Novel

Gulliver’s Travels is the tale of Lemuel Gulliver as he voyages to the strange lands of Lilliput, Brobdingnag, the kingdom of Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms.

In Lillput people are six inches high, and Gulliver, in comparison, is a giant, or a “Man-Mountain”, as they call him. Over time Gulliver becomes involved with the domestic and international dealings of the Lilliputian government. Here the government requires Gulliver to aid the Lilliputians in their war against Blefuscu, A neighboring country whose citizens are also six inches high. During the war Gulliver literally seizes the enemy fleet from Blefuscu and strides across the harbor with it back to Lilliput. For a short time he is a hero.

However, during the peace process, Gulliver intervenes and wins a more advantageous treaty for the Blefuscudians than they would have otherwise had. After this Gulliver is convicted of high treason by the Lilliputians. At this point Gulliver escapes to Blefusco, then home to England.

The second part of the novel takes place in the land of Brobdingnag. This time, however, it’s Gulliver who is six inches tall among the giant Brobdingnagians. After a short stint working as a circus sideshow attraction, Gulliver is rescued by the king and queen of Brobingnag and lives a life of considerable comfort at court.

One day while on an outing with the king and queen, Gulliver is captured by a bird and dropped into the sea, and recovered by an English ship. Gulliver stays in England a while with his family then goes back to sea.

In the third part of the novel Gulliver ventures the flying island of Laputa and some of its’ nearby colonies. His first stop is Laputa, where the inhabitants have one eye turned inward and one eye turned upward towards the sky. Here their inward eye represents their constant thinking of inward speculations while the upward eye represents lofty issues in mathematics, astronomy, and music. Later Gulliver becomes friendly with Count Munodi who is the only one on the island who lives in a beautiful, well-built house and whose lands yield crops. The other citizens, due to their continuous reflection upon useless scientific theories, live in houses and lands that are in ruins.

After traveling to several other colonies of Laputa, Gulliver returns to England before again setting sail.

In part four, after a mutiny, Gulliver ends up in the land of the Houyhnhnms (pronounced WHIN-nims). The Houuyhnms are horses governed totally by reason. They have created a society that is perfectly ordered, perfectly peaceful and exempt from passion. Co-existing along with the Houyhnhnms are the Yahoos. In this land the Yahoos are humans, but are so bestial that they are human only in outward appearance. The Yahoos are kept in a kennel, and are prohibited from having anything to do with the Houyhnhnms.

Gulliver tries his best to become a Houyhnhnm. He eventually learns their language, and tries to think like them. However, Gulliver realizes that he is neither a Houyhnhnm nor a Yahoo and cannot a place to fit in their society. Therefore he leaves and returns to England. By this time, however, Gulliver has gone mad and can never reconcile himself with other people, whom he considers to be Yahoos.

At home, he buys horse and spends most of his time in the stable. He can barely tolerate the presence of his family, and has little to do with them as possible. Having been exposed to the Houyhnhnms, he finds it near impossible to live among his fellow Englishmen.